Keeping Up With The Kardashians (Tariq)

## Introduction

Technology has always been considered the friend of art. Technology has aided with the easy access of creating and transforming art and art mediums. No longer was art confined to the box of detailed Renaissance-standard oil paintings or Michelangelo-style frescoes; thanks to technology, art has now assumed many different forms from the seemingly blank white canvases of modern minimalist art, to performance art, even motion pictures. Technology has also allowed media such as video games to be considered art form in some circles, as encouraged by Ian Bogost. Bogost's idea that video games can be considered art stems from his claims that like traditional art, video games offer an escape from reality. While some video games may have outcomes and points, things that Roger Ebert says are what sets video games apart from being art forms, some video games–like Telltale's choice-based story games–are story-driven experiences that toy with your ideas of morality and make you feel empathy with three-dimensional characters and scenarios similar to those presented in films and books are also reasons to consider video games a form of art; the ability to toy with your emotions and empathy by putting you in someone else's shoes, by offering you an escape into a fantasy world. Enter the age of the reality show. Bogost's logic that video games to be considered art can also be applied to reality shows. While not exactly as interactive as video games, reality shows offer an escape from the hardships of life and have the ability to make you laugh or make you cry.

***Keeping Up with the Kardashians*** is an American reality TV show that chronicles the lives of the extremely affluent Kardashian-Jenner clan. The family is made up of media personalities and beauty moguls; sisters Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian, their reclusive brother Robert "Rob" Kardashian Jr., and their supermodel half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, all of whom the show is centrally focused on. Their parents Kris and Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner also make regular appearances on the show, as do their family friends and their multiple significant others.

Despite being critically panned, with critics dismissing it as unintelligent and accusing it of faking storylines for ratings, the show continues to attract a high amount of viewership, even so far as to garner a status of being a guilty pleasure show. The show was also a hit with fans, developing a large online fan community with a lot of the humor in the shows becoming foundations for hilarious and consistently circulated memes on social media such as Twitter and Instagram.

Despite the show being considered dumb and superficial, I believe there's way more to the Kardashians than meets the eye. On the surface, they and their show seem like rich girls crying about rich people things, but I feel that their reality show also offers an excellent commentary on modern millennial consumerist culture, much like Andy Warhol's pop art. The show also makes you feel relatable to these girls, as the show's themes also deal with heavy family issues–including Kim's Paris robbery and most notably, Caitlyn Jenner's transition and how the family deals with it, heartbreak, anxiety, birth of new children, and the girls' many boyfriends cheating on them. The show also offers a real and honest depiction of motherhood as described by one Redditor on the Kardashians fan subreddit: "They're very honest about childbirth, breastfeeding, all the ugly details, and we don't really see that too much. I loved it when Kourtney just casually sat there with breast pumps strapped on her, like it was the most normal thing in the world (and it was, we just don't see that part of life usually). It's funny to me how everyone calls them fake, but I've seen a lot more about the actual facts of life on that show compared price winning dramas that gloss over the ugly, and most of all the female ugly."

## Famous for Being Famous: Interpretive Disputes

A long-standing anti-Kardashian sentiment is that the family is notoriously "famous for being famous." While this seems like the case, the sentiment holds no water. The Kardashian family already has had a history in the public eye, well before the conceptualization of the reality show and its media and cosmetics empire legacy.

### **Lawyering Up**

The Kardashian family's first brush with fame–or infamy in some perspectives–is a result of the Kardashian sisters' biological father and attorney, the late Robert Kardashian Sr. (1944-2003), who is best-known for being part of the defense team of disgraced football star and actor O.J. Simpson's–who also happens to be a close family friend of the Kardashians, as well as Kim's godfather–murder case. The trial became the site of a media circus, with press coverage labeling it as the "trial of the century."

With the trial essentially catapulting the family into the limelight, Kardashian Sr. shared his frustrations with his newfound fame, commenting in an L.A. Times article: "I was totally unprepared for the avalanche of reporters, cameras and gawking members of the public that besieged my home and invaded my life. Overnight, I was the subject of hat letters and phone calls at all hours of the day and night. I was threatened; my children were threatened. Why should reporters and photographers camp outside our homes? Why should the personal life of a private citizen be torn apart just to provide one more meaningless detail to feed the mass hysteria?"

### **Running for the Money**

In March of 1991, Kris Houghton and Kardashian Sr. divorced, but they remained close friends until his death from esophageal cancer. A month after their divorce, Houghton met Olympic gold medalist and decathlete Bruce Jenner, and soon eloped. The couple had two daughters, the Jenner half-sisters future supermodel Kendall and cosmetics mogul Kylie Jenner. Jenner already had media traction, being in the nation's eye as an Olympic gold medalist and had a brief television and film career, appearing in movies such as Village People's comedy film *Can't Stop The People* (1980) as well as appearing on cereal boxes as Wheaties' own spokesperson in 1977.

### **Socialite Socialization**

The Kardashian family's first brush with 21st century pop culture came as a result of Kim Kardashian being Hilton heiress Paris Hilton's personal assistant and close friend. She appeared with Hilton at multiple PR events, galas, and parties, as well as making a few appearances on Hilton's own pioneer reality show *The Simple Life*.

Aside from being Hilton's personal assistant, Kardashian later developed into a fashion stylist, then became the personal stylist and personal shopper for other celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and R&B singer Brandy Norwood, whose brother Ray J became infamously romantically involved with Kim, eventually leading to her controversial sex tape. She was also involved in other high-profile celebrity relationships, such as with singer Nick Lachey and Nick Cannon.

