Can't afford a Kardashian? How about a Molinaro?

Melissa Molinaro in Old Navy's "Super C-U-T-E."

The second half of Don Quixote is peculiar not only for the reader of Miguel Cervantes's book but also for its protagonist.

Some of the folks Don Quixote encounters have read the first half of the book and are now running about claiming to be the old man and imitating his antics.

The old man does not like this, and so Mr. Q  forces at least one of these impersonators to carry official documents declaring that he is NOT Don Quixote.  Sort of like UNidentification papers.

I thought of this when I saw that Kim Kardashian had filed a lawsuit against Old Navy over a TV commercial featuring Melissa Molinaro.  You can watch the commercial, titled "Super C-U-T-E" here.  I admit that the first time I saw this commercial, I thought it was Kardashian.  However, when I compare photographs, the resemblance seems minimal.

Reggie Bush might disagree.  The professional football player is Kardashian's ex-boyfriend who is now dating Molinaro.

Melissa Molinaro & Kim Kardashian

In Molinaro's defense, while there may be some physical resemblance, there is little personality resemblance to Kardashian.  Molinaro is flashy and cute in the ad.  Her sexiness is more cartoonish, fitting the tone of Old Navy ads.  Although The Kim's curves are outrageous, her demeanor is more calm, her behavior more reserved.  Sultry rather than sassy.

Her suit against Old Navy is somewhat similar to one filed by Bette Midler against an advertising agency for hiring one of her former backup singers to cover one of her songs for a 1985 Ford car commercial.  Midler claimed the singer was instructed to imitate her as closely as possible.  That would have been like getting Midler without paying for Midler.

The Divine Miss M sued for $10 million but received a judgement for $400,000.

Karl loved cargo shorts.

Whether Kardashian has a case against Old Navy is not what interests me.  Instead, I am intrigued by what this means about the cult of personality in a media-saturated, capitalist system.  There are two ideas that seem to be mixed up here in some kind of Marxist Theoretical Martini: the alienation of labor and commodity fetishism.

On the one hand, Marx wrote about alienation.  He wrote about how a worker becomes alienated from his own labor.  In a highly developed capitalist system, the worker is less directly invested in what he produces, since that belongs to someone else.  The worker merely sells his labor.  He is alienated in the sense that there is a division between himself and his product. 

The worker is also alienated in that he feels that much of his working life is dictated by other people -- his working conditions, his wages, his future employment, etc.  He may have some influence on these things.  He can try to dictate his wages, but those are also influenced by the wages being demanded by others.  If someone is willing to work for a cheaper rate, he may have to lower his price.

"Do I turn you on?"

On the other hand, Marx also wrote about commodities and how they take on a life of their own in a system that depends upon the flow of commodities to consumers.  This quality is what Marx meant by the word "fetish."  Today we tend to think of this word in its Freudian sense, which means to obsess over something, to invest it with an inordinate amount of emotional energy, often times an erotic energy.  You know, to be erotically attracted to toes (a foot fetish) or leather (a Hermes bag fetish).

But Marx meant "fetish" in a more anthropological sense, referring to the human tendency to endow an object with spiritual or animated qualities.  A rabbit's foot is a kind of fetish.  If we associate luck, speed, or agility with a rabbit, we believe these qualities will be available to us if we carry the rabbit's foot.  A more complicated understanding of the fetish, though, would allow it to bestow or withhold those qualities, depending upon our behavior or our treatment of the fetish.  The fetish is not always in our control. 

Marx said that commodities can become like fetishes.  The value or desirability of those commodities is not in the control of the people making them or the people buying them or selling them.  Of course, people have some influence on those things, but they are ultimately decided by this abstract thing called "market forces."  It is as if the commodities are controlled by a higher force or are motivated by some personality they possess.

What happens when the product of your labor is a commodity called yourself?  Can you become alienated from that?

What happens when your image/identity becomes a commodity, exchanged and valued by other people?

Kardashian's lawsuit implies both ideas.  It states she has worked hard (labor) on developing her image (commodity), which has considerable value in the marketplace.  The lawsuit states she "has invested substantial time, energy, finances and entrepreneurial effort in developing her considerable professional and commercial achievements and success, as well as in developing her popularity, fame, and prominence in the public eye."

Kim has discovered that her value does not adhere as closely to her self as she had thought.  Other people can be valued for qualities that she has cultivated.  The value of what she has produced, the brand called "Kim Kardashian," does not necessarily adhere to her self.

