From the Archives... Celebu-tide

Baby Pictures and Fair Compensation
-- originally written March 29th, 2008

This week I read that Jennifer Lopez and her husband, Marc Anthony, were paid $6,000,000.00 for photos of their newborn twins Max and Emme. Six million dollars. I am aghast and disgusted and numb, all at the same time, at the news. According to People, the magazine paid the amount for exclusive North American rights to the photos. Now, this amount of $6 million is much more than the $1.5 million Christina Aquilera and her husband, Jordan Bratman, earned for photos of their son Max (clearly the name of the moment). No word on how much Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubrey will or have received for photographs of baby girl Nahla. But of course, the real coup was in 2006 when Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born in Namibia and Getty Images paid $4 million dollars for North American rights. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt reportedly were to donate all proceeds to charity. At the time it was rumored that the deal was also about safety, so that a bounty, literally, wasn’t put on anyone’s head for the photos.

So, what’s the big deal about $6 million for some photos?

I can’t help but think of my friend John, who when I asked if he knew anything about the rampant rumors that a colleague of mine was having an affair, said “I don’t know. They’re both hot, so I say go for it!” I was so shocked. I kept thinking, they’re being ‘hot’ doesn’t absolve them of an extra-marital affair. And I can’t help but think of similar things with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.

How do you arrive at the decision to sell photographs of your infants to a national magazine? How do you navigate your moral compass? How do you remotely explain the decision to sell your infants for $6 million? Oh sure, they didn’t actually sell the children, but being a visual communication researcher and teacher, yeah, I can spout enough philosophical writing to say that, indeed, Lopez and Anthony actually did sell their children.

And what do you do with that money? Buy another house? Put it aside for the children themselves, telling them with a glint in your eye and a rock in your chair, Sweethearts, when you were just days old, Mommy and Daddy sold your pictures for a lot of money. If Max and Emme know they’re getting thatcash, will that make it all better? Or will they feel violated, years after the click of the camera? Or will these children have to make their own way like the majority of humankind vs. the anointing of the celebrity offspring? Granted some have had it hard– Tori Spelling didn’t even receive a full million from her father’s estate; and Paris Hilton will only inherit about $5 million, after taxes, according to The Telegraph, after her grandfather Barron decided to donate 97% of his +$1 billion fortune to charity.

And what about us? The buying, consuming public who buy the magazines and consume the images, and likewise, buy and consume the people in those photos. This morning as I was buying donuts, I had to walk buy (pun intended) the gauntlet of magazines beckoning me into the “Wedding of the Century” about Brad and Angelina and onto the beach with a bevy of beauties with bikinis. Are Lopez and Anthony, Aquilera and Bratman, Jolie and Pitt, just great financial minds, thinking of how they can build their own ‘brands,’ specifically, the newest expansion of the brand name? Isn’t this just one more form of entertainment they’re providing for us?

Maybe Max and Emme are the luckiest babes in the world. Luckiest until Angelina and Brad’s newest edition joins us all. Imdb.com reports that if the Jolie-Pitts have twins, themselves, their babies will be worth $10 million.

Wow.

We’ve had it all wrong all these years. Instead of a photo being worth a thousand words, it’s clearly worth a million dollars per shutter snap.

And I thought my family photos were worth the world….