The case of Spencer Elden (potentially a biopic title) is more than somewhat unprecedented. After all, there are so few iconic album covers with naked infants on them. Certainly none that outshine Nirvana’s Nevermind. And even Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die doesn’t stand out in the mind’s eye half as much—not least of which to say that the latter child in question was wearing a diaper to cover up any chance of being called “pornographic.” And yes, you’ll notice that the baby on that cover, Keithroy Yearwood, has never tried to sue Biggie’s estate despite making even less ($150) than Elden’s parents did for two hours of work (as opposed to Elden’s fifteen minutes—a somewhat poetic amount of time considering that Andy Warhol quote).
Maybe the memory of this particular naked baby has to do with just how much the Nevermind record was shoved down people’s throats in the 90s, and how much of a zeitgeist Nirvana had tapped into/catalyzed. Arguably, the only album cover more iconic from that decade was Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time, well at the tail-end of the cultural moment that Nirvana embodied.
Elden himself has made it clear he’s very aware of his own unwitting impact on pop culture, re-creating the image four times on the album’s tenth, seventeenth, twentieth and twenty-fifth year anniversaries. After all, when you peak that soon in life in terms of what your greatest “accomplishment” will be, you might as well embrace it. Except that, all of the sudden, Elden has decided not to. Has chosen instead to reframe the narrative as an act of infant pornography. To the tune of $150,000 from each of the named parties in the suit as his desired “recompense.” Oh yeah, and Nirvana “redacting” the image of his exposed genitals on the cover.
The irony, of course, is that the cover represents how, from day one, we’re all forced to become whores for money (the dollar bill attached to the hook was, just so you know, added in later). Slaves for the cash. Dignity be damned. Dignity is, evidently, only intended for those who were already born into wealth and therefore don’t need to degrade themselves in assorted sycophantic ways in order to secure income. Just as Elden’s parents, by his estimation, degraded him by allowing him to be photographed for this project. Granted, nobody who was part of the album’s creation—cover included—could have possibly predicted just how much of a phenomenon it would become.
Kind of like how Anne Geddes probably didn’t foresee just how “gaga” everyone would go over her “portfolio,” germinal at first before growing into a multimillion-dollar industry. Especially in the 90s when, apparently, “infant pornography” was all the rage. While, yes, many of the babies in her photos are “clothed” (albeit in some cutesy “tailored to the theme” bullshit), many of them are not. And we all know these babies didn’t get consent for being pimped out in this way by their parents. So where are all the lawsuits against Geddes, if we’re going by Elden’s “logic”?
A “logic” that, per the lawsuit, states, “Cobain chose the image depicting Spencer—like a sex worker—grabbing for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body with his penis explicitly displayed.” Oh dear. Has Spencer never heard of a little thing called “irony”? Or, claiming to be an artist himself, a little thing called “artistic license”? While the record label initially wanted to “get rid of” the penis in some way, Cobain would only consent to the placement of a sticker over the offending area. One that he stipulated must say, “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.” Evidently, that’s precisely what Elden would later be banking on as a line of thinking for his abrupt cash grab, er, lawsuit.
His parents, who were paid two hundred dollars for a photoshoot that lasted all of fifteen minutes should technically be the ones suffering from Elden’s newfound rancor. Sort of like those parents in India whose child sued them for bringing him into this world (which, to be honest, was fair play—and we should all do the same).
During his more “carefree” days regarding the album cover, Elden’s remarks were more about reclaiming his fame than about reclaiming some dough as he remarked, “I might have one of the most famous penises in the music industry, but no one would ever know that to look at me. Sooner or later, I want to create a print of a real deal reenactment shot, completely naked. Why not? I think it would be fun.” In 2016, however, he would start to lay the groundwork for the lawsuit to come in the present by telling Time magazine, “I go to a baseball game and think about it: ‘Man, everybody at this baseball game has probably seen my little baby penis.’ I feel like I got part of my human rights revoked.” There was the setup—leaving it just open enough for Elden to come back and say, “Yes, I want some money for my trouble. And more than just a dollar bill.”
Begging the question, once again, of whether or not a number of “Anne Geddes babies” (part of a separate 90s phenomenon) might/ought to use this precedent for their own benefit and try their hand at suing the “infant photographer”/“pornographer” for a bit of dough themselves. Ah, but Geddes is deemed too unbesmirchable for bringing such “preciousness” into the world. The kind of “preciousness” that does not apply to a “crass” cover and statement like the one Nirvana employed for Nevermind. The tongue-in-cheek “homage” (by way of mockery) to capitalism’s effect on all of us from the moment we can breathe (and therefore can’t anymore because of the oppressive nature of needing to make money).
