The Kardashian-Industrial Complex

One of the boldest questions Barbara Walters ever asked was less a question than an insult. The year was 2011, and Walters was interviewing three members of the Kardashian family—the sisters Kim, Khloé, and Kourtney—and their mother, Kris Jenner. The conversation was, in theory, a compliment to her guests; Walters had included the Kardashians in the most recent edition of her annual “10 Most Fascinating People” list. But now, sitting with the four women, she observed: “You don’t really act; you don’t sing; you don’t dance. You don’t have any—forgive me—any talent.”Had Walters been hoping to manufacture some drama with the remark—one of her own talents was her ability to make famous people cry on national television—she had underestimated the celebrities before her. “But we’re still entertaining people,” Khloé replied, meeting Walters’s barb with practiced placidity. Kim, taking her sister’s cue, noted the challenge of making people “fall in love with you for being you.”Their serenity should not have come as a surprise. The Kardashians were professionally versed in treating the real as not quite real. And they had heard versions of Walters’s critique before. From nearly the moment that their first show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, premiered, in 2007, its success had been met with suspicion. In its affect, the series was notably listless: Everyone involved (even the strivers it depicted) seemed a bit bored. It followed people who were wealthy and pretty, and their efforts to get wealthier and prettier. That it entertained viewers seemed, to its detractors, an indictment—not just of the family but also of the people who kept watching it. KUWTK was a canary in the content mine: evidence of all that can go wrong when “reality” is remade for ratings.The anxiety the show provoked only added to its allure. KUWTK endured for an improbable 20 seasons, fueled by fans and hate-watchers and the fact that, commercially, the two amount to the same thing. By the time its final