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HOLLYWOOD- A wide-eyed America stood in shocked silence this week when it learned that the marriage between basketball star Kris Humphries and television character Kim Kardashian was coming to an end after only 72 days. Just days after Earth’s seven billionth human inhabitant was born, the other 699,999,998 people simultaneously found themselves asking, “Why, Kim, why?”
The courtship between Kardashian and Humprhies began almost exactly a year ago when Kardashian attended a New Jersey Nets basketball game and saw Humphries playing. Careful observers will note, however, that their professional relationship dates back several months before that date when both parties’ publicists, agents, and financial planners held a week-long brainstorming session with the producers of Keeping Up With The Kardashians in Lake Tahoe to plan the story arc for the following season of the show. The brain trust selected Humphries for the role of Kim’s love interest because of his upward social mobility, semi-stardom on a non-marquee team in a major market, and shear gullibility. Producers settled on an NBA player after the success of the E!-NBA joint venture that resulted in Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom’s wedding. Humphries won out over fellow finalists Jameer Nelson of Orlando (too short), Dallas’s Tyson Chandler (too smart), and Washington’s Javale McGee (too young).
Veteran television and pop culture critics have pointed out that it was important for the writers of the show to grab headlines for the Kardashian character or risk a loss of cultural relevance. Whereas other pop culture icons can transition in and out of the limelight with the ebb and flow of a normal career- a musician going on tour or an athlete starting a new season- a character in a reality television show must incessantly perpetuate its own branding. [RIGHT- A clearly Photoshopped image of the Kardashian "family" including a crudely pasted courtroom photo of the "father," whose head is conspicuously larger than his body or the other heads.]
“The Kardashian brand has tentacles in more pop culture outlets than any other reality character over the last 10 years,” Deandra Boorad of Radar Online points out. “They worked backwards by starting bawdry with a sex tape and Playboy spread and have worked upwards into fashion, television, and even sports. The writers’ ability to find new and shocking ways to insert those characters into everyday life has been inventive and highly effective.” Boorad went on to contrast the Kardashians with Paris Hilton, who serves as a cautionary tale for reality writers who think their characters can take some time away from the public eye then return as popular as ever.
The Kardashian-Humphries wedding was one of the more successful stunts in reality television history in terms of the programming it created, the attention it generated, and the revenue it grossed for the principals. The television special featuring the lead-up to the “wedding” drew over four million viewers on consecutive nights, making it the third most watched program ever on the E! Network. Furthermore, the “wedding” was underwritten by various corporate sponsors to the tune of $10 million, far exceeding the actual costs. “In an era where fractured television audiences gravitate to highly-specialized content, there is a downward pressure on production costs,” said marketing analyst Don Feran. “What the producers of this show have done is turn the entire program into an elaborate celebrity endorsement type of advertisement, but where they invent celebrities instead of paying them. The fact that they can fill time slots with this strategy is an incredible manifestation of capitalism-as-art, and the fact that people actually watch it is an even more astounding accomplishment.”
The next move for the Kardashian producers will likely be to translate the internet buzz surrounding the divorce into television programming. First, they will almost certainly bring the Humphries character back for a few episodes to try to “work things out,” which will include seeing a marriage counselor, whose company’s name will be prominently and frequently displayed on screen. From there, viewers may see an attempt at reconciliation through a vacation to a famous resort in the Caribbean or a hotel in Las Vegas. It is also possible that prominent LA divorce lawyers will try to horn in on the self-promotion by paying the family to take the case while appearing on the show.
While the show producers have certainly put themselves in a position to make a great deal of money, it has not come without some hiccups along the way. For example, some observers were questioning the Kardashian-Humphries relationship from the beginning since the story that she met him at a New Jersey Nets game implies that she visited Newark and attended a Nets game, which is not a particularly believable story. Additionally, the couple reportedly honeymooned in Eastasia, the fictional “other country” from George Orwell’s 1984, which is particularly thick doublespeak, even for a show that specializes in insulting its viewers’ intelligence. Nonetheless, the show will proceed unscathed.