In the same aforementioned Time article, Elden, who, by the way, permanently branded himself with the album by getting the word “Nevermind” tattooed on his chest, would express a two-pronged part of his bitterness by adding, “Looking back, it feels kind of stupid doing interviews about it, because I had nothing to do with it, but a lot to do with it all at the same time. It’s a really weird feeling being a part of someone else’s momentum—being caught up in this wake of stuff.”
At one point, he tries to sell himself as but a humble servant of “art” (or whatever) by noting, “It’s a trip. Everyone involved in the album has tons and tons of money. I feel like I’m the last little bit of grunge rock. I’m living in my mom’s house and driving a Honda Civic.” No mention of his father, who was the key liaison to Kirk Weddle, the underwater photographer responsible for the album’s cover art (including photos of the band underwater as well).
Having “interned” for Shepard Fairey, but clearly not seeing much come of it, the resentment manifests further when Elden admits to already trying to seek legal action, but meeting a dead end. Perhaps because he hadn’t yet used the “infant pornography” course yet. Time described, “Frustrated about never receiving any sort of compensation for Nevermind, Elden recently looked into pursuing legal action against Geffen Records, but was unsuccessful.” Again, because he hadn’t decided to cry “sexual exploitation”—which, by the way, is quite an insult to those who are truly sexually exploited. For, as Cobain said, anyone who could see the photo as sexual is clearly the one with the issue. Elsewhere, it opened up a debate within the modern context of social media to ask parents—particularly millennial ones—about the ethicality of posting photos of their children before they’re able to form their own opinions about whether that’s something they really want: their image just out there in the ether for any stranger to see.
On the other side of the discourse is Spencer Elden being the so-called poster child for “victim culture.” While no one would argue that it’s a strange thing to be “the Nirvana baby” before the age of five months, it’s often said that it’s what you do with your trauma that informs your character. And clearly, Elden’s character is of the “sue-happy”/“cry like a perpetual baby” variety. That much was already obvious when he mentioned to Time, “I was trying to reach out to these people. I never met anybody. I didn’t get a call or email. I just woke up already being a part of this huge project. It’s pretty difficult—you feel like you’re famous for nothing, but you didn’t really do anything but their album.” Oh the seething-with-rage aura. The “done wrong” sense of injustice. And again, we must ask: then why aren’t the Anne Geddes babies joining forces to file a class action lawsuit? Perhaps because, unquestionably, Elden is exploiting what he can to milk one final benefit out of his lifelong claim to fame. Fame of a now unwanted variety, since posing repeatedly in the same position for another album anniversary has grown stale. In a “documentary” (about three minutes in length when you exclude the credits) about his art from 2015, Elden notes of being selected for the cover, “It could have been anybody, so it also makes me feel lucky. So if you look at it like that, it’s pretty cool.” But no, it’s ostensibly “not cool” anymore now that Elden is looking at it from a different angle.
And it appears as though at least part of his sudden vitriol toward the band is a product of not getting anything out of them in terms of “clout.” Of being able to say, “Yeah, I’m friends with the band” or “The band respects me.” Better still, being able to use the band to market his “art.” A practice he doesn’t appear all that interested in as he muses, “I don’t know, art’s weird, man” in between shots of his tattoo-esque designs on canvases. It’s what he says next that gets to the core of what drives him: “Everyone wants to produce something… and if you’re not it’s like you’re not a productive member of society.” This so blatantly has been eating away at Elden—realizing that the only thing he’ll ever “produce” of true worth is tied to someone else’s artistry. Trying to become an artist in his own right is an overt psychological aspect of that attempt of Elden’s to try to carve out his name, separate from the band’s. Of course, it might help if he didn’t keep bringing up who he was to everyone—complete with this petty lawsuit.
During the credits to said “documentary,” he says, “How do I feel about so many people seeing my penis? I feel that it is pretty cool. You know, it’s the best kind because no one knows about it, you can be at the gym and then Nirvana comes on and then you can’t be like, ‘Hey that’s me on the—’ you know?… It’s chill.” More documented statements that could easily be used against Elden in his battle for compensation. This, ultimately, in response to wailing (like the lifelong baby he is) about how the band didn’t agree to submit artwork to some show he was putting on back in 2016, telling GQ Australia, “I was asking if they wanted to put a piece of art in the fucking thing [and] I was getting referred to their managers and their lawyers. Why am I still on their cover if I’m not that big of a deal?” Well, honestly, he isn’t. It’s just that Elden keeps trying to make himself a big deal.
Complete with this legal uproar. Anyway, if the lawsuit doesn’t pan out for Elden as he had hoped, of course he could always just shrug, say, “Well whatever, never mind” and go right back to pimping himself out by doing a re-creation of the cover yet again for the thirtieth anniversary of the album. Or maybe this is what breaks the dam for those prostituted Anne Geddes babies finally coming forward. Shit, maybe even Jesus too. There are way too many exploitative images of his exposed baby penis in art.