The Kardashian sisters also opened a series of fashion boutique enterprises known as the DASH boutique in 2006, for which Kris Jenner attempted to use the reality show as a means of advertising the brand, featuring it extensively in season 13, even giving it its own spin-off show called DASH Dolls.

### **Concluding Dispute**

The Kardashians are the pinnacle of modern 21st century pop culture. To say that they are "famous for being famous" is an understatement of their ability to appeal to millennial generations, and that they didn't get famous for no reason. Would they have still been famous if it wasn't for Kim's sex tape? Of course! After all, both their fathers are already public figures–a defense attorney for the highly publicized O.J. Simpson case and Olympic gold medalist respectively, and their family has long been in the spotlight rubbing shoulders with celebrities; all they needed is that extra push with that controversial sex tape, the ensuing lawsuit, and Kris Jenner's genius idea to develop what would've been the 21st century's biggest culture game-changer.

## "You guys!": Authorial Interaction

With the advent of social media, the Kardashian-Jenner superfamily has garnered a large media platform on their social media sites, with each of the sisters amassing upwards of more than 100 million followers across all platforms, Kim having 121 million on Instagram, Kourtney having the least amount of followers on Instagram at 70 million as of December 4, 2018. Even their own fan-pages have thousands of followers and are actively posting their idols’ (or “faves” as they’re now known) photos and videos, as well as interactions of the family liking back their fans’ photos.

### **Notification Nonsense**

Social media has allowed each of the family members to directly interact and engage with their fans–while also giving the fans unprecedented access into the sisters' lives–and directly promote their show. The Kardashians have used that easy access to it's fullest extent as the perfect marketing tool. When the new season premiered in August, the sisters attempted to hype up the show by staging a

    fight directly on the Twitter timeline. Fans were excited, other saw through it as an elaborate marketing ploy, especially since Khloe was directly hash-tagging her tweets with the show's title. Elle Magazine declared the Twitter drama "a smart way to market KUWTK."

## Wavy: Cult & Lifestyle

The Kardashians have also had a significant influence on modern pop culture as well as meme culture; from quotable snippets and relatable gifs, to outright exaggerations of Kim's "ugly crying face", the Kardashians' influence on fashion and modern meme culture is something to marvel at, so much so that some of the sisters have even attempted to capitalize off of that meme culture. They have also transformed cosmetics culture with trends such as facial contouring with makeup, and the ever popular "Instagram eyebrows", which are bold, polished yet still natural-looking eyebrows popularized by women. The Kardashians have also introduced new slang into modern language with words such as "Wavy", another way of saying "cool", and "Bible" which is another way of saying "I swear".

### **Kimoji**

Kim herself has capitalized off of her meme infamy by creating platforms to sell merchandise–simply called "merch"–based on these memes, such as her once popular “Kimoji” app, an application that allows you to send reaction emojis based on and personally curated by Kim herself, as well as physical retail such as sweatshirts, bodysuits, and slide slippers that have quotes on them such as “Okurr,” “Turbo Thot,” and “Waves.” The app has become so popular that it crashed the iTunes App Store upon launch, with Kim’s husband Kanye boasting about it:

*Plus Kimoji just shut down the app store, ah!*

*And we made a million a minute, we made a million a minute*

*(We did)*

*Yeah, we made a million a minute, we made a million a minute, ah!*

- Facts (Charlie Heat Version), Kanye West, The Life of Pablo

## Additional Links

Official KUWTK Website.

Kim Kardashian's Instagram.

## References

1. ↑ Real Dumb: 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians': https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2008/10/08/real\_dumb\_keeping\_up\_with\_the\_kardashian/?utm\_term=.31d69a528731
2. ↑ Yes, I love Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Don’t dare try to shame me: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/13/keeping-up-with-kardashians-tv-pleasures
3. ↑ Kardashians Appeal?: https://www.reddit.com/r/kardashians/comments/9mnmyw/kardashians\_appeal/
4. ↑ How O.J. Simpson Gave Us the Kardashians: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-oj-simpson-gave-us-the-kardashians
5. ↑ PERSPECTIVES ON THE SIMPSON VERDICTS: http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-06/local/me-53778\_1\_public-eye
6. ↑ This Kim Kardashian & Paris Hilton Timeline Explains Everything About Their Tumultuous Friendship: https://www.bustle.com/p/this-kim-kardashian-paris-hilton-timeline-explains-everything-about-their-tumultuous-friendship-8271056
7. ↑ Kim Kardashian Biography: https://web.archive.org/web/20160223224144/http://www.people.com/people/kim\_kardashian/biography
8. ↑ The Many Men of Kim Kardashian: https://www.accessonline.com/galleries/the-many-men-of-kim-kardashian-3082#10
9. ↑ Kim Kardashian's Official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimkardashian/?hl=en
10. ↑ Kourney Kardashian's Official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kourtneykardash/?hl=en
11. ↑ Who’s the Most Popular Kardashian Sister on Instagram? https://observer.com/2017/04/kardashian-and-jenner-family-instagram-numbers/
12. ↑ Kim and Kourtney Kardashian Stage Nasty Twitter Fight to Hype Show, People See Through It: https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a22651367/kim-kourtney-khloe-kardashian-twitter-fight-fan-reactions/