← The Stacks
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- [00:00]
Tracey Thomas
As you all know, the Stacks just celebrated its birthday last month and I cannot thank you all enough for supporting this independent podcast for the last eight years. We truly could not do it without you. My plan is to continue to bring you many more years of great reads, author interviews, behind the scenes looks in the book world and pop culture gossip. But I can only do that with your support. So giving us a listen every week goes a long way. And if you want to go that extra mile, consider consider supporting the Stacks on Patreon and Substack. I will say May is also the month that kicks off summer around here. I believe in the longest possible summer. That's Memorial Day to September 22nd for those who are wondering and summer ushers in the era of the Summer Reading Guide. My non fiction reading guide is coming in May for all of you who are paid subscribers on Patreon or Substack. So that's just a perk to keep in mind in addition to everything else we've got going on like book club meetups, our Discord conversation, bonus episodes, my weekly show and tell over on Substack. Making this podcast takes a village, as they say. And you're part of our village when you support through Patreon and Substack so that me and my amazing team can continue doing what we do best, which is bringing this podcast to you every single week. So if you or your friends are looking to meet other book lovers, support an independent podcast. Come hang out with me at patreon.com the stacks on Patreon and subscribe to my newsletter at Tracy thomas.substack.com I would love to have you.
- [01:40]
M.J. Cole Corey
I think that's one of the most compelling things about the Kardashians. The fact that it's been, as Khloe once put it, blood in, blood out to be a bunch of women trying to make something happen. Working together and with business too. Business partnerships fall apart really easily. Yeah, it's spectacle in and of itself. I don't know how they do it, but Courtney plays a really important role because being this like reluctant Kardashian. But the performativity of her reluctance is really good because even haters of the Kardashian family can identify with a Kardashian.
- [02:16]
Tracey Thomas
Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host Tracey Thomas, and today we are joined by writer, psychotherapist, podcast host and creator of the Kardashian Colloquium, M.J. cole Corey. She's here to discuss her debut Book Deconstructing the Kardashians, A New Media Manifesto. In this book, MJ uses the rise of the Kardashians to analyze the evolution of media and celebrity culture in the Internet age. Today, MJ and I talk about why it is the Kardashians have kept us captivated for all of these years, what their fame and our obsession with it says about us, and how the O.J. simpson trial has impacted the ability of the Kardashians to soar to new heights. Our book club pick for May is Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu. We will be discussing this book with Chanda Prescott Weinstein on Wednesday, May 27. Everything we talk about on each episode of the Stacks is linked in our show Notes if you like this podcast. If you want more bookish content and community, consider joining the Stacks Pack on Patreon and subscribing to my newsletter unstacked on Substack. Each place offers a slew of different perks where you can find community conversation. Join our virtual book club, get bonus episodes, see all of my bookish and pop culture hot takes. Plus, you get to know that your support makes it possible for me and the Stacks team to make this podcast every single week. To join, go to patreon.com the stacks and subscribe to my newsletter at Tracy Thomas substack.com All right, now it is time for my conversation with MJ Corey. All right everybody, I am so excited. Today we are gonna do a little pop culture in the stacks. I am joined by MJ Corey. She is known for all sorts of things. Maybe you know her from the Internet from her videos. Maybe you're just nowhere because you care about books and you saw her brand new book Deconstructing the Kardashians which is out now. Either way we're doing it. We're going all in on Kim K and co co with a K obviously. Welcome to the Sax MJ Corey.
- [04:21]
M.J. Cole Corey
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to get into it.
- [04:24]
Tracey Thomas
I'm so excited. First and foremost, did you ever consider changing your last name to Corey with a K so it could just like really be on brand?
- [04:34]
M.J. Cole Corey
We'll put it this way, my real last name in real life does start with a K. So that's the irony
- [04:40]
Tracey Thomas
is your pen name because you have like a whole other professional career that you do that is not caring about
- [04:47]
M.J. Cole Corey
the Kardashians which 100 yes. I'm also a psychotherapist by trade. I got into this project of the Kardashians and postmodern theory as a kind of fun outlet while I was studying to become a psychotherapist, so.
- [05:00]
Tracey Thomas
Got it.
- [05:01]
M.J. Cole Corey
I care. Wear these two hats. And it's really useful because then my patients can't find my pop culture life online.
- [05:07]
Tracey Thomas
And your online enemies can't, like, sink your practice on Yelp.
- [05:11]
M.J. Cole Corey
A hundred percent. 100%.
- [05:14]
Tracey Thomas
Okay, for people who have not read the book yet, can you give us, like, a 30 second pitch? What is deconstructing the Kardashians?
- [05:20]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. So my core argument is that Kim Kardashian is the perfect emblem of the moment that we live in right now, which is a postmodern moment of social media and incredibly fractured media landscape. And she's made it her business to reflect the structures of media as it is now. So my belief is that in a time when it's harder and harder to be remembered, Kim and her family are doing everything they can do to ensure that they're remembered. And my book is kind of built to say that she's the icon of our moment.
- [05:51]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah. How did you. Can you give people who maybe aren't familiar with you sort of a backstory? How did you come to the Kardashians? It's one thing to be like, oh, I watch the Kardashians and, like, talk or whatever with your friends on a group chat. And it's a totally different thing to be like, I'm gonna analyze them and sort of contextualize them publicly for an audience. So how did you becoming, like the Kardashian person happen?
