Is it just Curmie, or does it seem to you, Gentle Reader, that there’s some kind of rule that to truly reach the heights of rock and roll immortality, you’ve got to release at least one controversial album cover?
There was The Who’s “Who’s Next,” featuring an image which seemed to suggest the band-mates had just urinated against a concrete piling. The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” showed a crotch shot of a man in tight jeans, complete with a little bulge suggesting an erection and, in the initial release, a working zipper that revealed underwear-like fabric underneath. Supergroup Blind Faith stayed together for only a single eponymous album, which features a topless pubescent girl on the cover.
Led Zeppelin’s cover art for “Houses of the
Holy” shows naked children climbing a hillside of basalt rocks. (A post about Facebook’s censorship of this
image a couple of years ago—a decision they quickly reversed after public
uproar—came around on my feed just last week.)
Even the good-guy Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today” shows the Fab Four
posing with slabs of meat and broken doll parts (not to mention the photo of
fully nude John and Yoko on the cover of their “Two Virgins.”)
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| The album cover in question. |
After attempts to find a photo that was neither too graphic
nor subject to a steep royalty the producers didn’t want to pay, the band hired
a photographer and sent him out to local swimming pools. The photographer had a friend whom he knew had
a baby boy. According to the boy’s father,
“[He] calls us up and was like, ‘Hey
Rick, wanna make 200 bucks and throw your kid in the drink?’ I was like, 'What’s up?' And he’s like, ‘Well,
I’m shooting kids all this week, why don’t you meet me at the Rose Bowl, throw
your kid in the drink?’”
And so was born the now famous shot of Spencer Elden, then
aged four months, in the water. Eldren
is naked, and his penis is visible. Add
a little computer magic, and the shot now shows the baby apparently swimming
after a dollar bill with a fishhook attached; fishing line leads out of frame
to the top of the picture. The symbolism
isn’t hard to comprehend.
Elden has become a minor celebrity in the ensuing 30 years. He reportedly has “Nevermind” tattooed on his
chest, has developed a cottage industry signing copies of the record, and has
posed for underwater photos on several anniversaries of the album’s
release. All involved swim trunks,
although he told the New York Post that he wanted to do the 25th
anniversary shot naked.
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| A few examples of how assiduously Mr. Elden has avoided the horrors of his infancy. |
OK, I made up that last part. But let’s look at those arguments point by point.
“Extreme and permanent emotional distress.” This is the guy who pronounced his notoriety
as “kinda cool,” and who would be unknown if he hadn’t decided to publicize his
own identity as the “Nirvana baby.”
“Physical manifestations.”
Name them. Next.
“Loss of education.”
He is now a student at the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena; it’s
unclear whether he is a grad student or an undergrad. What is clear is that just tuition (not counting incidentals like food and
lodging) there is at least $47,000 a year for undergrads, and more for grad
students. Somehow, the loss of education
argument seems a little strained.
Wages: How does that
work? Is he truly arguing that someone wouldn’t
hire him because of something that occurred when he was four months old? He’s worth a half a million dollars, by the
way. Curmie has a fair number of
30-year-old former students, college grads (and good ones) who would be willing to undergo such financial
suffering.
“Enjoyment of life.” Apparently
exploiting one’s own purely accidental celebrity status just isn’t as much fun
as it used to be.
Parents never signed release: assuming this to be true, then
the time to deal with this was 30 years ago, and the people to do it were his
parents. But to imagine that a professional
photographer and an established record label wouldn’t have the necessary paperwork
in hand before proceeding with the cover design rather strains credulity.
Child pornography. Two
responses.
Response #1: Bullshit.
Shyster lawyer Maggie Mabie, Elden’s mouthpiece, argues that “The focal point of the image is the minor’s genitalia.” This statement can have two equally possible
explanations: 1). Mabie is lying. 2). She’s really, really creepy. Curmie must have seen that image a dozen
times before even noticing the boy’s penis.
The focal point, of course, is what appears to be the stretch towards
the dollar bill. As even a relatively
dim bulb like Chris Cuomo points out,
I don’t ever remember anybody ever writing or anything being
out there in society about this image as a sexualized or pornographic image. I always thought that it was a suggestion of
how right out of the womb, people are just grabbing for money and doing
anything they can. I thought it was more about capitalism than it was sexuality.
That, Chris, is because the image is not sexualized, and
only an attention-seeking jerk or his utterly irresponsible lawyer could see it
otherwise.
Response #2: if this is true now, it was true 30 years
ago. Why the wait? Could it be that the average music consumer today
wasn’t even born when Kurt Cobain died, and that the demand for Nirvana memorabilia
has dwindled accordingly? Could it be
that this is one last desperate effort to exploit a situation Elden did not
create?
Many Curmiphiles will know that Curmie often seeks a
parallel between life and art. This time
it’s Betsuyaku Minori’s The Elephant that provides the latter. The central character in that is a survivor
of the Hiroshima bombing. He survives by
posing shirtless, showing off his keloid scars and allowing himself to be photographed—for
a price—by and with tourists. But the scars
fade over time, and even when covered in baby oil they don’t shine the way they
used to. So it would appear to be with
30-year-old baby pictures, even famous ones.
Finally, there’s Elden’s other lawyer, James Marsh,
who opines that anyone who thinks he’s an unethical hack who demeans the
experiences of people who really did experience some form of abuse is indulging
in “idol worship when it comes to famous people, bands and places.” Marsh is almost as disingenuous as Mabie, and
even more pompous. It would be a stretch
to say that Curmie has any particular positive feelings towards the defendants
in the case. He couldn’t care less if
they’re famous, and recognizes that to most of them $150,000 borders on pocket
change. But he also knows a money-grabbing
hypocrite when he sees one. Elden is a
jerk. His lawyers are worse.
None of this changes the ethical quagmire that surrounds the use of the picture to begin with. It, and at least the Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith examples noted above, are problematic, not because they are necessarily sexualized (although you could make a pretty good case in regards to the latter), but because those photos are now eternal, and the subject of them was in no position to give consent. If you want to argue the laws ought to be configured differently to better protect minors from exploitation (in whatever form), Curmie’s ready to at least listen.
But to
bring a lawsuit that most experts agree has little if any chance of success, some
30 years after the fact… yeah, when you describe yourself as “being a total
little bitch about this,” Curmie can’t help but agree. And Ms.
Mabie and Mr. Marsh are walking lawyer jokes.
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