IDOL WORSHIP
rest in peace to kris jenner’s motherrrrr.
the following is an essay i wrote in 2018 about the kardashians for my history of electronic media class. for a leading kardashian family conspiracy theorist, i kept it pretty tame because i didn’t want my professor to think i was schizo/ go completely off book. academia is full of censorship and my teachers never really liked my essays. anywayz, its not revolutionary by any means but here it is:
The Sun Never Sets on the Kardashian Empire:
How a Reality Television Show created a Digital Age Dynasty
In October of 2007, E! Network premiered a new reality show, one that focused on a large Calabasas family, the Kardashians. It was safe to say that at the time, the world was unprepared for the full media takeover that Keeping Up with the Kardashians was going to incite. In the past eleven years, the Kardashians have become the royal family of not only E! but also of America, despite large amounts of criticism from critics. Since the time the show started, the Kardashians have infiltrated every form of social media, the high fashion, commercial fashion, and makeup industries, and even going so far as to have successful game apps. In an almost inexplicable way, the Kardashians have been able to turn their everyday trials and tribulations into media events that millions tune into.. Keeping up with the Kardashians serves as a reflection of the digital age and the guilty pleasures that modern television audiences seek. Keeping up with the Kardashians turns reality into fiction and fiction into a marketing tactic for the Kardashian family whose reach spreads far beyond the television screen and into the hands of any person with a cellphone.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians follows the trend of 21st century reality television shows which tend to intensify the drama of the everyday interactions of the characters for the sake of making the narrative more interesting. The first reality television show, PBS’ An American Family (1973), did not use this formula. An American Family took a cinema verite approach to reality television, focusing more on exploring the medium than the narrative. An American Family is similar to Keeping up with the Kardashians as both shows were both highly criticized but received high viewership. While Keeping up with the Kardashians dramatize every
scenario, both shows revolved around seemingly “dysfunctional families”. An American Family features parents in the midst of divorce who have a gay son which in the 70s, would have been considered dysfunctional. Keeping up with the Kardashians has family members struggling with addiction, alcoholism, and gender identity, just to name a few of the many drama filled subplots of the shows fourteen seasons. The dramatic style of Keeping up with the Kardashians is the result of the era of television fans it is directed towards. Fans of reality television in the 21st century want drama and they want it instantaneously, something Keeping up with the Kardashians does very well.
Keeping up with the Kardashians makes use of the documentary style from which reality television originated with the use of talking head interviews with the characters throughout each episode. These interviews establish a sense of rapport between the audience and the family because they are conducted in a very light hearted manner which makes it seem as if they are speaking candidly to us. Often, the talking heads are intercut so that the character has a chance to explain themselves in more detail or to share their personal feelings in a confessional style. We witness them laugh and occasionally break down during these interviews and they serve as a reminder to the viewer that what they are witnessing is a real event, even when it seem like it is not.
The early seasons of the show reflect the interests of audience they were seeking to attract. The family was portrayed as affluent, but not quite having it all together. The show toes the line between trying to portray the family as down to earth, but also characterizing them as if they are playing roles rather than being themselves. Kim is the “uptight perfectionist” while her older sister Kourtney is framed as the “laidback sibling contending with an alcoholic boyfriend. Khloe is the “irreverent funny sister” while Rob, who takes on a more minor role in the show is portrayed as “lazy aimless brother who lives off his sisters”. The youngest two Kendall and Kylie were originally framed as “idealistic teens trying to enjoy their childhood”. The six siblings are led by their fearless leader Kris, the “overbearing matriarch” (Edwards, 5). The early episodes of the show follow the characters as they engage in typical sitcom activities, although the viewer gains more humor from these activities being portrayed as “real” rather than a live audience sitcom. Long time watchers of the show feel themselves growing with the characters and even in some cases relating, most of the time in a humorous way, to them. As the Kardashians themselves became more famous and the show gained exposure, the narrative focused more on the Kardashian’s navigating their newfound fame rather than the typical sitcom action. This reflected shift in what the audiences wanted to see, now, they could be privileged enough to get an inside scoop into the lives of celebrities, especially when they were ones whose fame had come about somewhat unexpectedly.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ mirrored not only the changing interest of the audience but also the Kardashians success. The more successful they became, they and E Network, realized how to profit from making the show less of a show and more of a marketing franchise. Just as the Kardashians are known for spinning any news coverage of themselves into a money making franchise, E! has capitalized on every opportunity they can to promote their top selling clients and make themselves more money. E often uses “their nightly entertainment news program, E! News Live, to interview Kardashian cast members and to recirculate entertainment news about the show” (Edwards, 3). Promoting the Kardashians on another one of E’s shows is also ‘aggressive marketing for the program (with news host Ryan Seacrest, media mogul and prolific reality TV developer, notably serving as one of [Keeping Up with the Kardashians and E! News Live] executive producers)” (Edwards, 3). E and Ryan Seacrest have managed to take full advantage of the Kardashian’s fame over the years and in turn, help to promote themselves. Realizing how popular the Kardashians had become with audiences, E! decided to maximize their profits from the family which spurred the creation of more than several spin off shows centering on certain characters from Keeping up with the Kardashians such as Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, Kourtney and Kim Take New York, Khloe and Lamar, Kourtney and Kim Take Miami,Kourtney and Khloe take the Hamptons, I am Cait, Dash Dolls, Kocktails with Khloe, Life of Kylie, Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian, Kris, and Rob and Chyna. These shows were still poorly received by critics but they did their job of garnering more media publicity for the Kardashians and the network and allowed audiences to explore some of the personal relationships between the family members rather than the family dynamic as a whole.
