A rival emerges to the annual Kardashian drama about what the Kardashian Christmas card will look like. It is a drama about whether there has simply been too much drama for the Kardashians to bring themselves to do a Christmas card.
Time was that America’s first family would gather without exception for a festive tableau, whose production values grew higher in accordance with whatever DUI arrests/72-day marriages they were required to gloss over that year. The high-water mark of this era was undoubtedly 2013’s effort, shot on a gazillion-dollar budget by one-note photographer David LaChappelle, which showed the various Kardashian women disporting themselves in a sort of post-apocalyptic gameshow set, with then-paterfamilias Bruce Jenner trapped in some kind of glass chrysalis. It was an absolute masterklass, and its meanings are still unfurling themselves to me like so many golden lotus flowers.
Last year, however, the annual ritual seemed in grave peril. Speculation was rife that no card would appear, particularly given that Khloé Kardashian’s estranged husband, Lamar Odom, had spent a period in a coma after overdosing four days into a stay at a brothel. Frankly, I would have popped a Santa hat on him and styled it out, but in the end, the Kardashians went with a card simply featuring a group shot of all their children.
This year, the family once again approaches the festive season involved in dramas not immediately suggestive of interpretation via the medium of synthetic snow and eveningwear. Not only has Kim withdrawn from the limelight after being the victim of a violent burglary in Paris, but her husband, Kanye West, was last week admitted to a psychiatric ward suffering from what was described as exhaustion. He has now returned home, but the prospect of him participating in a card seems slim.
Then again, perhaps we once again underestimate the clan. After all, when Kanye was first admitted, many reports declared that E! had indefinitely suspended production on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. This seems to have been an assumption too far for the network, which will tolerate a lot of suggestions about itself, but not that one. It promptly moved to issue a statement correcting this falsehood, declaring: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians is currently in production and has not been halted.”
Well, how disgraceful of anyone to have assumed otherwise. Let no one have the temerity to accuse the network of seemliness again – and let us hope the famous Christmas card is just as “in production”, too.
