Dekonstructing the Kardashians
A New Media Manifesto

Quotes

“A rigorous yet lively exploration of the way we consume media today, Dekonstructing the Kardashians is Ways of Seeing for the Instagram Age.”—Maris Kreizman, author of Slaughterhouse 90210 and I Want to Burn This Place Down

“Corey’s ambition is undeniable . . . and her meta-analysis . . . genuinely persuasive.”­—The New York Times

“Like the Medicis, had that family patronized only themselves—like the Carnegies, had they manufactured not steel but empty air—the Kardashians have ascended, in their case by proving that nothingness, in a culture that defers to images, can be the stuff of empires. They are also, as . . . MJ Corey argues . . . perfect metonyms for American culture. . . . Corey’s book . . . reads less as a biography of one clan than as a study of the culture that elevated it. This makes Dekonstructing the Kardashians particularly compelling: To deconstruct the family, to treat them as a text to be read, as canon to be accepted, is to understand the media moment. . . . Dizzying in its scope . . . the book can read as a brief history of modern, and postmodern, thought.”—The Atlantic

“Corey is at her best when parsing the ways in which the Kardashians resonate with their vast audience.”—The New Yorker

“[Corey’s] union of pop culture and media studies makes for a vibrant read. . . . Her perspective is refreshing. . . . By investigating the rise of the Calabasas-based family, [she] is searching for insights about where we are as a society and how media has seeped into every aspect of our lives. . . . An incredibly ambitious book [and] an important reflection on the digital world we live in today and how we got here." —The Chicago Review of Books

“Why, some wonder, would a perfectly sane psychotherapist be so intrigued by the Kardashian family? The answer is simple: because it is possible to argue, as Corey persuasively does, that they are physical manifestations of America’s psyche; flesh-and-blood representatives of a post-internet mindset that prizes aesthetics over meaning.”—Bookforum

“A cool, post-modern look at the American media juggernaut that is the Kardashians and how they mirror society’s obsessions and foibles. Thoroughly entertaining, this book is for those who relish the intersection of theoretical ideas and pop culture, while seeking a way to make sense of the maelstrom surrounding one of the world’s most famous families.”—Hyperallergic

“[Corey] argues that the family functions as a psychoanalytic mirror for society. Using postmodern theorists like Baudrillard, Boorstin, and McLuhan, she asks: Why are they like this? Why are we like this? And what does our enmeshment say about media and meaning in the Internet age?”—Interview

“From the old Hollywood studio system to TikTok, media has become increasingly disjointed and self-referential, and Corey charts the rise of the Kardashian reality TV empire to explore exactly how and why that’s happened.”—W Magazine

“Fascinating.”—Electric Literature

“An exhaustively researched, extremely entertaining, and surprisingly profound study of a decadent American dynasty and the spectacle they've produced—which we participate in whether we love them or love to hate them. This is by far the best book I've ever read on celebrity in the twenty-first century.”—Leigh Stein, author of Self Care

“A special work of scholarship that goes far beyond its stated—and divisive—topic. Both Kardashian fans and critics alike, however, will find genuine gold (not to mention plenty of diamonds) here: MJ Corey helps us to understand how and why the Kardashian family was able to parlay humble third-tier reality TV stardom into an empire that colonized our feeds, news, minds, and conversations over the last two decades. Did they know it had to do with Hegel, dialectics, semiotics, and the underpinnings of the history of cinema? Probably not, but now we do, and boy do we have some smart thoughts to drop at our next dinner party.”—Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia and When Women Invented Television

“Any hack can hate on the Kardashians, but it takes a true genius to use America's first family as an entry point for a thoroughly researched romp through the last century of media criticism. You don't need to know anything about Kim and the Krew, or even be a fan, to follow MJ Corey's argument about how they are the truest reflection of our country at this moment or the incredible impact they've had on television, commerce, social media, and the world at large.”—Brian Moylan, New York Times bestselling author of The Housewives: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives

“Taking on one of America's most self-documented and sensationalized families is no simple feat. But, M.J. Corey's Dekonstructing the Kardashians enters this pop culture fray with rigorous analysis, clever close readings, and the type of deft social commentary that the Kardashian brand often eludes. To make sense of their rise, their constant reinventions, and the role that race, gender, and media spectacle play in both their production of self and the public reception of them is to hold a mirror to 21st-century American identity—this book is a crucial looking glass.”—Salamishah Tillet, Pulitzer Prize-winning contributing critic-at-large for The New York Times

“It is hard to get your bearings in a world where ‘reality’ is just a kind of television show and many of the people in our (para)social circles are entirely imaginary. Lucky for us, MJ Corey is an adept guide through the hall of mirrors that is influencer culture, screen addiction, and the shapeshifting nature of contemporary celebrity. Dekonstructing the Kardashians is not just a brilliant analysis of one famous family and their physical and virtual empire, it’s a guide for navigating the distortions and misrepresentations of what comes out of our devices. Corey reveals how much we go to the Internet to tell us how to live, and she helps us make sense of that impulse. Clever and funny, she writes with the venom of a bee sting and the impact of a frying pan to the back of the head.”—Jessa Crispin, author of What Is Wrong with Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything

“A daring and radical interpretation of the Calabasas family that assesses Kim and her sisters not merely as a mirror to our society or a symptom of cultural rot but as the distilled essence of American spectacle, the spray-tanned spirit of the age. Dekonstructing the Kardashians is a rollicking trip through a century of mass media that seamlessly moves from California McMansion to ivory tower and back. The saga of a family self-made in every possible sense of the phrase, it’s an immersive treatise on the kontradictions of fame, how a family with so few professed fans has so many followers, and how a woman can be both a cultural underdog and social hegemon. MJ Corey has written a must-read to understand not only our moment but what made it—and the Kardashians—inevitable.”—Walt Hickey, author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything

“A critical tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly

“Much needed in our current media landscape. . . . Will delight the biggest KUWTK fans and provide the uninitiated with an ultimate guide to one of America’s most famous families.”­—Booklist

“Paired with a personal fascination with the Kardashian family’s collective talent for narrative mastery, a postmodern sense of reality, and catchy episodic arcs, Corey cleverly and effectively fuses celebrity scrutiny and deft analysis with the famous family’s personalities and creates a whirlwind of themes, abstract ideas, and some very solid truths about their roles in modern society and their impact on feminism. . . . Corey digs deeper into the meaning and the message of the “pixel-perfect” family’s popularity, intelligently assessing how their tabloid-worthy, sensational fireworks keep the fires of celebrity culture and viewers’ addiction to reality television consistently stoked.”—Kirkus