There is Kim Kardashian.  And then there is Kim Kardashian-ness.  She thought she was selling and controlling the former, when it turns out she was selling the latter.  And that can be alienated from her.  That can be produced by others.  Once Kardashian-ness is circulating freely in the market, its value will be influenced by those market forces and less by Kim.  (The commodity starts to take on those fetish qualities.)  The danger for Kim is that once Kardashian-ness becomes a commodity, its value can decline -- I doubt a Molinaro endorsement fetches the same price as a Kardashian.  Once others can produce it, The Kim could find that she cannot charge as much as before for her Kardashian-ness.

With Kardashian, we can find a convergence of alienation and the fetish.

If Kim does not win the lawsuit, she will find herself competing with others for the product she had originated and had once held a monopoly on.  If she does not win the lawsuit, she will have been, to some degree, alienated from her own labor.  Others will have greater influence on what is produced and what price it fetches.

This is not to say that Melissa Molinaro is a counterfeit Kim Kardashian.  She is not claiming to be Kim.  This is not identify theft.  This is different from the Don Quixote situation.  It will not do Kardashian any good to make Molinaro carry a sign that states, "This is not Kim Kardashian."  Authenticity is not the issue. 

This is all very ironic, since what Kardashian sells with her products is the promise, implicit or explicit, that if you wear her perfume or makeup, you can be like her.  You, too, can possess Kardashian-ness.

One could say that Molinaro is guilty of doing what Kardashian has been encouraging all along: Be like me!

Except now she is finding that she can be outsourced.

Next on "Inside The Actors Studio" -- Kim Kardashian

Part Three of my musings about Kim Kardashian.

As I watched Kim and Kourtney Kardashian sunning their augmented breasts in Miami on a friend's yacht, I thought to myself, "How do we watch this stuff?"

I didn't mean "Why do we watch this stuff?"  I meant literally "How?"

I was watching a clip of Kourtney and Kim Take New York on Hulu, and Kim was on this yacht with her sister and a friend.  She was fidgeting with her ever-present Blackberry, and she let out a big sigh that drew their attention.  They asked what was wrong, and Kim said, "I'm just trying to deal with this kind of like privately, but Reggie and I broke up."

I was struck by the irony of her statement.  She was trying to deal with her Bush break-up privately -- while being filmed talking about it.

What we call "reality TV" is filled with such moments, moments when the folks on screen seem to have a private experience for the benefit of the camera crew that is present when they speak and the millions they hope will watch later.  This should make us ask, "Just how real is reality television?"

I know this is not an original question.  I imagine most of us would answer it quickly: "Not very."

Since we know their reality is limited, I asked myself whether we watch such shows in a manner different from the way we watch "regular" drama.  When we watch a regular drama, we know what we see is not real.  It may imitate the real, and it may do this quite faithfully.  But those of us in the audience know what we watch is, in a sense, a lie.  This does not stop us from getting emotionally involved in the events.  This does not stop us from experiencing emotional reactions to what we see on the screen.

At the heart of the audience's experience is identification.  People in the audience identify with the people they see in the production.  They may think, "She is like me.  I have felt her pain before."  Or they might think, "I have never known that fear, but I imagine it is powerful!  Look at me, my heart is racing, yet I am sitting safely in my home, wrapped in a Snuggie and eating S'mores."  That is to say, even if we cannot relate our own lives to the lives we see on the screen (or read on the page or witness on the stage), we imagine ourselves in those lives.  We experience, vicariously, the actions and emotions being imitated for us.  And the fact that they are not really happening does not diminish our pleasure nor our participation.

Aristotle

Aristotle recognized this long ago and wrote about it in Poetics.  While many plays in his time were based upon historical events or on characters well known to the audience through myths, he noted there were some plays "where incidents and names alike are fictitious, and yet they give none the less pleasure."

Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" to argue for implausible or fantastic events in stories, the idea extends to many forms of storytelling.  For instance, while watching 3:10 to Yuma, I am supposed to suspend my disbelief that a man with a prosthetic foot -- one made in the 1870s no less -- could jump from roof to roof in hot pursuit of a bad guy.  (I'm sorry.  I snorted in the theater at those scenes.)  But at a more fundamental level, I suspend my disbelief enough to watch any of the film and allow it to influence my thoughts and emotions.

