And so, once more, to the great question of the age for entertainment cartographers, whose sextants and compasses hover uncertainly over grim developments in America’s first family. Where lie the boundaries between public and private? Between art and life? Between reality and Reality?
It is an inquiry which, on the formbook, will not tax the Kardashian hive mind, despite news that one of their supporting players lies comatose and on life support, having been hospitalised after an apparent overdose four days into his stay at a Nevada brothel.
He is Lamar Odom, basketball player and estranged spouse of Khloe Kardashian – as well as erstwhile star of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, of Khloe and Lamar, and of Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami. Khloe is reported to be at his bedside, along with materfamilias Kris, stepfather Caitlyn Jenner, and various sisters including Kim. Thence they are required to take all the decisions, medical and media. Show sources have reportedly denied that cameras have been taken into the hospital.
If so, that may serve as the first useful coordinate in years for our befuddled cartographers. After all, the addiction struggles of both Odom and another sister’s ex partner, Scott Disick, have long been used as plotpoints and drivers in various Kardashian episodes, with the apparent blessing of the two men. Quite how much of a blessing they are capable of giving as addicts is a matter that has not been discussed. But if it were, expect that discussion to take place in the controlled space of a lucrative Kardashian-produced spin-off show called something like Manufacturing Konsent.
By the time both addicts’ behaviours had descended into the sort of horror-show that no amount of clever editing or continuity disingenuity could render acceptable onscreen, they were reduced to unsettling noises off in the ongoing Kardashian drama. You don’t show Lamar – but you can show Khloe on the phone, supposedly to Lamar. You can show Kim showing her disapproval of this. And, of course, this is what scripted reality shows do. They take something that is often messy and formless – life, it used to be called – and they impose a clear narrative structure on it.
Alas, the Kardashians don’t have a monopoly on this kind of editorialising (not yet, anyway). Apparently anxious to edit this increasingly tragic incident into something more ordered, gossip website TMZ has already declared that the “trigger” for Lamar’s spiral into overdose was – but of course – his distress after watching a recent episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
Is that true? Is it any more or less true than half of what airs on Keeping Up With the Kardashians? There seems something very yesteryear about even wondering. The line between being the family that shares everything and the family that exploits everything is a very telly 2.0 idea.
Back in 1991’s Truth or Dare, AKA In Bed With Madonna, an uncomfortable Warren Beatty – who already came across as having landed from another century – remarked wryly that his then-girlfriend “doesn’t want to live off camera, much less talk”. How comically reserved Madonna now looks, hundreds of hours of Kardashian keeping-up and tens of millions of dollars of product lines later. There has simply been no one to touch the Kardashians in the reality age, with their seemingly endless ability to regenerate their format – which is to say, their lives.
At some point, logic and precedent insists, their unmatched run must end, and the ratings and sales will decline. Until then, I expect the Kardashians would prefer us to think of them as earth’s most highly evolved apostles of the old adage “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. It was Kim who announced the clan to the world, as victim of a leaked sex tape from which she eventually fought to profit several million dollars. Since that moment, there has been simply no event or pseudo-event in their lives so disruptive or painful that it cannot be folded lucratively into the great self-perpetuating drama of the Kardashians. There is no marital row, no addiction, no 72-day marriage, no gender transition, no nascent 2020 presidential bid that does not result in the fortuitous by-product of higher ratings.
Lost in Showbiz has had a squiz at its Business for Dummies textbook. And, consciously or unconsciously, the Kardashians seem to have pursued a strategy of backward integration, effectively acquiring suppliers of the raw materials for their business. In fact, the sensationalism has become chicken-and-egg stuff. Who else could Kim be married to but the rapper who appears to be considering a run for president in 2020? Who else could co-parent this family but Caitlyn Jenner? Who else could Khloe have got married to a month after meeting him but poor, tragic Lamar Odom?