In 2011, E! And Keeping up with the Kardashians managed to hit a peak. Kim got engaged to basketball player Kris Humphries and the show decided to turn the nuptials into America’s version of the royal wedding. The media event was a two night special titled Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event and it went on to set the records for the networks most watched event to date. The event drew 10.5 million viewers in total with most being in the coveted 18-49 age demographic. The placement of the two parter event also helped to give E two of its most watched days in history and the shows that were on directly after the event managed to amass some of their largest amount of viewers as well. The event itself was nothing short of a spectacle with Kim donning a custom Vera Wang dress and spending near two million on flowers, the total price tag on the wedding came to be around 10 million. Critics have referred to these types of episodes as “made-for-TV celebrations of love, devotion and product-placement” (McClain, 17) In typical Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s style, the first part of the event details all of the drama leading up to the wedding, detailing minor errors and heightening the stakes for the viewer that something might go catastrophically wrong, of course nothing does as we soon see in the second part of the event which shows the actual wedding and gives the viewer a chance to feel as though they are celebrating with the family and having a happy ending as well.
Although the show consistently draws a high number of viewers and has propelled the families careers, it has come under a lot of scrutiny and criticism. Critics pose the question of why anyone would find the lives of a normal family so interesting and many believe that the perceived “reality” that the Kardashians present, is no reality at all. After Kim’s highly publicized marriage to Kris Humphries ended in divorce after 72 days, news reporters insinuated that the entire marriage and subsequent divorce were staged for publicity. An ABC news reporter supported the idea of the Kardashian’s turning their lives into scripts, saying “Divorce, opens the door to whole new chapters. So, was it in the script all along” (McClain). Kim addressed the rumors on the show making the already “reality” based show, more self reflexive. When any of the family members address their public image and the many critics people have about them they are “engaging with the meta-narrative of the family’s media celebrity, these plotlines allow the series further to market themselves and the family brand, engaging in saturation and excessive branding”(Edwards 5). What makes the self reflexivity about Keeping up with the Kardashians different from that of any other show is that, as Edwards highlights, it serves as another marketing strategy and form of brand promotion.
In 2018, it seems almost useless to criticize anything the Kardashians do or anything they show about their lives because it is very clear that they are not going anywhere. In 2007, this might have been hard for critics to imagine because they were used to living in a pre-Kardashian world where socialites such as Paris Hilton had come and gone from the reality television spotlight, not quite able to hold the attention of a large audience in the same way that Keeping up with the Kardashians so aptly does. A 2007 variety review written in a misogynistic and condescending way, writes that “once you get past Kim’s prominently displayed assets, there’s not much of a show here, and no discernible premise” (Lowry). Lowry not only manages to be extremely degrading to women with this comment but also misses the point altogether. In reality television there is no premise, the show is supposed to be an escape from the real world into one filled with wealthy, quirky, dysfunctional characters. It is not a deeply academic or scholarly show but there is something to love about the hilarious situations the siblings find themselves in and the show’s ability to make everyday events dramatic. The show has become beloved by pop culture fanatics spurring memes, gifs and constant quotes. There was the ridiculous episode in which Kris is feeling like an empty nester so her children rent a pet monkey for her to take care of, the time when Kim can’t stop taking selfies on the way to pick Khloe up from jail after her DUI or the many times in which the girls and their mother reminisce on the fact that “buy a bull” sounds eerily similar to “bible”. Just as comedy shows in the 1940’s during World War II were used as a way for people to feel better about themselves and be able to laugh at someone or something else, Keeping Up with the Kardashians serves as spectacle, one that is meant to be laughed at and not always taken so seriously, it is a guilty pleasure in the sense that one can laugh, realizing that they will never and would never do the same ridiculous things they are witnessing. One of the things that makes the medium of reality television an even better platform for laughs is because even though it has been edited and shot and sometimes scripted, it has a semblance of reality that sticks with us and makes us think that these things really did happen, which makes them all the more funny.
