Smells Like Bovine Excrement: The baby from the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind" album is suing while claiming cover is "Child Porn" and "Sex Trafficking"

After reading this, it seems to me that that Spencer Elden is suing because he was snubbed by the band when wanting them to promote his art. If he simply sued over name and likeness, that's fine, but he went the extra mile to claim the image is "CP" and is also that, as reported by CNN, "Elden was sexualized because the dollar bill used in the image made the baby resemble 'a sex worker.'"

Claiming the album cover is CP is absurd. In the words of Curt Cobain, “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/arts/music/spencer-alden-nirvana-nevermind.html

Why the Baby on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Album Is Suing Now

Spencer Elden, 30, says Nirvana engaged in child pornography when the band used a picture of him naked on the cover of the breakthrough album.

By Maria Cramer

Aug. 25, 2021

Spencer Elden was 4 months old when he was photographed by a family friend in 1991 drifting naked in a pool.

The picture, taken at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, Calif., would be used that year for the cover of “Nevermind,” Nirvana’s seminal second album that helped define Generation X and rocketed the Seattle band to international fame.

In the decades that followed, Mr. Elden appeared to celebrate his part in the classic cover, recreating the moment for the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries, though not naked.

“It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember,” he said in 2016 in an interview with The New York Post, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25.

Now, however, Mr. Elden, 30, has filed a federal lawsuit against the estate of Kurt Cobain, the musician’s former bandmates, David Grohl and Krist Novoselic, and Mr. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, among other parties. He claimed that they, along with Geffen Records, which released “Nevermind,” profited from his naked image. It is one of the best-selling records of all time, with at least 30 million copies sold worldwide.

“Defendants knowingly produced, possessed, and advertised commercial child pornography depicting Spencer, and they knowingly received value in exchange for doing so,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in federal court in California.

Mr. Elden suffered “permanent harm” because of his association with the album, including emotional distress and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity.” The lawsuit did not provide details about the losses and said they would be disclosed at trial.

Mr. Elden, an artist living in Los Angeles County, has gone to therapy for years to work through how the album cover affected him, said Maggie Mabie, one of his lawyers.

“He hasn’t met anyone who hasn’t seen his genitalia,” she said. “It's a constant reminder that he has no privacy. His privacy is worthless to the world.”

The lawsuit said that Mr. Elden is seeking $150,000 from each of the 15 people and companies named in the complaint, including Kurt Weddle, the photographer who took the picture. Mr. Weddle did not respond to messages requesting comment.

The photo of Mr. Elden was picked from among dozens of pictures of babies Mr. Weddle photographed for the album cover, which Mr. Cobain envisioned showing a baby underwater.

Mr. Weddle paid Mr. Elden’s parents $200 for the picture, which was later altered to show the baby chasing a dollar, dangling from a fishhook.

“They were trying to create controversy because controversy sells,” Ms. Mabie said. “The point was not just to create a menacing image but to cross the line and they did so in a way that exposed Spencer so that they could profit off of it.”

She said her client sometimes agreed when the band, media outlets and fans asked him to recreate the photo as an adult, but he eventually realized that this only resulted in the “image of him as a baby being further exploited.”

The representatives for Mr. Cobain’s estate did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Representatives for Mr. Grohl, Ms. Love, and Geffen Records, which is now part of Universal Music Group, did not respond to messages.

Mr. Elden, who declined to comment on his suit, said in a short documentary in 2015 that the album cover had “opened doors” for him. For example, he worked with Shepard Fairey, the artist who was sued by The Associated Press for using an image of Barack Obama for his piece “Hope.”

Over the years, he has expressed ambivalence about the cover.

“It’d be nice to have a quarter for every person that has seen my baby penis,” he said in a New York Post interview in 2016.

In a different interview that year, he said he was angry that people still talked about it.

“Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice,” Mr. Elden said to GQ Australia.

He said that his feelings about the cover began to change “just a few months ago, when I was reaching out to Nirvana to see if they wanted to be part of my art show.”

Mr. Elden said he was referred to managers and lawyers.

“Why am I still on their cover if I’m not that big of a deal?” he said.

Ms. Mabie said that Mr. Elden has long felt discomfort over the images and had expressed it in even earlier interviews when he was teenager.

“Mr. Elden never consented to the use of this image or the display of these images,” she said. “Even though he recreated the images later on in life, he was clothed and he was an adult and these were very different circumstances.”

Ms. Mabie said his parents never authorized consent for how the images would be used.

She noted that Mr. Cobain once suggested putting a sticker over the baby’s genitals after there was pushback to the idea for the cover.

The performer, who died in 1994, said the sticker should read: “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.”

Mr. Elden is “asking for Nirvana to do what Nirvana should have done 30 years ago and redact the images of his genitalia from the album cover,” Ms. Mabie said.

This lawsuit is not a typical child pornography case, said Mary Graw Leary, a professor at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.

