Today, Explained - The Kardashi-end

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Over 14 years and 20 seasons of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” the show rewrote the rules of reality TV, social media, marketing, and popular culture. Next up? Politics. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. There is an alternate universe where this is the Today Explained theme song. The song is called Morning. It's by Francis and the Lights. And back in 2017, when I was trying to figure out what this afternoon news show would sound like, there was a moment where I ironically thought a song called Morning might be the right fit for the top of the show. I reached out to the guy who wrote it, Francis Starlight,

and Francis was open to the idea. There was just one problem. The Kardashians were already using it. You see, Francis is friends with Kanye. Kanye was happily married to Kim, and Kim had taken a liking to Morning, and in 2017, she started to use it as the theme song for her reality TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I didn't know it was the theme song because I have never seen an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. The show ended yesterday after 14 years

and 20 freaking seasons on the air, and it's hard to overstate its influence. So today, we're gonna talk to someone who really kept up with the Kardashians. I'm Zan Romanoff, and I am a full-time freelance writer and part-time Kardashian expert. Part-time Kardashian expert? You'd think that'd be a full-time job. I mean, it is full-time in my head, but only part-time on my tax returns, I would say. And this show ended after 14 years and 20 seasons last night.

Why have so many people spent 14 years following this family around? Kind of the answer is that they're interesting. They represent a lot of things that we don't want to be interesting, right? I think we all would like to think that we're above being interested in beauty, wealth, fame. Sex. Sex. Yeah, sex. Oh, you can't leave out sex when you're talking about the Kardashians. Sex is really one of their calling cards in a very real way. And they're willing to be quite public. They're willing to put it out there. Not to say that the show isn't pretty staged, because it is. But, you know, they have been willing to put themselves in the public eye despite the very real pain that it has caused them.

And for anyone who's been, like, living under a rock for the past 14 years, can you just quickly give us an idea of how integral these people have become to our culture? Yeah, that show was E's most watched show for a number of years that it was on, peaked around 4.8 million viewers for the episode where Courtney pulls her son Mason out of her body while giving birth. It is truly incredible to watch. Dr. Crane, he's like, oh, your baby's halfway out. Do you want to touch the baby? And Courtney's like, sure.

And she just reaches down and pulls him out. And it's like, oh, my child. And I'm like, I think you ripped something. Like, that's not normal. Kim currently has 227 million Instagram followers. Damn. And you got to remember that's only Kim, right? Part of the deal of this family is that there's, we're doing it in order,

Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Rob, Kendall, Kylie. And just for a frame of reference here, like, Barack Obama's got like 34.9 million. I'm just looking up Bieber real quickly here. He's at 176 million. Beyonce's at 184. So yeah, they're crushing it. They got on social media before a lot of people. They understood how to do social media before a lot of people.

So they have crazy social media followings. And I think my favorite Kardashian power move was when Kylie Jenner a couple of years ago tweeted that she was kind of over Snapchat and their stock fell precipitously. Let's trade Snapchat. Snap the ticker sinking 8% today. Thank you, Kylie Jenner. Now on pace for one of its worst days in a long time. So they are controlling global markets. They are setting trends. They are selling products. They are dominating social media. And Kim was in the White House and probably will be again, setting policy for the United States. So what area of American life aren't they touching? I do not know. Okay, well, let's talk about how we got to this moment of domination. I mean, where does this all begin? I guess it's with like O.J. Simpson,

if I know my history right. It is with O.J. Simpson. There are weird dark roots in this story. It kind of tore our family apart, I'd say, for the whole time of the trial. And you're 13 and this happened? Yeah, 13, 14. I mean, I vividly remember staying home from school to watch the verdict. A criminal defense lawyer in LA., Robert Kardashian, marries Chris Houghton. And so the kids have kind of a front row seat growing up to the O.J. trial, which Kardashian was the defense lawyer on. This letter was written by O.J. today. To whom it may concern, first, everyone understand,

I had nothing to do with Nicole's murder. murder so i mean a to fame and b then to the beginning of reality television to sort of the beginning of this fascination with people's lives unfolding in real time fast forward a number of years chris and robert kardashian are divorced she marries caitlyn jenner a olympic athlete and a famous person in her own right. And at this point they have one, two, three, four, five. Yes, six. Okay. At this point they have six kids. Kim is sort of interested in nightlife.

