Please consider... Khloe Kardashian's artistic relevance
Please Consider #1
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Troll
This weekend, as our cheeto-in-chief was rushed to the hospital in a truly wild October Surprise, we were all left to ask ourselves, “Where’s Khloe?!”
Skinny Legend!
Okay, maybe some of you were considering electoral precedent and other things that won’t matter next week when Mr. 45, the greatest performance artist of the era, pulls a Kim Jong Un and reappears in perfect health to stunt on the haters and losers. The rest of us are in awe of the number two greatest performance artist of our generation, Ms. Koko Kardashian (Alex Jones is #3). Move over, Marina Abramovic! Yeet yeet, Yoko Ono!
Let’s rewind.
There have been no shortage of shocking events this year, the cursed 2020, but one image is indelible in my mind. I can’t remember when I first scrolled past the post, but I can’t remember life before it. I’m changed; mesmerized by the glossy bosom, acute-angled jaw, and brilliant teeth of the subject. Months and a few historical disasters later, I close my eyes, and there she is, with her piercing, yet vacant stare, glittering like a salmon. Incredible portraits of women tend to have this effect on the audience. Is this how Renaissance folk felt about Mona Lisa, with her infuriating smirk?
Strangers With Koko
Some may inaccurately describe the post as a picture or photograph. So wrong. It’s a sculpture, molded from a soft, earthly raw material into a shiny, hard object. All portraiture is, in this way, sculptural, and the skilled portraitist tends to illuminate a person into a concept. But, while we will never see Mona Lisa the woman for comparison, we know the post’s source material quite precisely.
Calabasas Diptych
I’m not here to shame and criticize the use of the liquefy filter and its impact on young fans - there are hundreds of Instagram accounts dedicated to that certain mode of cultural analysis. Nor am I interested in exploring her probable body dysmorphia (it’s called “being a woman”) nor why she seems set on being a clone of her sisters. Rather, please consider that Khloe’s manipulation and distortion of herself is her Cindy Sherman-esque stab at performance art.
Beyond the skilled visual doctoring (too crisp for Facetune, must be Photoshop) is the performance of denial, which is not just a river in Egypt, but a Kardashian special. It’s always yeah right, as if, and lol from the K’s. But the “clapbacks” are not always outright. Khloe has mastered a certain infuriating emotional distance. Take her response to the most recent influx of criticism:
*Laughs in Jordyn Woods*
You may think, “This is just classic trolling. She’s obviously intentionally working up her followers in order to piss them off and get media coverage.” But, trolling is fingerpainting compared to the work of Khloe-vaggio. Trolls go for the unsuspecting victim, the quick kill, the FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU. And, trolls are often aligned with the audience, intentionally making themselves ridiculous in the process in order to further humiliate the victim (i.e. Borat and Ken M).
In contrast, Khloe and the Kardashian/Jenners at large have created an alternate reality for us to grapple with in order to question our own beliefs. Khloe offers her surreal self-portraits as an effigy of the pop culture industrial complex. Like unto a Trump piñata, the public is free to unleash its disgust at the false images. We scream into the void of her comments, while only a chosen few get “lol the shade” from Koko in response. Each incident is covered in Byzantine detail by the Daily Mail and the other news regurgitators. This cycle is a treatise on the media machine, and that we are powerless against the manufactured truth. Is this not what Abramovic did when she allowed her audience to realize their own capability of violence and, in effect, the violence of the state?
Perhaps my reading of the situation is too intellectual. Whatever. The most simple explanation for this Instagram effort is, of course, that it upholds the Kardashian brand of attainable wealth, beauty, and social power for the purpose of selling us knockoffs, cheaply-made underwear and diet products. But, that seems incredibly short-sighted for the brilliant mind of PMK.
Please consider that this may be practice for a loftier goal - political power. A product of a transformative decade, the breathless neutral to positive coverage of the K’s is a shocking contrast to the outright bullying of the recently-redeemed Paris Hilton (article coming soon). In today’s click economy, journalism and news are historically neutered at the mercy of pop culture influence, which means celebrities are now primed to become our socio-political leaders rather than disadvantaged. If Khloe were a politician rather than an entertainer (a possibility we shant ignore), the constant cycle of manipulation and denial wouldn’t be any different from agitprop or other soft control.
I’m now reminded of the big, orange, virus-infected elephant in the room! Considering his fantastic physique, I’m sure he’ll be just fine. But, if not, he has a worthy successor. She’s tan, blonde, American, and turned 35 last year. Koko 2020.