There have been a lot of trends in television since the year 2007, but Keeping Up With the Kardashians has been a constant throughout the many shows that have started and ended in the past 11 years. Kris Jenner, the family’s matriarch and self proclaimed “momager” commented on the show’s success and reason behind its high viewership saying “the more that people watched, the more they became emotionally invested in our family. There was something for everybody. We were all different ages — you could get a nine year old or a 59 year old. It was really a remarkable phenomenon because there were so many of us” (Wagmeister.) Since 2014, the Nielsen ratings and viewership of the show have decreased and some critics have pointed out that “without interested fans to tune into their show, download their apps and buy their products, the Kardashian-Jenners could see their incomes take a hit” (Berg). However, it seems unlikely even with lower ratings for some of the more recent seasons, that the Kardashians will be leaving the spotlight anytime soon. Kris Jenner notes that when the show first started, it was the only way to get insight into their lives because “when we first started the show, there was barely Twitter, there was no Instagram, there was no Snapchat, there were no Instagram stories, so there wasn’t really a way to peek into the lives of a family the way that E! gave access.” (Wagmeister). The Kardashians do not really need the rankings to be high for their show anymore, in the digital age, they can share their drama with millions and promote products through any and every social media platform, not just network television. Kendall, Kylie, and Kim are amongst the top 10 most followed accounts on Instagram with 90.3, 108, and 110 million followers respectively. They use social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to give fans even more coverage of their lives that is even more instantaneous and easier to consume. The Kardashians have even made use of YouTube with the release of an 11 minute video titled “to our daughter” announcing that Kylie had given birth. The video amassed over 66 million views, double the amount that tuned in for the premier of the most recent season. It is clear that the Kardashian’s will not be leaving spotlight anytime soon, in fact, it seems as though they have turned the entire internet into their own television show.
Keeping up with the Kardashians might not be the most important factor in the success of the Kardashians anymore. However without the show, they never would have become the business moguls they are today. The show charts their progress from a family of socialites to a family that has been able to use the rise of technology in the digital age as a way to make money and become famous. Since the rise of the Kardashians, there have been numerous people who have been elevated to celebrity status just for being famous, but none to the same extent as the Kardashians. The show as a whole serves as a metaphor for the shifting tides of popular culture in America. In 2007, reality television fans were hungry for gossip, drama and to see rich people making fools out of themselves. As the times have changed, and people have turned away from typical reality television shows and network television as a whole, the Kardashians were able to make use of the rise of social media to take over another platform. If Keeping up with the Kardashians was cancelled tomorrow, it would hardly seem to matter for the family who has been on the cutting edge of fan culture since 2007. Wherever the Kardashians go next, pop culture is soon to follow.
Works Cited
Berg, Madeline. “Despite Robbery Reveal, Kardashians Can’t Keep Up Their Ratings.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 21 Mar. 2017
Edwards, L. H. (2012). Transmedia storytelling, corporate synergy, and audience expression. Global Media Journal, 12, 1-12.
Lowry, Brian. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” Variety, Variety, 10 Oct. 2007
“Kim Kardashian’s $10 Million Wedding: By the Numbers.” The Week, 23 Aug. 2011,
McClain, Amanda S. “The Kardashian Phenomenon: News Interpretation.” Media Report to Women, vol. 41, no. 2, Spring 2013, pp. 12-23. EBSCOhost
Wagmeister, Elizabeth. “Kris Jenner on ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ 10th Anniversary and If Show Will Ever End.” Variety, Variety, 1 Oct. 2017