The Kardashians, Live! Fabricating Liveness in the Sex-Tape-Derived Reality Series

Abstract

This article explores the fabrication of liveness, understood as a category of affective urgency and narrative motivation, in two reality series derived from a sex tape scandal: Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Kardashians. The reality programs narratively incorporate Kim’s live TV appearances to compensate for the sex tape intertext’s incomplete liveness. Consequently, the Kardashian series suggest that live TV might imbue other media genres, like reality TV and sex tapes, with the liveness those genres only partially replicate. At the same time, the Kardashian series indicate a deficiency in live TV’s intertextual influence. The two series necessitate artificial liveness, produced through esthetic techniques, and simulated liveness, manufactured from imitations of live TV, to bolster the liveness of Kim’s live TV appearances. The Kardashians’s intertext, Saturday Night Live, clarifies this complication in live TV’s intertextual impact by parodying live TV’s decline as the dominant medium for liveness.