She is hanging out with and working as an assistant to Paris Hilton. You can always buy a new dress, but you can't like buy a new life. Oh. Notorious sex tape haver and sort of famous for being a famous person. And so the family has kind of been around Hollywood, has been kind of flirting with this world for a long time. And in around 2005, 2006, they start talking with folks about whether they could have a reality television show of their own. This is a couple of years after the massive success of The Osbournes. Shit! television show of their own. This is a couple of years after the massive success of The Osbournes. And so there was sort of this idea

of like, okay, like, you know, famous family, you know, cute reality show, and this will be The Osbournes, but less creepy, more glamorous, and a zillion more kids, right? So this was one of the big things, was there are so many Kardashian Jenner children that it's a sort of intergenerational show, and someone will find something to relate

to. And then what happens is that Kim's sex tape of intergenerational show and someone will find something to relate to. And then what happens is that Kim's sex tape comes out between the show getting sold and the show premiering. And all of a sudden they have a big, bold scandal to discuss and they are quite famous. Wait, I got to ask, is that an accident or is that on purpose? I mean, she's friends with Paris Hilton and she also just happens to have a sex tape drop around the time she's launching a reality TV show. I am not trying to shame anyone here, but I have to ask. No, it's a good question, and it's one that you can imagine has been asked since 2007 when all this happened. So Paris Hilton's sex tape was absolutely revenge porn. Her boy, the ex-boyfriend who leaked it, admits this.

What an ass. The Kim thing is more complicated. She maintains very adamantly that she had no hand in releasing it. And how does this work into the launch of the show? So A, it changes the content of the show, but B, it changes the viewership of the show, right? A lot of people who would never have heard of Kim Kardashian are all of a sudden like, oh my God, I got to tune in and see, you know, what family raised this girl? Like, who raised this trollop?

And it works. It takes off. It's a rating smash. And they become really famous. And in part, I will say, because they have the TV show and in part because Chris then immediately parlays the TV show into every other opportunity possible. What are we talking here? They do endorsement deals with Silly Bands, the like bracelets, remember those? They do one with Charmin, Kim Kardashian,

stumbling for porta potties is really something you got to see. It's the fifth year in a row that Charmin is opening up a great, gorgeous, clean restrooms for, you know, everyone to use in New York City during the holidays. And because I've never seen the show, I have to ask, how much of this is happening, you know, off the show,

and how much of this stuff is integrated back into the show? So, yeah, it creeps in kind of slowly. Like, at first, the show really is mostly, or it's at least an even split between sort of, like, home family life and the demands of fame. I open the door and Chloe slams the door right in my face. And it infuriates me, like I literally want to kill her. And then as they get more and more famous, it becomes more

and more about sort of how you even have a family life when fame is built into the structure of your family, right? When your mom is just also your manager. Kim, you're doing amazing, sweetie. And so it becomes this really kind of incredible feedback loop, right? Where it's like media writes stories about what happens on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Keeping Up With The Kardashians comments on the stories that are written in the media. Kendall Jenner opens up about her involvement in the now infamous political Pepsi commercial. I would never purposely hurt someone, ever.

Let's talk about some of the big milestones on the show, like the red weddings of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Kim, would you stop taking pictures of yourself? Your sister's going to jail. Hey, guys. My diamond earring came off in the ocean and it's gone. Kim, there's people that are dying. I think the big transition moment happens in 2011 when Kim marries Kris Humphries. Kim's fairytale wedding, a two-night Kardashian event, starts Sunday, October 9th at 8, only on E! And 72 days after they are married, I think like a couple of weeks after the special airs, they announce that they are getting divorced. But that's the moment when I think even people who were kind of interested in them turn on them.

The feeling at the time was like, oh, the wedding was a publicity stunt. And it was like, if they're willing to get married for publicity, then what won't they do? Tamara has a lot of people shaking their heads. It absolutely is a talker this morning, Matt. You know, it's the end of a relationship that had barely begun. Her breakup with Chris Humphries has sparked a wave of criticism. There was even a mock vigil held outside of the Kardashian store Dash in New York City. Every paper this morning talking about it, big blank sham on the New York Post, not being so kind.

2011, there's like petitions to get them taken off the air. There's real kind of serious backlash. And I think could potentially have been the end of the family because people were just sick of that level of like hyper-concentrated, kind of like cheesy D-list fame. But as it happens, that's when Kardashian West goes to Washington. Thank you. at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P dot com slash explained, cards issued by Sutton Bank,

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with iGaming Ontario. Uh-huh, honey. What does Kanye do for the Kardashians? Kanye takes them A-list. He takes them straight to the top, right? And he's really considered an artist and a genius. And so for him to sort of look at these try-hard strivers, you know, these cheap D-list reality stars,

and be like, no, they are artistically interesting to me, forces all kinds of people who previously never would have put the name Kardashian in their mouth to consider them. So like Jerry Saltz, who's the art critic at New York Magazine, writes a great piece about like Kim Kanye and art.

They eventually end up on the cover of Vogue together, which was a huge, huge deal. A million think pieces written about how Anna Wintour must have felt putting Kim K on the cover of her hallowed institution. And their influence isn't just contained to the show that's ending this week. No, because they very cannily use the show as a springboard to doing a ton of other stuff. In 2014, Kim releases a phone game called Kim Kardashian Hollywood. Download Kim Kardashian Hollywood for free and play today.

That is super successful, makes a ton of money, and sort of launches the Kim K. Mogul era, which is really when people start talking about them as businesswomen, right? Understanding that this is not, these women didn't just show up and pose, right? They've been kind of shaping careers for themselves on and off the screen. You were asked, how would you most like to be remembered? And you said, I'd like to be remembered as someone who was smart in business, worked hard, could be sexy, and a mom. And then a year later, Kylie Jenner starts Kylie Cosmetics, which goes on to become a billion-dollar makeup brand. And all of her sisters pretty much follow suit. The Kardashians really did pave the way for the kind of reality star to become an A-lister, right? That was not really something that had happened. I mean, there hadn't been that

many reality stars before them. They also helped create influencers as a category, right? They really understood what it meant to have and own a social following and the way that you could market to them because their lives are so constantly broadcast. They really do change how celebrity functions, a little bit how media functions, and certainly, you know, how business functions. They're everywhere. While all this is happening, there's sort of like this evolving conversation about American beauty standards. It's like people think she invented butts or something. Which is interesting and complicated, right? Kim, whatever she has or hasn't done, like she was born with that ass. On the one hand, like, yes, she does help move us

away from a very thin, very white beauty standard. On the other hand, she is not Black. She does not experience the racism that Black women... The bodies of Black women are often both celebrated and fetishized, right? Sexualized, fetishized, but also criminalized and denigrated. And Kim and her sisters get to sit at this really interesting intersection where they have some of these features that Black women are traditionally associated with. Obviously, not every Black woman has them. But they get to sort of have these traditionally sexualized Black features

without having to themselves be Black. And it gets even more complicated because the Jenner kids are just like one hundo pee white. Hundo pee. But if you look at their before and after photos, they increasingly don't look white anymore, right? The Jenner kids are Hundo P. White and Kylie Jenner's decision to get lip fillers absolutely is in pursuit of a fuller lipped look

that is associated with black women. Yeah, that she gets to wear like a fashion style without having to deal with any of the difficulties of actually being black. Kylie Jenner got called out on Instagram for posting a photo of her hair in cornrows by Kim Kardashian found herself in hot water once again after wearing Fulani braids to the MTV Awards this past weekend. Kim shared her new cover for 7 Hollywood on social media.

