Things That Bang

Generally we ask people whether we can take their picture. That is the polite thing to do. Some people comply and others refuse albeit rudely like Steve Jobs did to an erotica writer called Violet Blue (NSFW site) at the MacWorld Expo where she asked him if she could have a picture of him with her.

He told her she was rude and turned his back on her. She wasn't asking for him to act in a porno movie or for his SSN number but there you have it - he was as obnoxious as always and had people rolling their eyes and snicker at poor Violet's humiliation.

The story did its rounds in the online world and died, but once again the concept of invading the personal space of celebrities has made news when Quentin Tarantino bad mouthed some dude who was taking video footage without Tarantino's permission.

Tarantino, however, was rocking mad, like ten cups of coffee mad, but he did ask the guy who was taking his video what he was doing - twice. And then he lost his temper, grabbed the guy's video camera and kicked it around like one of his dysfunctional movie characters.

To tell you the truth, he reminded me of being as edgy as his character Richard Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn, except in real life he was sane enough not to fling his coffee on the camera guy or make good of his threat of really whooping the guy's arse.

The entire episode was just not worth his while. He made his point and walked away with the video guy trailing behind him. Again, the online world was thrown in a tizzy. They agreed that taking his video was not done, but him going mental was equally ugly.

Ugly, yes and understandable too.

Violet Blue did the civilized thing of asking permission, Steve went mental anyway, Tarantino asked what the dude was doing, asked whether he could talk to him off camera and then went nutso.

See the difference? One was drunk on his Apple power and the other merely pissed that he had been caught by a rude gawker and despite his expressed wish not to be caught on camera he was still harassed and egged on to beat the camera guy up - so that the 'don't tase me bro' tees' would have been replaced with don't do me Tarantino - I'm getting ahead of myself but you get the picture.

It all comes down to Privacy and Creative Commons. The public has one set of rules for themselves where people are not allowed to take others' pictures without their knowledge, use their material or make contact without their expressed permission where as those in the limelight are considered to be public property - we gawk at them, we harass them and we even take their pictures when they are carried out in Body Bags.

Both Steve and Tarantino think they have a right to privacy and we think they are very much part of the Creative Commons. The only difference here is that we should take the middle ground and ask them - pretty please before we invade their privacy and then the ball is in their courts as to whether they give the respect back to us and stand with us and let the picture or video footage be taken or politely decline.