KIM KARDASHIAN HAS A KOLD

We open on a cavernous sound stage. It’s a commercial photo shoot of some description. Exactly what or whom the subject of the shoot is remains unclear at first, but the scale of the operation suggests that it’s for a very major person, or a very major brand, or a very major person who is herself a very major brand. Dot, Dot, Dot. Literally foreshadowing, you guys. There are dozens upon dozens of people milling about, each deeply focused on the task at hand. It should be a chaotic scene, but it’s strangely quiet, even serene. There’s an almost balletic quality to everyone’s movements: not a step out of place; not a superfluous word; not a second wasted. Something big is about to happen; it’s the thing they’ve all been preparing for. For days; for weeks; for months; for a lifetime. It’s her. She’s about to arrive. 

Waitwaitwait: who’s about to arrive? You know. You know. You knowww. Her. Her. HER! Like, literally you guys it’s like, so obvious. Like, honestly, I’m like kind of concerned that you like, haven’t already guessed. Like, seriously you guys, you know who it is; you know her; you do…you do…you DO! Oh em effing gee. Honestly? Fine. Fine! No it’s fine! I’ll tell you. I’ll fucking tell you! Calm down. She’s the reason we’re all here, and they’re all there. She’s the sun, the moon, and the stars; her name’s etched on the door of our collective imaginations; hell, her name’s on the marquee of this damn short. She’s inescapable, undeniable, inevitable. She’s HER. She’s Kimberly Noel Kardashian West. Except we don’t know that yet; not quite; not exactly. 

The camera scours the room, weaving and wending through this crush of worker bees, each one efficiently and meticulously contributing their unit of labour to whatever this is. Do we know what they’re doing? Not particularly. Do they know what they’re doing? Not especially. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. All they need to know, all we need to know, all anyone needs to know is that someone extremely hot and extremely famous is selling something extremely covetable, and as such, we all want it, need it, and gotta have it. Whatever it is, we’re talking about it, we’re thinking about it, we’re buying it, we’re even making fucking art about it, evidently. Oh to hell with the coyness: it’s underwear. It’s, err, uh, actually, for legal reasons, let’s just go ahead and say it’s a brand very much like um, that brand that wasn’t mentioned above. Very, very much like it indeed. I really don’t want to get sued; not now; not yet; not before I’ve even begun.

There’s junior assistants who answer to senior assistants, and senior assistants who answer to executive assistants, and executive assistants who answer to chiefs of staff, and chiefs of staff who answer to no one except God and HER. And then there’s the agents, and managers, and lawyers, and money men, and money women, and the whole sordid entourage of assholes-in-training who support them. And of course this being a photo shoot, there are models big, and models small, and models wide, and models tall, and essentially every permutation of shape, size, skin tone, hair type, and gender presentation, all in keeping with the recent and ongoing revelations that people other than thin white women exist in this world. And then there’s the makeup artists, and the wardrobe team, and the hair stylists, and the hair extension stylists, not to mention the half dozen matronly women and one also rather matronly man who seem entirely over-concerned with a thicket of silky wigs of every possible length, style, colour and consistency. And of course there’s the creative team, and the branding team, and the marketing team, and the PR team, and the social team — but that’s just one set! There are, quite naturally—quite necessarily—creative, and branding, and marketing, and PR, and social teams in duplicate, triplicate, and goddamn quadruplicate to manage every facet of Kim’s being, which is to say her brands, each of which come to the table with their own competing agendas, prerogatives, and priorities that never align and always lead to the sort of tedious, petty sniping that is absolutely ripe to be massaged according to the wicked machinations of some sadistic reality TV producer. Oh yeah: there’s also full ass reality TV crew documenting this whole riveting circus for some as-yet-untitled show for some as-yet-unconfirmed streaming platform that has somehow already netted everyone mentioned above a few hundred million dollars. But wait there’s more! It’s a shoot after all, so there’s also naturally the director, and the producer, and the assistant producer, and the cinematographer, and the videographer, and the camera operators, and the camera assistants, and the set designers, and the set decorators, and the gaffer, and the key grips, and the boom operators, and the prop master, and the whole goddamn art department, which is to say nothing of the legions of confused and abused production assistants, or the light dusting of other random people who seemingly have no purpose or role other than to sidestep people who seemingly DO have a purpose and role while making their way to pick at stale bagels at the craft services table. And craft services! Damn it if they’re not all here too with their very own ecosystem of used and abused underlings in tow, plus the three young women who meticulously document every flaccid, mealy crudité for their 175K followers on Instagram. And babe, that’s just the skeleton crew on the, er uh, unspecified celebrity underwear brand side of things! If a tree falls in the forest and VOGUE isn’t there to ask 73 questions about it, did it even happen? That gang’s all here too: a fretting, sweating, tittering mass of underpaid, undernourished girls, gays, and theys who are, if it’s even possible, MORE fucking addled and frenetic than everyone else, because they have not one but TWO omnipotent, omnipresent mistresses to answer to day, night, in their dreams, and in their nightmares: HER-Kim, and HER-Anna. Three, if you count HER-Annie Leibowitz, but Annie’s actually surprisingly chill and literally just in it for the pay check and nothing else, which is oddly refreshing if you actually stop and think about it.