While some fans loved the look, others disapproved, saying Kim's skin seemed darker than usual. And with or without the appropriation, there is just no denying the impact this family has on American, if not just global popular culture, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think this is sort of where it gets tricky with the Kardashians is people, because we don't want their influence, you know, because it sort of feels complicated and feels kind of yucky in certain ways to us,

people often like want to deny the size of their influence as a means of saying like, it's bad. But it is just undeniable. I did a piece a handful of years ago where I interviewed cosmetic surgeons about injectables. And everyone I spoke to said that one of the number one faces that women came in asking for was Kim Kardashian.

Wow. Yep. Creepy. As much as the family is associated with beauty, fame, and fashion, there have always been kind of political elements to their lives, right? When you think back to the O.J. Simpson trial, and in the last handful of years, they have moved more intentionally towards talking about and being involved in politics

with very mixed results. So to a certain extent, politics has always been part of their lives. We're looking up different guns. I'm just trying to play with different photos. Looking up what? Different guns. Why? There is an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians about gun control

that's actually, I think, a pretty effective intervention. She says she has literally a different stalker outside of her house every few days. She's a single girl who lives alone, and she just wants a way. Like, someone's already broken into her home, and what if she was there? Well, that's what you have security for. And Kim, who has kids, is basically like, I'm not going to let my kids come over if you have a gun in your house. So that's just not going to happen. It's not safe. Hi, how are you?

How are you? And so they go to a shooting range range and they talk to gun control advocates. I think Kim will respect it more if she sees later how much work and effort and responsibility we put into this. It's really Kardashian in terms of being a very outsized, fame-driven problem, but it's not a really real conversation around like sort of, you know, what is safety? What does that mean? How do we keep each other safe? So there had been moments like those, you know, where they would kind of wade into political stuff. They've also discussed the Armenian genocide

since they have Armenian heritage. A much less successful instance was Kendall's Pepsi commercial. Protesters and cops are clashing and she hands the cup of Pepsi and the cop's like, we're all friends now. Wait, that's not how it works? I've never tried it, so maybe

I'm wrong. But yeah, the image of a white girl handing a soda to a police officer, people found incredibly trivializing and upsetting. And that might have been, like, the most famous instance of the Kardashians slash Jenners delving into politics were it not for the fact

that Kim Kardashian ends up at the White House with Donald Trump at some point, right? Yep. Kim Kardashian West. A post comes across her social feeds about a woman named Alice Marie Johnson, who's been unjustly imprisoned. Some say you do the crime, you do the time. However, that time should be fair and just. And Kim kind of gets interested in it. And she's like, this is messed up. What can I do?

And ends up, yeah, at the White House with a bunch of sort of seasoned criminal justice activists talking to Donald Trump and saying, you've got to let this woman out. I pled the case of Alice Johnson, who the president granted clemency to. And not only that, then helping get past an actual law that helped reshape criminal justice reform. One of the biggest reforms in decades has just passed the Senate. It's called the First Step Act. It's a sweeping bipartisan bill that overhauls parts of the federal criminal justice system.

Supporters say... You can't sleep on the fact that, you know, a person some people deem to be sort of famous for being famous and chasing fame goes to the White House to meet with another person who's kind of sort of like that

to this positive end that no one can really harp on. Oh, people harped. Don't worry. People harped? Van Jones, who's one of the activists who's with her at the White House, talks about being there with her and talks about how Trump was not unsympathetic, but he was sort of like, look, I'm just really afraid that if I let this woman out of prison and she commits a crime, right, then I'm in huge trouble because I let her out on the streets.

And what he's worried about, right, is his public image. And in fact, Kim, who understands public image better than anyone, who is also a reality star, right, is able to have the conversation with him where she's like, this is, you know, so this is how you handle it. This is how you think about it. Like, this is why this is still the right thing to do. But he also talks in the same article about how sort of when it came out that she had done this, a lot of people's response was basically like,

