As the new season of “Kardashians” arrives – their sweet sixteenth! – GGN Publisher Shaun Proulx talks all about the Kardashian kulture phenomenon with UK psychologist Dr. Beth Bell, who specializes in the role of media, social media and technology in the lives of young people and wrote, “How did the Kardashian Jenner family become so successful? A psychologist explains“.
Proulx is also joined by entertainment and political journalist, Seamus Kirst, author of a memoir about substance abuse called “Shitfaced“, with his first children’s book coming out in June of 2020. He has written about the influence of the Kardashians for Forbes magazine and interviewed one of the family members before.
Say what you want, the Kardashians are the most well known and talked about family around the world. Proulx asked Kirst and Bell how they would describe the Kardashians to someone who had never heard of them (presumably comatose these last many years).
Seamus Kirst describes the show as a portrait of an American / Hollywood success story; a family with no shame whose members are “so out there” for fame and have capitalized on the most extreme version of the American Dream.
Beth Bell called the family K the the epitome of the American Dream. She adds that it’s hard to imagine a world where we don’t know the Kardashians. They embody much of our cultural aspirations, namely appearance, wealth, being self-made, family, and so on.
During the interview, Proulx and his guests cover a number of topics to explain why the Kardashians are the phenomenon that they still are today, including,
- The role of social media and how well the family has used it to their advantage to let people into their world;
- The aspiration and inspiration the family provides to their viewers;
- Are role models like the Kardashians actually helpful to young people;
- How the family plays into and profits from insecurities around fashion, beauty, and body image, and;
- The “positives” of their lives as an escapist form of entertainment.
And that’s only what Proulx and his guests talk about in the first half of the show! If you’re a Kardashians die-hard fan, you don’t want to miss this episode of The Shaun Proulx Show Sirius XM Canada 167:
