If you are the kind of person who is thrilled by the idea of reading theory in order to better understand Kim Kardashian, i.e., someone very much like myself, then rejoice: Dekonstructing the Kardashians is for you ... Corey’s resistance to moralizing helps her to make an even-handed, clear-eyed case for the Kardashians as a phenomenon that is interesting rather than 'good.'
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. The book’s subtitle is, aptly, A New Media Manifesto ... Can be dizzying in its scope ... Remarkably, though, the book’s argument justifies its breadth.
Corey is at her best when parsing the ways in which the Kardashians resonate with their vast audience ... Yet Dekonstructing the Kardashians is also a frustratingly frenetic and recursive book, whose agglomeration of details doesn’t always amount to a deeper narrative. It can read like social-media commentary, with disjointed riffing on one subject after another, and familiar critical ideas trotted out repeatedly ... The book seems designed for an online follower of Corey’s, who already knows the details of the Kardashian story and craves exegesis. The lay reader would benefit from a more sustained, linear biography of Kardashianism, but even in the latter half of the book, which proceeds roughly chronologically, the text darts among subjects and eras, often in the span of the same paragraph.
There is, at times, a kind of punishing density ... A layering of theory on top of theory that can feel like graduate school homework. But if you can push through, there is also real insight ... Too often, the book can feel like intellectual over-performance, without the conversational tone or playfulness of the original Kolloquium. One wonders if Corey felt the need to prove something on the page, and in that sense maybe she has succeeded — to insist, to all those detractors, that the Kardashians really are worth taking seriously.
Her union of pop culture and media studies makes for a vibrant read ... Refreshing as it reminds the reader of the part we all play in this dizzying milieu of social media ... An incredibly ambitious book ... Corey’s book continues the momentum of an important reflection on the digital world we live in today and how we got here ... Reminds us that nothing happens in a vacuum.
The author skillfully condenses her years of observation and evaluation as a Kardashian analyst into this obvious labor of love ... 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 ... An exhaustive and entertaining look into the Kardashian media machine.
An avid, painstaking postmodern evaluation of the Kardashian-Jenner family ... While the information overload can at times mimic the inescapability of the family itself, this avalanche of analysis is nevertheless a critical tour de force. Kardashian obsessives will be thrilled.
