When I first saw the Brad Pitt/ Jennifer Aniston wedding picture, a woman was waving it around on breakfast TV. I was half asleep. I saw the subjects of the picture three or four times removed - through the veil of my tiredness, compounded by a slight hangover; through the TV camera; through the fingernails of the TV presenter, and, finally, through the lens itself. But I had an immediate reaction. The black-and-white image, the bride and groom not looking at the camera, the formal clothes - I disliked it immediately. Then a woman came on with a picture of the Hollywood sign behind her, and she talked about the key points of the Pitt-Aniston wedding. The fireworks. The security. "Yuck," I thought.
Then I went out to get the papers. My tabloid had the picture twice - a big one on the front and a smaller one inside. By now, I knew more about the wedding. Not that I'd been looking for more; facts were pouring from every outlet. The wedding, for instance, had cost US$1.5 million - 10 days' work for Aniston and possibly less for Pitt. Somebody had estimated that a billion hearts had been broken around the world. But the picture was the big thing. Pitt and Aniston had strewn the Malibu shoreline with mirrors to create an anti-paparazzi glare, and filled the sky with barrage balloons to confound photographers in helicopters. Then they'd presented the world with one picture. This was censorship. Worse than the censorship itself, though, was the presumption that went along with it. Again, I thought, "Yuck."
I looked at the picture in more detail. It made me uncomfortable. But why? On the surface, unlike most wedding photographs, there was nothing awful about it. It was not, for instance, like the Paul "Gazza" Gasgoine's wedding pictures, full of grinning red-faced people in humorous costumes. Nor was it like pictures from the wedding of David and Victoria (Posh Spice) Beckham, with couple seated on matching thrones. This picture is in black and white. The bride and groom are not looking at the camera. Pitt is looking downwards, roughly at Aniston's chest. Aniston is smiling and looking at Pitt's eyebrows. They look modest, happy. They are actors. They are playing the part of people who are not involved in a ghastly celebrity wedding.
Perhaps that's what made me uneasy - the fact that, even though this is a pictorial record of what must have been, in many ways, a nauseating event, it is not in itself nauseating. It is "sweet". The fact that it's in black and white is disarming; you don't see the orange tans, the loud, fake-looking green of over-watered Malibu foliage, the matt pastel colours of the ranch-style beach house in the background. On the contrary, they have the temerity to be tasteful. He is wearing a tuxedo with a skinny tie, a sartorial faux pas which makes him look lovable. She has not ironed her hair, or whatever she does to it in Friends. They look wistful. Annoyingly, they have styled themselves not to look vain.
But, clearly, they are vain. Having your wedding picture taken in black and white - how vain can you get? It calls to mind an era when stars were stars, when the press was more deferential. It calls to mind an era, in fact, when the press would have covered the entire wedding, from the vows to the smashing of plates - and still printed a picture like this one. It is saying: "The press loves us and holds us in high esteem." But it is not a press photograph. It was taken by a specially selected photographer, and cropped to look intimate and cosy. It is saying: "These are not people who hire minions to place mirrors along the shore!"
I didn't see Joey. That's another thing. Aniston and Pitt - the Pitts, as they are now - censored the TV pictures of guests arriving at the wedding. We saw minibuses careering past, filmed in the style of news footage of prisoners in transit. Ross and Chandler, on camera for fragments of a second, looked like bodyguards. The whole thing had the air of a mafia wedding. There was a 30-strong gospel choir. Aniston didn't even invite her mother. One helicopter picture shows brown-shirted guards hanging around outside the hedge. The flowers alone cost $10,000. Maybe all this wasn't Joey's style.
This - the luxury, the security, the plunder and price of fame - is what the picture is trying to negate. It's trying to negate the barrage balloons, the guards outside the wedding compound talking into their radios, the prison vans. It might as well be a photograph of a politician and his wife. It is spin. Here is a couple pretending they are just like you and me. They know the price of a pint of milk. Knowing that we would not like them if we saw them represented by more conventional images, they have given us a more likeable version of themselves. And they think they've taken us in!
AND then I began to wonder. Poor Brad and Jennifer. You can imagine what the other guests might have whispered as they turned up, as they sipped the first glass of champagne. Was Lisa Kudrow's wedding like this? Hardly. Somehow, Pitt and Aniston, who, when taken separately, are normal, run-of-the-mill screen stars, are more than the sum of their parts. Together, they have become a monster. And if you look at this photograph, you can almost hear them saying: "We are not a monster! Please don't think we are a monster!"
Look more closely. Pitt, who carries his head aloft on screen, is looking down. His hair has been emasculated. There is, of course, no facial hair. The shoulders slope shyly downwards. Aniston, you can see, has been dieting. Look at that chin. The self-denial of the chin. The couple look coy, almost ashamed. Is Pitt's buttonhole in the shape of a "J" as a tribute to Aniston? Are they real pearls all over her dress? Are those dogs looking out of the windows in the top corner? Does that mean that dogs were banned from the wedding? Pitt, sweetly, has a wispy fringe; Aniston, sweetly, wears a veil. Millions of people, including me, will pore over this picture for years to come. It is a cynical, exploitative version of good taste. As spin, it's brilliant. The most monstrous thing of all is that it works.