SYLVESTER STALLONE calls them “legalized stalking.” ELIZABETH TAYLOR said of them, “It just makes me so angry!” STEVEN SEAGAL renewed his call to legislate strong limits on their activities. TOM CRUISE and LUCIANO PAVAROTTI voiced similar outrage.
If JACKIE ONASSIS were alive today, as YOGI BERRA might have said, she’d be spinning in her grave.
The subject is those confounded paparazzi, the freelance celebrity photographers that Italian filmmaker FEDERICO FELLINI glorified and romanticized in his 1960 film “La Dolce Vita.” Today those wild-eyed workaholics are being denounced around the world for contributing to the death of PRINCESS DIANA and her companion, EMAD “DODI” FAYED, well-known millionaire.
“I always believed that the press would kill her in the end,” said her brother, the 9th EARL SPENCER. He also offered a stinging indictment: “It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana’s image, has blood on his hands today.”
Indeed it appeared that the paparazzi literally hounded PRINCESS DI to death. But, like most of life’s seemingly easy scenarios of good and evil, this picture is not so clear-cut as it appeared at first. Parisian police announced that the driver of PRINCESS DI’S Mercedes-Benz was too inexperienced, driving too fast and driving too drunk. The fortune-hunting paparazzi may not have needed to chase Di, but Di’s driver may not have needed to drive that fast, either.
Since supercelebrities like Princess Di are famous precisely because they are so famous, it raises serious questions as to how much privacy they should expect to have when driving on a public street. It also raises questions about how anyone can muzzle the paparazzi without restricting more respectable journalists, too.
Paparazzi have gotten more aggressive in recent years because pictures of celebrities have become immensely more valuable, commanding up to a million dollars or more for one juicy shot.
And celebrity photos have become more valuable because the competition to buy the photos has become more intense, not just between the tabloids of questionable taste like the Globe, the Star and The National Enquirer, but also between the tabloids and the seemingly higher-class mainstream magazines and newspapers.
The success of People magazine in the late 1970s, “Entertainment Tonight” in the 1980s and cable’s E! network in the 1990s, among other celebrity media, have encouraged the mainstream media to jump into the soup, too. In the age of Madonna, the Kennedys and O.J. Simpson, everybody’s gone celebrity crazy.
Even otherwise serious columnists and commentators have been known to run the names of celebrities in boldface or in BIG LETTERS LIKE THIS in a shameless attempt to seduce readers with the power of celebrity.
The paparazzi who chased Princess Di may have been behaving recklessly. If so, they should be prosecuted under laws that outlaw reckless driving and criminal endangerment.
And, if photographers really are stalking in the U.S., actions can be taken against them under conventional anti-stalking and harassment laws without stomping on the 1st Amendment.
Princess Di obtained an injunction in 1996 to bar celebrity photographer MARTIN STENNING from coming within 1,000 feet of her or harassing her or communicating with her in anyway. The late Mrs. Onassis won a similar injunction to keep her most persistent paparazzo RON GALELLA at a distance from her and her children.
On the flip side, celebrities may be surprised by the intensity of what they’ve gotten themselves into, but most know what they’re getting into. Princess Di, to her credit, used her celebrity to bring attention to AIDS, children’s diseases, land mines and other worthy causes.
As for the private lives of public people, the celebrity press sometimes have shown a surprisingly good sense of fair play in probing it. When Buckingham Palace asked the media to leave Prince William, then 14, out of their lenses when he entered Eton College last year, the request was respected. British editors voluntarily reduced coverage of his mother in 1981 after QUEEN ELIZABETH II’s press secretary said Di felt “totally beleaguered.”
Still, today’s paparazzi and their customers are far more ruthless than the editors and photographers who informally agreed not to show FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, who had polio, in his leg braces or wheelchair.
It remains to be seen how well the handsome young William’s privacy will be respected henceforth, now that his marvelous mother is dead. The answer will be demand-driven, meaning that if you, dear customer, refrain in revulsion from buying such trash, the publishers will stop publishing it.
My guess is that the future king can kiss his privacy–or whatever he has left of it–goodbye.
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