Deep into the K-hole

Don't worry, this is scary for me too. I don't want to be doing this. I'd happily live my life in blessed ignorance. But I was asked to review a reality TV show, and I'm nothing if not a man of my word. Having written recently about the psychological dangers of reality TV, I'm concerned that these ridiculous, vapid excuses for entertainment are going to render me incapable of cogent thought. And yet here I am, ready to cast a critical eye over the newest season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

I've never watched the show before. But somehow, I know who they are. Maybe it's the fact that they're regularly featured in the tabloids and are all over the gossip sites. I know that Kim's currently showing off an engagement ring that makes Kate Middleton's look like a factory second from Ratners. And thanks to Mail Online, I know that Kourtney recently went out for lunch in some wedge shoes. This is some fascinating stuff. The title of the show is misleading - Keeping Up With The Kardashians has me imagining the raven-haired siblings being tracked by a slobbering pack of hunting dogs. Sadly, the reality is much more mundane. The best we can hope for is a peek into the crazy chaos of life on the A-list.

The Kardashians would be the first to admit that their notoriety has little to do with any discernible talent, beyond an alarming capability for self-promotion. They've become one of the most famous families in America thanks to the grasping ambition of monstrous matriarch Kris Jenner. As the head of a family of fame whores, she's less of a mother and more of a madam. She sets their hourly rates and tells them not to kiss on the mouth. Kris was already in talks back in 2007 to turn her family's day-to-day existence into a reality show, when suddenly Kim shot to fame thanks to the fortuitously timed release of a sex tape that showed her suppressing her gag reflex with R&B singer Ray J.

Thankfully, Kris is an optimist, as well as an opportunist, so she decided to make the most of the situation, "All I knew was that I had to make some lemonade out of these lemons fast. Real fast..." A more accurate aphorism might be "When God gives you a facial, make face cream". Anyway, she believes her "...job was trying to take my kids' 15 minutes and turn it into 30." And if you wanted to see the full thirty minutes, you had to pay Vivid Video for the privilege.

Coincidentally, Kim settled for a $5 million payout from the wily distributors, making her the highest paid actress in Hollywood, at least in terms of on-screen minutes. Meanwhile, 'Keeping Up...' was launched and became an instant smash, even notching up a number of spin offs. Along the way, the girls have also found time to open clothing boutiques in New York, Miami and California, written a biography called 'Kardashian Konfidential', and launched a gaudy range of homeware under the heading 'Kardashian Kollection'.

So here we are at the start of Season Six, and this is my first real brush with the Kardashian Klan, even though I've already used the 'K' key so much that my laptop thinks I'm a white supremacist. Seeing the sisters together is a slightly confusing experience. There's no denying that Kim is stunning, like a trampier version of Nicole Scherzinger. But the rest of the girls are a little, well, off. When they all sit around a dinner table for some 'family time', it's reminiscent of the scene in Alien Resurrection when Ripley is confronted with all the aborted experiments at cloning her from a DNA sample. Khloe, for instance, looks like a caricature of Kim, sketched onto a soup ladle.

I'd like to give you a blow-by-blow account of what transpired during the show's frenetic 22 minutes, but I'm utterly bewildered about what just happened. We saw Kim and her new boyfriend belch in each other's faces, Khloe defending the shortness of her dress by saying "But it's not like you can see my asshole", and the sisters arguing over how long it would take them to fill a salad bowl with piss. Between these highbrow moments, the family bickered over how little they see each other, only to spend any time they did get together as a family arguing or checking their Blackberries.

Despite their protests that she's all work and no play, Kris defends herself by saying "I'm working hard right now so that I can set them up for the rest of their lives. My business is their future." Even if 'business' amounts to little more than sitting in a lavishly furnished office watching YouTube, or hiring a woman called Palm to get her daughters' names wrong.

Khloe and Kim are also bickering, because the former hasn't embraced the latter's new boyfriend, complaining "I don't know how I'm supposed to invest emotionally in Kris." You and me both. At one point, Kim freaks out that Khloe still has pictures of Kim's previous boyfriends in her home, asking rhetorically "You think I want to come over and see pictures of my exes?" It's a silly question, when everyone knows she prefers videos.

By the time we get to the big family dinner, there's another three K-words sitting around the dining table. I'm not sure but I think their names are Kickbox, Krispykreme and Klamydia. Even though the show is barely twenty minutes long, I feel utterly exhausted. I don't know what just happened, but I know that I'm stupid for having sat through it. I think I've finally reached critical mass where reality TV is turned. Let's pray that somewhere out there is a King Canute figure, who will simply raise his hand and turn this tsunami of effluence in its tracks, before I start ruining my own salad bowls.

Define 'reality'

After yesterday's rather serious (and lengthy) political post, here's something a little lighter, although no less significant. The world of celebrity has been rocked by the news that last weekend's big A-list wedding may not have been as legitimate as we were led to believe.

Meet Khloe, one of the stars of Keeping Up With the Kardashians - a reality TV show following the adventures of the children of Robert Kardashian. Don't know the name? Well, Robert was one of OJ Simpson's defence attorneys, and his time in the spotlight was sufficient to warrant prolonged media interest in his family (Robert died of cancer in 2003).

The three oldest Kardashian girls (whose names all begin with K, whether they're spelt that way or not) seem to be the stars of the show, and have delighted easily-pleased viewers with such adventures as posing for Playboy, attend acting classes and buying Bentleys. All gripping stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

With Kim the glamourpuss of the family, and Kourtney (this is NOT a typo) devouring the column inches with her 'surprise' pregnancy, Khloe needed to do something to redress the publicity imbalance. Which is why, after just thirty days of dating, Khloe walked down the aisle with her new boyfriend, NBA Los Angeles Lakers star Lamar Odom.

Despite the fact that 250 guests attended the wedding, and the bride wore a Vera Wang dress, some bitter old cynics have suggested that the whole thing was a sham. Tragically, it has been alleged that the marriage is not legally binding, although the happy groom has claimed “Anybody that was there will tell you that it was a beautiful event and it was real.”

Adding to the newlywed's woes, are the reports that the whole affair was scripted and meticulously stage-managed by the show's producers. Reporting the story with the breathless intrigue of a Watergate-style cover-up, the usually reliable Huffington Post declares:
"In the audio... the producers are heard debating a line from the wedding script, specifically when during the festivities Khloe should tell her stepdad Bruce Jenner that she considers him her real dad."
And they said investigative journalism was dead.

Regular viewers of 'reality' TV shows know what's what. They may have a tolerance for trash that other mere mortals find hard to comprehend, but they're not idiots. We all know that 30-day romances and an ever-present camera crew don't make for genuine wedded bliss. So it should hardly come as a shock that these events were staged for the cameras. I think the more depressing insight from all this is that somewhere, there's a roomful of writers, dreaming of Pulitzers and Peabodies, who have to earn a living putting words into Khloe Kardashian's mouth.

As for the viewers, they know that reality TV is no longer a serialised documentary format. It's simply taken the place of the soap operas we used to watch for all our salacious behaviour and vicarious thrills.

After all, we've now reached a point where soap opera actors threaten to quit when asked to portray their characters in an unappealing light. Is it any wonder we look to Khloe, Kourtney and Kim, who have no such qualms?