My work aims to make postmodern and media theory more accessible by using the Kardashian family as the ultimate exemplar. I also aim to utilize postmodern and media theory to help explain how the Kardashians managed to make such a massive, inescapable cultural impact. Some people view my project as parasocial. Others view it as pretentious. I feel neutral about the Kardashians as people—sometimes to such an extent that certain pop culture consumers become frustrated that I don't perform a larger moral reaction to the family's antics. But the truth is, this project could just as easily be about Las Vegas, Disney, or WWE. For me, the Kardashians are concepts—no different from those other kinds of American conglomerates—and I find it so gratifying to try to deconstruct their meaning and power in our culture, just as I've enjoyed taking digressive deep dives into Vegas, Disney, and professional wrestling. Combining postmodern and media theory can help deconstruct the role that images, symbols, and evolving communication technologies play in shaping our world. I'm a fangirl for the theorists behind these frameworks most of all, and I really try to convey my fandom for Their Ideas with as much sincerity as possible.
I was in the final years of my graduate studies in psychodynamic psychotherapy when I was introduced to Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and I was struck by how uncanny the episodes felt. They collided a sense of raw “reality” with highly staged, polished moments. It was disarming. My sister, a media studies major, advised me to start reading Jean Baudrillard. He wrote about concepts like “hyperreality” and “simulacra,” which describe how our fractured, increasingly complex world comprises references without “real” origins. As we know, these days, everything is a reference of a reference of a reference—and the Kardashians make the most of this norm to tell their stories in layered ways, embed their products in the culture, and ultimately iconize themselves. Anyway, in 2018, I began making memes about the family—simply transposing quotes from the books I was reading onto fitting moments from the reality show. I started to realize that people wanted to learn more about the ideas, so I began documenting the study process more fully and contextualizing the ideas I was learning for my readers. In 2020, I tried TikTok and shared short videos breaking the ideas down further. This went viral, and I began getting opportunities to write at length—writing is my preferred medium. I was always a writer, so this was really thrilling. I earned the ultimate opportunity to write a book called DeKonstructing the Kardashians. I aspired to capture the family's weird alchemy—and, in doing so, the weirdness of our larger culture—once and for all. I wrote a nearly 700-page tome in under a year and a half. I had to cut the page count in half. It isn't perfect, but I feel I managed to capture and express much of what I intended, and I am really proud of this book.
The epigraph of my book is “The Worms at Heaven's Gate” by Wallace Stevens. I was swimming in so many texts while writing my book that I can't remember exactly how I came across the poem. But I remember that when I read it, I immediately knew it was the context that needed to open and then underlie the entire book. The poem describes worms carrying out the decomposition of Princess Badroulbadour, the figure who inspired Aladdin’s Princess Jasmine, bit by bit from her tomb. So much of the Kardashian myth—and the American tradition—concerns anxiety about mortality, and a strong drive toward preservation and legacy. It seemed like such a grotesque, sad, and honest rendering of what it means to deconstruct such a powerful, glamorous, and divisive phenomenon. It also indicts us, the spectacle-addicted public—in a way, like worms feeding on a person who has made herself available for complete and total consumption. The poem describes the princess's different body parts, much in the way the chapters of my book aim to unpack different pieces of Kim's hyper-curated, referential public myth.
