The Media Takes Kim Kardashian's Narrative at Face Value, Again
While the topic is trifling it exposes a wide gulch of issues
I wouldn’t say I ignore the Kardashians, meaning the family with that name or people they’ve been in a fictitious or not relationship with, but I do make it a point not to click on the stories the media feeds itself.
This is easy for me because I don’t find them interesting. I wouldn’t say I ignore articles about how to make the perfect Beef Wellington or what the preferred attire will be at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, either. I am aware that there are some thoughts on these things but they don’t appeal to me. To ignore it means there is a conscious effort involved.
But it can get tricky, because we are inundated with stories about these people’s lives on every website we pull up. You can’t get away from the stories. And, they aren’t really stories. It’s usually something Kim Kardashian said, such as, “Kim Kardashian says she stayed with Kanye too long.” I just made that up, it very well might be an actual article on MSNBC, I have no idea. Probably.
Kim Kardashian saying something isn’t a story. Except, it is. I understand that she and her people want it to be a story, but a lot of people want free promotion.
Up until the turn of this century this would have been when media outlets stepped up and decided they weren’t going to participate in the business of labeling something a story that has no content or arch and handing attention to people who asked for it as part of a mutually beneficial relationship. That happened in the tabloids, but not on a grand scale, not at the top of the page. Not as a crutch to keep the thing alive.
They’ve mortgaged their future to a degree by selling their integrity for click-bait revenue, and this is why they are slowly dying and not respected by most anyone. I’m talking Fox News, CNN, NBC News, all of it. As one example today CNN has a headline on their website that reads “Kim Kardashian cries as Kanye West retrieves rest of sex tape.”
My theory on the Kardashian phenomenon is that it’s a function of the erosion of anti-trust legislation. Media companies acquired each other and consolidated at a rapid rate as Republicans succeeded in breaking down these protections, and suddenly we had reality TV - which was of a lower production value but it didn’t matter because there were only three companies left to compete with each other and they all began doing it. It’s basically what’s known as price fixing in any other industry.
We’ve come to accept it and it’s easy enough to ignore, except when the media really makes a point to rub in our faces how pathetic it is. It’s basically a taunt. This is when I stop ignoring it and actually begin to focus on the ridiculous situation we, as Americans, have no choice but to live out.
One example was when Kim Kardashian’s publicists convinced CNN and other major news networks to feature a story on how she was recovering from a pregnancy. That would have been lame and unnewsworthy enough but as it turned out she was actually recovering from a surrogate pregnancy, meaning she was managing the stress of someone else giving birth to her embryo¹. You had to read the articles about five times to figure this out. It was as if Kim Kardashian was Kim Jong un and major media outlets had no choice in the matter.
Today the “Kim Kardashian cries as Kanye West retrieves rest of sex tape” headline really began to bother me. Just looking at it on my screen. It made me want to slap someone in a suit. Maybe that generates clicks for some people. I clicked on it.
It featured a quote from Kim enacting a scene on her TV show, which gets lower ratings than History channel segments about tugboats by the way, referring to her notorious “sex tape.”
Her “sex tape” was a professionally recorded and brokered video segment. It was sold to Vivid Video for five million dollars. Kim’s mom brokered the deal, reportedly earning a one million dollar commission². The idea, the entire point behind a “sex tape” is that it is a privately recorded encounter which was not intended for public consumption. It’s not a video, it’s an amateurish “tape.” It’s not for commercial use. It’s supposed to be private. This arouses perverts.
But her “sex tape” is a pornographic film contractually released with her consent in exchange for money. It would be like U2 claiming they only made Joshua Tree for their own personal use yet somehow it became monetized against their knowledge and at some point they signed some contracts.
This story I saw, which is not a story, features Kim stating the following in regards to the public availability of her porno clip. She’s talking about her children being exposed to it. (I can only hope we still live in a world where the other kids make fun of her tragically doomed children, mercilessly. I’d like them to develop PTSD and stuff like that. There should be consequences for things.)
I want to shield them from as much as I can. And if I had the power to or if Kanye has the power to, like that is just the most important thing to me. And I'm just so emotional because of it.
You can’t just state that you are emotional while displaying no palpable emotion. You have to at least pretend. That’s what acting is. That’s like saying “I’m literally jumping so high right now,” while you’re sitting on the couch.
The story involves Kanye West picking up a laptop from Kim Kardashian’s ex-boyfriend who performed in the porn clip with her which contained some remaining porn footage, or something, and how that was a brave gesture on Kanye’s part, or something, because this footage would be destroyed and hence spare her children some additional stigmatizing, or something. It’s really nothing, it’s not a story. It’s utterly stupid. You can already google the footage or watch it on any adult site. It’s explicit. There’s really no reversing it. So, the story is stupid, and it’s not a story.
But this is a professionally written article for a major news network, which is now, bizarrely, abiding by the conventions and imposed reality of a fictionalized TV show.
The writer is quoting Kim Kardashian while omitting that she is performing this segment on a TV show. It would be no different than if Rachel Maddow interviewed The Undertaker with a straight face about his character’s narrative that he rose from the dead a hundred years ago and still expected people to take her seriously as a journalist.
Kim Kardashian is still, after all of these years, inferring that this porn footage was released against her consent, even though the information is publicly available that it was shopped around and she was paid a few million dollars for it. She’s still milking this narrative. It’s been fifteen years. She sold a porno film to a porn distribution company. That’s the story. It’s not a story.
If Kardashian wanted to “shield” her children, as CNN quoted her as boldly proclaiming, she could actually sever her deal with Vivid Video which pays her a royalty every time her porno scene is viewed or take any number of steps to remove the content.
News networks like CNN are actually covering fictionalized television shows and people whose job it is to create media narratives as if they exist independent from television cameras. It’s an unarticulated kayfabe version of our entire culture and reality. They’ve gifted this privilege, this sort of to the Kardashians in exchange for providing them content. It’s like they bestowed Team Captain status on the Kardashians and a few others.
But shouldn’t they have a responsibility to report the actual facts of their bogus stories along with the bogus facts, which paradoxically are their entire stories, which aren’t even stories? This would be the prying of the supposed objectivity from their cold dead hands - the same objectivity which they claim forces them to incorporate government propaganda into their coverage, even in instances where its easily disproven.
If CNN and Fox News are comfortable abusing journalism on such a trifling topic as Kim Kardashian then imagine what they’re capable of with more nuanced or consequential issues where it’s not quite as easy to verify how worthless their information is with a quick google search.
* This is more of a story than most of their stories.
¹ https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/pictures/everything-kim-kardashian-has-said-about-surrogacy/pro-tip/
² https://pagesix.com/2016/03/27/kris-jenner-deliberately-leaked-kims-sex-tape/