“Nudity of a child alone is not the definition of pornography,” she said. “The typical child pornography that is being seen in law enforcement and pursued in the courts can be violent. The children are young and it is very graphic.”

But there are factors under federal law that allow a judge or a jury to determine whether a photo of a minor “constitutes a lascivious exhibition of the genitals,” including if they were the focal point of a photo, Professor Graw Leary said.

That part of the law “gives a bit more discretion to the court,” she said. “It’s not a case with easy answers.”

Mr. Elden’s past comments about the cover should not undermine his current claim that he was a victim of child pornography, she added. The law does not pick between children who immediately denounce their abusers and children who initially were dismissive about what happened to them, she said.

“We don’t want to be in a position where we’re only going to consider one case criminal because in the other, the child didn’t think it was a big deal at the time,” Professor Graw Leary said. “We don’t only protect certain kids.”

Jessica Ye of the University of Maryland calls for vigilante actions if you don't like how "justice" plays out in America

 “If our institutions cannot ensure that people will be safe and that criminals will suffer consequences for their actions, society should.” These are the words of Jessica Yu in this recent OpEd to The Diamondback, a student newspaper for the University of Maryland. 

“This country was founded on vigilantism.” These were the words uttered by Patrick Drum, a career criminal who used the public sex offense registry to plan the execution of four Registered Persons, murdering two on his hit list before his capture. He is now sitting in a Washington State Prison for the rest of his natural life with no chance of parole.

Perhaps UMD should reconsider how they are educating their students. 

https://dbknews.com/2021/08/04/public-shaming-olympics-fencing-pink-masks/

The public must hold sex offenders accountable, even if institutions don’t

Jessica Ye

Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.

Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault.

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction. He wasn’t even reasonably believed to be innocent of the crimes he was accused of committing — rather, the judicial system had made a technical error during his trial. So even though he probably did commit horrible acts, our judicial institutions failed to hold him accountable.

Unfortunately, our institutions failing to appropriately investigate and punish sexual offenders seems to be quite common. From Roman Polanski to Jeffrey Epstein and now Bill Cosby, it’s difficult to think people who might’ve committed these types of crimes can avoid trial or get out on a technicality. Shouldn’t society demand that people who’ve seriously harmed others receive equally serious consequences?

When it comes to perpetrators escaping the system, individuals should be encouraged to step up and dole out certain consequences themselves. Some sex offenders can return to their normal lives after upending those of their victims’. But individuals can make “normal life” harder for these despicable people through public humiliation and accountability.

Last Friday, members of the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team did just that to Alen Hadzic, an alternate member accused of rape and sexual assault. Hadzic stood alone in a black mask at a match. His teammates — épée fencers Jake Hoyle, Curtis McDowald and Yeisser Ramirez — wore pink masks to support sexual assault victims and to express disdain for Hadzic.

I usually consider public humiliation to be a pretty useless and unnecessarily cruel punishment for crimes that specifically target vulnerable people. However, there’s a marked difference between sexual crimes and most other crimes.

In the context of sexual crimes, I think public humiliation achieves some necessary objectives if there’s no institutional or legal punishment. First and most importantly, it serves to keep potential victims away from people with a history of sexual harassment accusations. In Hadzic’s case, although USA Fencing discreetly put measures in place to separate Hadzic from female athletes in Tokyo, the pink mask stunt will likely warn other women who work in and around the venues to stay away from him.

Second, public humiliation can also have indirect consequences on perpetrators’ future careers and reputations. Before his appeal, Hadzic was initially removed from the U.S. Olympic team. These public accusations will probably (I’d like to say undoubtedly, but some men in positions of power seem to be totally okay with this type of thing) play a factor in his future endeavors, whether as a fencer or not. No one wants to be part of a company that hired a dude with a history of sexual harassment accusations.

Frankly, the pink mask stunt will likely follow Hadzic into all aspects of his life — and it’s exactly what he deserves.

These consequences of public humiliation are totally fair given the crimes committed. Victims of sexual crimes can suffer career repercussions and damage to their reputations, not to mention physical and mental health tolls that can come with losing the basic right to control what happens to their own bodies. Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 25 perpetrators end up incarcerated, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. It doesn’t make sense for people who caused so much pain to be able to walk off virtually scot-free, with no sort of punishment or justice served.

It especially doesn’t make sense that someone like that could represent the U.S. at an international level despite being both a safety risk and a distraction to other hard working teammates. If you’re like me, embarrassed to be represented by someone like Hadzic, go the route of his teammates and return the favor.

Embarrass sex offenders. Make sure their communities know who they are and to stay far away. They might already be public, even if the repercussions of that publicity haven’t landed yet.

If our institutions cannot ensure that people will be safe and that criminals will suffer consequences for their actions, society should. Public humiliation might just be the most effective tool individuals can use.

Jessica Ye is a rising sophomore government and politics and economics major. She can be reached at jye1@terpmail.umd.edu