For those unfamiliar with the Kardashian backstory, “Kim Kardashian” is a fictional character created in the mid-‘00s by Ryan Seacrest and a team of writers. She is posited as the child of the late Los Angeles area attorney Robert Kardashian, who was part of O.J. Simpson’s defense team. Seacrest has been quoted as saying that when he heard the name “Robert Kardashian,” he first envisioned him as a patriarch of a family modeled as a latter-day Brady Bunch with more sex appeal, and immediately started casting for the reality show. Unlike traditional television, the show presents itself in a “day in the life” fashion, so the actors and actresses must stay in character at all times. As a result, the events of the show are not confined to what happens on television. Seacrest’s team is credited with the masterstroke of introducing the “Kardashian” characters to the world before the debut of the show, first through Kim’s sex tape with R&B singer Ray J (also an actor playing the “Ray J” character on several TV shows). The producers cast former Olympian Bruce Jenner to improve the show’s name recognition and to help teach the other actors how to seamlessly pitch products, but have marginalized him as he has not fit into the larger plot of the show. The programming has been a huge success, generating several spinoffs, convincing people that it is real, and becoming one of cable television’s most watched shows.
“The Kardashian brand has tentacles in more pop culture outlets than any other reality character over the last 10 years,” Deandra Boorad of Radar Online points out. “They worked backwards by starting bawdry with a sex tape and Playboy spread and have worked upwards into fashion, television, and even sports. The writers’ ability to find new and shocking ways to insert those characters into everyday life has been inventive and highly effective.” Boorad went on to contrast the Kardashians with Paris Hilton, who serves as a cautionary tale for reality writers who think their characters can take some time away from the public eye then return as popular as ever.
The Kardashian-Humphries wedding was one of the more successful stunts in reality television history in terms of the programming it created, the attention it generated, and the revenue it grossed for the principals. The television special featuring the lead-up to the “wedding” drew over four million viewers on consecutive nights, making it the third most watched program ever on the E! Network. Furthermore, the “wedding” was underwritten by various corporate sponsors to the tune of $10 million, far exceeding the actual costs. “In an era where fractured television audiences gravitate to highly-specialized content, there is a downward pressure on production costs,” said marketing analyst Don Feran. “What the producers of this show have done is turn the entire program into an elaborate celebrity endorsement type of advertisement, but where they invent celebrities instead of paying them. The fact that they can fill time slots with this strategy is an incredible manifestation of capitalism-as-art, and the fact that people actually watch it is an even more astounding accomplishment.”
The next move for the Kardashian producers will likely be to translate the internet buzz surrounding the divorce into television programming. First, they will almost certainly bring the Humphries character back for a few episodes to try to “work things out,” which will include seeing a marriage counselor, whose company’s name will be prominently and frequently displayed on screen. From there, viewers may see an attempt at reconciliation through a vacation to a famous resort in the Caribbean or a hotel in Las Vegas. It is also possible that prominent LA divorce lawyers will try to horn in on the self-promotion by paying the family to take the case while appearing on the show.
While the show producers have certainly put themselves in a position to make a great deal of money, it has not come without some hiccups along the way. For example, some observers were questioning the Kardashian-Humphries relationship from the beginning since the story that she met him at a New Jersey Nets game implies that she visited Newark and attended a Nets game, which is not a particularly believable story. Additionally, the couple reportedly honeymooned in Eastasia, the fictional “other country” from George Orwell’s 1984, which is particularly thick doublespeak, even for a show that specializes in insulting its viewers’ intelligence. Nonetheless, the show will proceed unscathed.
For those unfamiliar with the Kardashian backstory, “Kim Kardashian” is a fictional character created in the mid-‘00s by Ryan Seacrest and a team of writers. She is posited as the child of the late Los Angeles area attorney Robert Kardashian, who was part of O.J. Simpson’s defense team. Seacrest has been quoted as saying that when he heard the name “Robert Kardashian,” he first envisioned him as a patriarch of a family modeled as a latter-day Brady Bunch with more sex appeal, and immediately started casting for the reality show. Unlike traditional television, the show presents itself in a “day in the life” fashion, so the actors and actresses must stay in character at all times. As a result, the events of the show are not confined to what happens on television. Seacrest’s team is credited with the masterstroke of introducing the “Kardashian” characters to the world before the debut of the show, first through Kim’s sex tape with R&B singer Ray J (also an actor playing the “Ray J” character on several TV shows). The producers cast former Olympian Bruce Jenner to improve the show’s name recognition and to help teach the other actors how to seamlessly pitch products, but have marginalized him as he has not fit into the larger plot of the show. The programming has been a huge success, generating several spinoffs, convincing people that it is real, and becoming one of cable television’s most watched shows.
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