The show begins its 20th and final season on Thursday: “The incredible Kardashians”, cultural abyss for some, addictive melodrama for others, will have made the synthesis of reality TV and social networks, as well as the fortune of the clan in passage.
Savvy businesswomen Kim Kardashian, central to the show, and her mother Kris, decided last year to take the streaming train, via the Hulu platform and Disney’s new offering, called Star. And thus abandon their historic program, whose audiences on the cable channel E! had been divided by six since the peak of Season 4 in 2010.
Between the possible marriage of Kourtney and Scott, the second child of Khloé and Tristan, and allusions to the separation of Kim and Kanye West, this twentieth season promises to be loaded with emotions, feigned or not.
Since its launch in 2007, with sometimes more than one season per year, this is the recipe for this reality TV program that follows the Kardashians in their daily life, punctuated with family mini-dramas, in particular quarrels between the Kardashian sisters or juicy stories of couples.
“No one is stupid enough to think that this is not a carefully rehearsed show,” said Ellis Cashmore, a professor at the British University of Aston and author of the book “Kardashian Kulture”. “But just being in the know just reinforces the entertaining side.”
Despite these flashy tricks, “Kim and her family have created authentic personalities on the show and on social media,” said Christine Kowalczyk, professor of marketing at the University of East Carolina. “Consumers trusted them and wanted to be like them.”
Kim Kardashian was very inspired by Paris Hilton, starlet of the early 2000s who knew how to monetize her celebrity. Like Kim Kardashian later, she “knew she couldn’t sing, dance, act or write,” Ellis Cashmore says, “but she thought to herself: I can still make money with this” .
Moral decline?
The daughter of former successful lawyer Robert Kardashian also benefited from the social media take-off when “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” (“KUWTK”), the original name of the show, was launched.
Kim Kardashian, 40, who now has some 210 million subscribers on Instagram, “has been very innovative” with social networks, said Christine Kowalczyk. “She has used these different platforms to create and maintain her brand.”
Another key element of the recipe is family, a source of endless interactions and twists. “It’s unique in reality TV and celebrity brands,” says this specialist.
Kim Kardashian made a fortune from this brand, estimated at $ 780 million by Forbes magazine.
In addition to the distribution contract with E !, valued at $ 30 million per year, it has launched various products, including its cosmetics brand KKW Beauty, in which it sold 20% of the capital to the giant Coty last year for 200 million. of dollars.
By counting the fortune of his half-sister Kylie Jenner, estimated at 700 million dollars, the heritage of the clan, started from nothing or almost, is now approaching two billion dollars.
There remains the legacy of a controversial program, “which seized the unease of a society which is richer than it has ever been, but perhaps also in full moral decline”, where “we becomes voyeur “, analyzes Ellis Cashmore. It also reflects a cynical era in which authenticity is brandished as a cardinal value, but shaped for commercial ends by reality TV and social networks.
Others however see in “KUWTK” a platform which has made it possible to trivialize mixed couples, through the unions of Kanye West with Kim, or of two of his sisters. Or to familiarize the public with transgender people, with the transition of Bruce Jenner, Kris’s ex-husband, to Caitlyn Jenner under the watch of the cameras.
Some also note the valuation of independent women, in their private and professional lives, symbols of a form of post-feminism, who use seduction in a calculated way.
Whatever their next project for Disney, the end of the show does not sign the disappearance of the Kardashians, far from it. For Christine Kowalczyk, they “are constantly evolving so that their brand and themselves remain relevant”.
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