Kim Kardashian is trying to take credit for the criminal justice reform movement. All these Black activists have been working behind the scenes for years. Now she's the face of this movement. Is it fair to say that Alice Marie Johnson wouldn't have been released from prison were it not for Kim's visit to the White House? Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say that one of the reasons that she is, that Alice Marie Johnson is not in prison today is because Kim Kardashian was willing to go to the White House and have this conversation with Donald Trump. Is that the end of her criminal justice reform career or she kept it going? And at a certain point, she decides that she is going to study for the bar and try and become a lawyer

because she wants to have more of an impact, have more knowledge and have more of an impact. So she's been studying with a couple of lawyers for the past couple of years. We actually just learned from an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians that she failed her baby bar exam. So she has a way to... Baby bar? Yeah, the baby bar is like, you take it before the bar exam and you have to take it in order to continue studying law. But so yeah, she's been studying privately. Seems to be where she's kind of steering her career. And meanwhile, I guess like her former step-parent, Caitlyn Jenner, is now like running for office in California or what?

Yep. So California is, it's on the ballot to potentially recall Governor Newsom. And the last time California had a gubernatorial recall, the person, A, it was successful, and B, the person who won the governorship was celebrity Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm back.

So now that we're having our second gubernatorial recall, Caitlin has decided that this is the time for her to make it known that she thinks she should be in charge of things. Now I enter a different kind of race, arguably my most important one yet, to save California. Caitlyn doesn't seem to have any tremendously strong political opinions. She seems mostly to think, you know, she has good ideas. She has friends who have opinions and they should be better represented. Yeah, I don't think that there's, I don't think she's polling tremendously well. I mean, she's pro-banning

trans girls from participating in women's sports. So I don't know. Is it just like an inevitability that once you get this famous and don't have that much to do, you just got to turn to politics? Because what do you do with all that power? I mean, I do think it's fair to say, right, that, yeah, as I said, the Kardashians have touched a lot of areas of American life um and they really have conquered celebrity they have conquered the business markets um one of the last like big bastions of power they don't have a hand in is politics so it does kind of make sense that that's a place they're looking to okay so i'm just going to try and summarize 14 odd years of the kardashians here in like a sentence, which is just conquer reality TV, conquer makeup lines,

change beauty standards, get into all sorts of trouble, but also seemingly appropriate black culture kind of willy nilly, become an integral part of Black culture by marrying biggest rapper in the world, delve into politics, really just fundamentally change the realm of what Americans find possible when it comes to fame and power and money. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? What kind of thing is it? You know, I do think this is part of the problem is that we really always want to moralize about whether the Kardashian success is good or bad. And I think like pretty much everything, it falls somewhere in between. You know, it certainly is. It undeniably is. And it's had positive effects and it's had really negative effects.

And I think you hit on a lot of the really positive ones, right, in terms of like maybe shifting some beauty standards, helping people understand the labor that goes into being a beautiful woman. It's not easy and it's not time consuming. You know, the other thing that they do that I think is sort of less positive and perhaps less discussed is they really lionize having a compulsive work ethic. The problem is if I were on my deathbed, I would still show up. And mom is so used to me, Courtney, me and Chloe going on our deathbeds. No, you'll, you get anxiety and it's like, are you kidding me? Like I literally will. But yeah, this, this sort of sense of like, even if you are a billionaire, you should still be striving. You should still be working. You should still be constantly doing appearances. And then also the sense that like you are your own brand can be really powerful for people, but it's also,

you know, the monetization of the self is not something that I think is necessarily this sense that you are your own brand can be really powerful for people, but it's also, you know, the monetization of the self is not something that I think is necessarily going to end up being the most positive for the vast majority of people. But at the end of the day, it'll be distinctly American. Distinctly American. If there's one thing you can say about the Kardashians, they are an absolutely distinctly American. If there's one thing you can say about the Kardashians, they are an absolutely distinctly American family and story. Zan Romanoff is a full-time writer for hire, a part-time Kardashian scholar. According to her tax returns, you can find her on Twitter at ZanOanoff is a full-time writer for hire, a part-time Kardashian scholar. According to her tax returns,

you can find her on Twitter at Zanopticon. I'm Sean Ramosfirm. You can find me at Ramosfirm and the show at today underscore explained. Thanks for listening. And thanks again, Francis. See the end Morning, morning Never thought I would be here again

Now I feel like I should leave again It's okay they're only feelings I feel like I can feel again I can finally see the end Bye.