Anyways! We gaze upon this seething, pulsating, whirling mass from the margins for a moment, until finally the camera plunges furlong into the thick of it, and begins picking up on snippets of dialogue: each fragment of conversation bleeding into the next, either as a direct continuation of what was just said, or as a pointed contrast thereof. It’s a sort of verbal pass-the-baton that slowly begins to clue in the audience to what this all is, and more to the point, who it’s all about: a drip-drop revelation that gradually emerges from a frenzied tone poem of competing voices. As we snake through the room from person to person to person, we progress in a very particular order (TBD) from the lowliest assistant being screamed at, all the way up to the terrifying, terrorising woman in a $7000 suit who seems to be in charge of all this—at least inasmuch as anyone can be in charge of whatever this is. And everyone along the way has only one thing on their minds, and one name on their lips: Her. Her. Her. She. She. She. Kim. Kim. Kim.

The woman in the $7000 suit glances at her phone. PING! Fuck. She runs over to a man who’s also in a $7000 suit. Whisper whisper. Fuck fuck. Together they run over to a man who, despite being in a $7 t-shirt, manifestly has orders of magnitude more money, importance, and self-worth. Mutter mutter mutter. Fuck fuck fuck! The $7 t-shirt hops up on a crate and calls the room to silence which miraculously quickly follows. Everyone...everyone... everyone...we’ve just gotten some bad news: Kim’s out today. We’re gonna have to reschedule. $7000 man: You guys, she’s sick. $7000 woman: Literally so sick, you guys. 

With that the crowd begins to disperse. As the room gradually empties, we weave our way back through the thinning crowd, picking up on snippets of conversation amongst the people we were previously introduced to. They’re all still talking about Her. Her. Her. She. She. She. Kim. Kim. Kim. But anticipation has curdled into resignation: it’s not sad, it’s not mad, it’s just...nothing. Without her impending arrival, the air has been let out of the room. It was all for her and it was all for naught.

Finally, we arrive at the edge of the set: a pinky, peachy, beige-y womb-like expanse that’s dotted with massive undulating abstract forms rendered in smooth, matte, pearlescent white plaster. As the last few people dotting the stage scatter to the wings, we hold the shot until there’s only one woman left in the shot. It’s the lowest of the low assistant we began with. She looks left, looks right, then walks to the centre of the set. She positions herself on what should have been Kim’s mark and pulls out her phone. Purses her lips; squints her eyes; finds her light. 

Selfie. Selfie. Selfie.

Fucking fire.

And that’s a wrap.