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Kim Who?
Kim Kardashian is the very curvy 35 year old daughter
of the American lawyer who successfully defended
OJ Simpson. Ms. Kardashian’s celebrity began in 2007
with a leaked sex tape (a psuedo-event?) that created so
much interest that it led to reality television shows about
her family and a social media empire.
In defiance of Mark Twain’s insight that:
It’s better to keep your mouth shut and
appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt
Twitter is the internet site that allows people to post short
bursts of inconsequential information for all and sundry
to read. 302 million subscribers use Twitter and over 10%
of them, 33 million people, follow Ms. Kardashian who
is married to an equally famous man called Kanye West.
Mr. West is a rapper with ambitions to become President
of the USA. The couple called their daughter North.
I know all of this and you may know all of this not
because I am remotely interested in the Kardashian-West
household but because news of the Kardashians doesn’t
stay corralled within the world of the vacuous – it oozes
out into places where real life is discussed, into national
newspapers for example. Kim Kardashian understands
the love/hate dynamic intrinsic to the fashion for celebrity
calmly accepting that underpinning her success is her
ability to cope with having millions of people who
hate her. Talentless? Oh no! Ms. Kardashian’s talent is
celebrity itself and she’s very good at it. To the tune
of £25 million a year good at it. The Kim Kardashian
phenomenon is only possible because of the growth of
social media though it always amuses me to see people
glued to their smart phones rather than talking to their
companions. Doesn’t seem all that social to me.
Horses for Courses & Jumping to Conclusions
Kim Kardashian isn’t for everyone just as
Strictly Come
Dancing
and its celebrity contestants is not everyone’s
cup of tea. Pop stars whose fame is born of programmes
like The X Factor are criticised. Not a patch on the real
stars of the old days eh? Couldn’t hold a candle to really
talented people like Frank Sinatra could they? No? As it
happens Old Blue Eyes first came to public notice when
he appeared on the world’s very first talent competition
The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour
broadcast on
a New York radio station in the 1930s.
We can make a good start at understanding (if not
forgiving) the modern cult of celebrity if we think of
it as the coming together of the natural history of the
human mind, evolution and the advent of social media.
Like all great apes we are acutely sensitive to the
direction of others’ gaze and this isn’t the only caveman
survival advantage that has survived to become a bit
warped in the 21st century. We evolved a preference for
sweet-tasting and fatty foods because they motivated our
ancestors to seek out the essential nutrients in ripe fruits
and meats for the tribe to flourish. Mass-produced
confectionery and intensive agriculture combined with
these adaptive tastes has led to the much talked about
obesity epidemic and all its associated health problems.
Professor Stephen Hawking, (the celebrity scientist!)
has warned that the natural aggression of man which
may have conferred survival advantage in caveman days,
making it possible to win more territory, gain more food
and mates with whom to reproduce now threatens to
destroy us all. So there you have it. Macdonalds is in
our DNA and we should think of Kim Kardashian as a
cultural vestigial organ - our celebrity appendix! Dear,
dear .We are all going to hell in a handcart. Helena
Handcart? Didn’t she used to be a page three girl?
