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Keeping Up With The Kardashian Family Analysis

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Everyone in the world in the world seems to know who the Kardashians are, wherever you look they seem to appear, on billboards, magazines, in salons, on the internet, pictures of them are plastered everywhere. The Kardashian family is popular culture. In this essay I will be discussing consumerism, the role of technology in consumer culture and materialism in accordance to the show Keeping Up With The Kardashians and the Kardashian family, and explaining it through conflict theory.

Conflict theory dictates ideas coined by Karl Marx (1818-1833) who has divided the social groups into two classes, the bougeousie and the proliteriate. He states that because of the inequality in the power balance and the bourgeousie having a capitalist hold over the proletariates, they abuse their power over the proletariates. (Marx, 1970) In this case, The Kardashians are the bourgeoisie, the rich and the wealthy …show more content…

The show engages in hyperconsumption as a spectacle, showcasing the family members flying in their own private jets just because they felt like going to get macarons in Paris. This further amplifies the social structure between themselves and the working class. For Kim Kardashian’s wedding, which was also aired on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the wedding cost approximately $30 million. (International Business Times, 2014) Kim’s wedding venue was elegant, her gown cost half a million dollars, and thus the viewers of the show are seeing something unattainable and it’s for spectatorship. The unattaintability of these luxurious settings are what draws viewers, however, this also shows the inequality between the working class and the bourgeousie as after watching the shower, viewers will go back to their normal lives of working jobs and not living multi millionare lifestyles, while these viewers are also the reason Kim Kardashian could have such an extravangant

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