And so, while watching a show such as Kourtney and Kim Take New York, the viewer allows himself to forget that everything the sisters say is being recorded and they know it is being recorded -- and surely the sisters shape what they say or do because of that camera.  At some level they must be aware of how what they are saying is fitting into some storyline that has evolved through the creation of that episode or that is likely to evolve.  (They also must know their show is a collaborative effort.  What they say and do will be further shaped by editors, especially after the sisters tape the various cutaway commentaries on the episode's events.)

In this sense, a show such as theirs is not so much "reality TV" as it is "improvisational drama."  Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he plays a character named "Larry David," is famous for its improvisational creation.  David gives his actors the bare minimum for a scene, and the actors create the rest as they go along.  As they stay in character, they are aware of the plot they need to follow, but they also are aware of the need to make each scene funny.

Similarly, Kim Kardashian plays a character named "Kim Kardashian" in scenes that are meant to resemble her life, knowing that as she goes through each scene she must do and say memorable things -- look glamorous, be happy, be heartbroken, be sentimental, be rich, etc.

After I started thinking about this aspect of shows such as hers, I came across another name for them: docusoap.  Part documentary, part soap opera.  It sounds fitting.  But that name seems reserved for the types of shows that document people (most likely not celebrities) doing things in the "real world," such as Deadliest Catch.  The people in those shows may play to the camera, may manufacture drama in order to get more air time, but they also must be aware of the competition they are a part of or the dangers that surround them.

The kind of crabs that might threaten Kim and Kourtney are not the kind you pull from the Bering Sea.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

I am not saying that the Kardashians create television as compelling as Six Feet Under, The Wire, or even Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  While I suspend my disbelief in watching those shows -- "Come on!  A giant milkshake would never say that!" -- I also admire their invention and the craft of their construction.  I admire their understanding of human nature and the commentary they make on it.  But I do wonder whether the process of watching those shows is much different from watching the tawdry televised pathos of America's rich and famous.

I realize that not everyone watches these shows in the way I have described.  Not everyone watches something like Jersey Shore in the same way Aristotle would have enjoyed Antigone.  Some watch more like Romans enjoying their gladiators -- if the warriors sported Bumpits and fake tans.

I know many people tune in to see the human train wrecks that some reality TV shows present to us.  But not all watch for that, and some folks even watch as if the shows presented unmediated glimpses into the lives of other people.  But even those who watch like Romans at the Coliseum are to some degree reacting to events on screen as if they were accurate imitations of life, not people impersonating themselves in storylines intended to attract attention; the Roman-style viewers react as if they are watching real people doing real things -- evoking from the viewers genuine outrage, pity, scorn, or laughter, evoking that catharsis and purgation of human emotions for which Aristotle said drama was intended.

Kim's naked ambition

Part Two of a series.  Part One: "Ain't nothing little about Kim."

Kim Kardashian recently claimed she was upset that W magazine displayed her naked body in its November "Art Issue."  Through her tears on a recent episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York, she claimed she had been told her semi-private parts were going to be covered with artwork.

Perhaps she should have been worried more about the art than her parts.

On the cover of the magazine, the curvaceous queen of reality television is strategically covered by the work of Barbara Kruger.  Kruger is famous for combining words with images from advertising or celebrity portraits.  Her works comment on the consumer-driven culture of the United States, and they critique the force of advertising and media to shape our identities.

In the case of "Kruger Meets Kardashian," the young woman's body is superimposed with three blocks of type: It's all about me.  I mean you.  I mean me.

With the first line, Kruger seems to suggest Kim is telling us honestly that she is the center of the viewer's attention.  The straightforward look on Kim's face reinforces this.  And who could say she is wrong?

As the W article, "The Art of Reality," points out, Kim has become famous for being Kim.  Not because she has talent, but because she is.  And people want to watch her be Kim.  Millions of people watch her on the E! network.  She has millions of followers on Twitter.  She has lines of her own merchandise, and she endorses others.  Her every move gets reported on.  Her recent failure to dance on stage with Prince got major rotation on Yahoo!, along with tidbits from Donald Rumsfeld's autobiography and "Where to find amazing pies."

That second phrase -- I mean you -- is echoed in the W article.  The author follows Kim to a promotional appearance at a Nordstrom's in Santa Monica, California.  Several times Kim comments on her close relationship to her fans.  At one point she says, trying to explain her popularity among young women, "They have sisters or they don't have sisters, and then they see me as a sister.  They relate to me.  And I'm honored."

