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AN over-the-top wedding followed by a whipsaw divorce is leading to what can only be called Kardashian backlash, writes Brent Lang.
The family that captivated reality television and built the house of E! is coping with a vertiginous reversal of fortune.
From opinion pieces penned by New York Times columnist Frank Bruni to tweets from Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, everyone is lining up to take pot shots at Kardashian.
Rushdie was the first to take up the mantle, tweeting: ‘1. The marriage of poor kim #kardashian was krushed like a kar in a krashian’ ‘2. her kris kried, not fair! why kan’t I keep my share?’ ‘3. But kardashian fell klean outa fashian’.
The backlash continued with a Saturday Night Live parody that portrayed the Kardashians as airheads.
In the sketch, mum Kris Jenner is played by Kristin Wiig as an attention-seeking, plastic-surgery addict, while soon-to-be ex-husband Kris Humphries was rendered a monosyllabic simpleton.
The public opinion not only threatens the ratings of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but also imperils three E! spin-off series and brand placements for everything from weight loss supplements to perfumes.
There’s a lot of money at stake. Last year the television show built on conspicuous consumption and botoxed family values reportedly netted the Kardashians an estimated $65 million. With a wedding watched by 4.4 million people which reportedly brought in millions to the family, 2011 was shaping up to be an even bigger year for the clan.
However, that might have gone up in the air along with the bouquet.
“People still want to believe that there’s still some sanctity to marriage,” Jessica Wakeman, a writer for TheFrisky.com, told TheWrap. “People can deal with the wedding being over the top, but to do that and get divorced 72 days later, that is hard to swallow in this economy. When people are struggling to pay bills, it doesn’t make average people feel much compassion.”
Public relations experts and media critics have said that the damage to the Kardashian brand might be irreversible, due to widespread speculation that the wedding was a highly profitable sham. “There’s a real danger that people will be angry because they feel that they have been taken for fools,” Glenn Selig, a crisis management expert with the Publicity Agency, said.
“It’s one thing for reality stars to exaggerate something for an episode, it’s another thing to go through with the marriage just to concoct a TV special.”
An E! representative denied that the Kardashian and Humphries nuptials were artificial.
“The Kardashians have authentically lived their lives on camera for a long time, and Kim’s wedding is one of the many real-life events that the family has shared with viewers, from Mason’s birth to coping with their father’s death to Khloe and Lamar’s wedding,” the representative said.
However, it took the family several days to get the divorce story right. Instead of facing the cameras, Kim issued a short statement to E!, her network home, and took off for an endorsement tour in Australia.