These moments of sister solidarity are undercut, though.  Those fans gathered to greet her in Santa Monica are limited to the first 200 who purchase at least $75 worth of FusionBeauty products.  And the article suggests that more than a few of Kim's Tweets involve pumping the products she has endorsed.  It seems sisterhood has a price.

I mean me.

Perhaps Kim didn't pick up on Kruger's potential critique.  Perhaps she was happy simply to be covered up by the work of a famous artist, since in the media-driven world today the reason for a person's fame is less important than the fame itself.  Perhaps for Kim it didn't matter what Kruger was saying; it was enough that Kruger is famous and her art sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kruger easily could have recycled an earlier piece of hers for covering Kim's corpus: "I shop therefore I am."  After all, Kim spends a lot of time on her television show shopping, and much of Kim's involvement with her fans centers on shopping.

But it might be more appropriate to state, "You shop therefore I am."  Or "I sell therefore you are."

Both options suggest the strange cycle of codependency that develops between seller and consumer.  They need each other and they perpetuate that need -- those "sisters" consume in the desire to feel connected to Kim, and Kim's desire to be desired depends upon those "sisters" consuming.

A Kruger work that could not be recycled for Kim's cover is one that features Judy Garland and the phrase "i never wanted to be your icon."  It seems that Kim would most definitely like to be that.

Coming Soon

Part Three: Is "docu-soap" a better name for reality TV shows?  How about "improvisational drama"?

Ain't nothing little about Kim

Did you hear the news?

Kim Kardashian is upset because W magazine printed nude pictures of her.

She regretted posing nude for Playboy.  Then she regretted posing nude for Harper's Bazaar.  And most recently she regretted posing nude for W in its November "Art Issue."

For someone who regrets posing nude for magazines, doesn't she pose nude for a lot of magazines?

But all of this makes sense.  She is a star of a reality TV show, so therefore we can trust nothing that she says to be ... real.

If those pictures were printed in November, then why did her regret make the news in late January?  Because her tears over her exposed ta-tas were seen in a recent episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York.  The scene (link) was recorded around November, so that means she kept her displeasure, unlike her daunting body, under wraps for several weeks.

Kim is no fool.  She knows how to keep her name in the headlines.  Those photographs had played themselves out, but her TV tears revived them quite easily.  Her name -- and  the images -- were all over the Internet again, and she didn't even have to pose for another picture.

Again, Kim is no fool.  In the TV scene she calls the photographs "full-on porn."  They are not pornographic, although calling them that enhances the sense of injury or injustice done to her.   But she knows what porn is.  Her career as a professional celebrity was launched by a sex tape made with her then-boyfriend and singer Ray J.  Before then, she was merely a sidekick for Paris Hilton.  Since then, Kim is closing in on Paris in earning power ($6 million/year vs. $8.5 million/year), and by some measurements she has surpassed Paris in appeal for product endorsements and aspiration (people who want to be like her).

Since her sex-tape days, Kim has made herself into a brand that sells a complicated mixture of sexuality and classiness, corporeal beauty and capitalistic brains.

And then this week we learn that -- surprise -- she doesn't regret posing for the W photographs.  She told Us Weekly that now she loves her nude photographs.  In the dramatic arc of these photographs she occupies several positions: first, she is a daring, sexual beauty; then, she is a good girl crying tears of embarrassment and injustice; finally, she is still a good girl but also a mature woman, one who can distinguish dirty pictures from art and who is happy to have participated in the latter.

In announcing her initial unhappiness with the W photographs, she said she thought key points of her body would be covered with artwork.  And they were -- on the cover.  The only thing covering them in the other shots was a layer of silver paint.  Photographer Mark Seliger made an interesting choice in that color.  It seems gold would have been more appropriate -- echoing both the James Bond film Goldfinger (whose movie poster and opening credits featured a woman covered in gold) and the legend of King Midas, who could turn anything he touched into gold.  With the exception of the ill-fated Kardashian Kard, Kim seems to be a Queen Midas: any product she endorses sees its sales multiply.  Having about five million followers on Twitter can do that.

Coming Soon
Part Two: Barbara Kruger's art covers Kim Kardashian's private parts, but what is it saying?

Part Three: Is "docu-soap" a better name for reality TV shows?  How about "improvisational drama"?