- [06:16]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah, it happened really organically. I was very late to keeping up with the family, actually. Of course, I'd been inundated with their images and their stories in the media like everyone else as soon as they hit the scene in 2007. But I didn't start actively keeping up until 2018. A friend had the TV show on. I was one of those people that didn't really like reality tv. I felt like it was sort of junk food for the brain kind of thing. And I just was so struck by how the show made me feel. Like, really, this project started with a weird feeling. Like, this episode. It was the Bora Bora episode where Kim is being a diva all over the resort and her brother Rob is not having it. And it was this hyper produced, perfectly narrativized episode as we experience of Keeping up with the Kardashians often. But then in this moment where Rob tells her, mom raised you better than that. Dad raised you better than that, Kim looks genuinely embarrassed and it was this collision of something super staged, super produced and formulaic, and then something very real. And it provoked what really felt like uncanny valley in me. And uncanny valley is a sensation that scientists have coined for when humans feel like a robot looks too familiar and too human. And so I called my sister, who was a media studies major at the time, and I said, this show, really, it's. It struck me like, what is this feeling? And she said, you need to start reading Jean Baudrillard and French Theory. And that launched a larger study of media theory expansively. And it was just a fun outlet. Like I said, I was studying to become a therapist at the time, and it was really nice to get into, like, an analysis of something totally outside of what I was doing. And the more inspired I was by the work, I started to document my self study, and then people were inspired by it and it kind of built on itself.
- [08:05]
Tracey Thomas
That's so interesting.
- [08:06]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [08:06]
Tracey Thomas
Did you then go back to the beginning and watch the whole show from the beginning or how, like, it's one thing to be like, oh, I saw this one moment, and it sparked something in me. And then it's another thing to be like, I'm gonna talk about, like, so at what point your sister suggests, like, okay, go read this theory. You go read the theory. When do you then decide to go back and, like, take this whole family through this, like, theoretical analysis?
- [08:31]
M.J. Cole Corey
That's a great question. I'm trying to remember now what I did, because the truth is, and this sometimes bothers the faction of my readership, that is, that are fans of the Kardashians. I haven't seen everything. I have to. I'm just going to admit to it. I did go back. I watched season one and early seasons. There's a few seasons in the later seasons that I just have fully not seen. But because for me, the gist of the show and the gist of what they do is enough to make the theory makes sense to me. And I really appreciate the interplay that started to form between the Kardashians and the postmodernists, because the Kardashians really made the postmodernists easier for me to understand. And then the postmodernists made the Kardashians and their impact so much easier for me to understand. So this relationship was really gratifying and it didn't require me to keep up with everything the Kardashians did. So, yeah, I don't really remember the sequence of how I did it, but at the time I was making memes that were very cut and dry. Like, there was a trend back then of like a very simple kind of like postable meme image from the show and then like adapting whatever the subtitle from that moment in the show was, to quote. And so I was kind of like jumping on that bandwagon a bit. And then I found from audience response, like, they wanted more. They wanted more explanation, and I just went with it. Yep.
- [09:49]
Tracey Thomas
And for people who haven't read the book and who are like me, I am a. I'm. I am a pop culture person. I'm not like a die hard. Like, I'm not like a crazy, crazy pop culture person. But I also, like, think it's valuable and important. I watched the Kardashians basically every time I would go on vacation and you'd watch, like, the vacation television. They always, like, had E or whatever. So, like, I distinctly remember the stripper pole episode, like, watching that on vacation, but then, like, not watching for years. However, I have sort of kept up with the family through social media, through events like, what are they wearing to the Met Gala, the gossip, the boyfriends, But I don't watch the show. So if you're listening and you're like, you know, I'm familiar with a Kardashian, but I'm not like a die hard Kardashian person or a hater or a lover. You don't have to be for the book, nor do you have to be for this conversation. Like, you can sort of, if you are familiar that there's like a bunch of them and then there's like, totally the dad who, you know, was OJ Related. Like, if you kind of have the gist of the thing, you can go with it. Which I think is helpful because I sometimes think, like, when a book is about a topic, you feel like, oh, I have to really know or care. And you don't have to care about them to care about sort of the points that you're making.
- [11:03]
M.J. Cole Corey
Oh, my gosh, I love hearing that. Thank you for saying that. That's what. That's what I was hoping to do. That was my goal for the book, that it would kind of have a good equilibrium of both to bring in, because it was a challenge to figure out. All right, my task here is to tell a story of American media history, to explain how we got to this moment of the Kardashians. And I also want to explain the philosophies that help us understand history of media and the Kardashians and then even the history of those Philosophies, and then, of course, the Kardashians as this lens to understand it all. And so there was a careful balance that I found I had to strike throughout. And it was really satisfying to kind of figure out how to articulate these things. But there's a lot of density to every single angle. Yeah, that was definitely.
- [11:46]
Tracey Thomas
I was surprised by the density in the book, to be honest with you. Like, you see the COVID Yes. And like.
- [11:51]
M.J. Cole Corey
Like it.
- [11:51]
Tracey Thomas
It's much more theory. It's much more like context, history, especially, like, in that first half than I. And. And the way that I would describe how it's broken down is like, the first half is a lot of history, context, theory, and then the second half is, like, you kind of walk us through the Kardashians and say, like, remember that thing we talked about before?
- [12:08]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [12:08]
Tracey Thomas
You can see that in the stripper pole moment. And that's tied to Marilyn Monroe or whatever.
- [12:13]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [12:14]
Tracey Thomas
So for people who are sort of, like, trying to figure out how to situate themselves in the book, that's. That's how I would describe it as. As a reader, how were you thinking about audience? Because I'm sure there are people who are coming to this book who are. Who know every bit of Kardashian trivia knowledge moment. They're like, this happened in 2018. This happened in 2000. Like, this happened before there was ever a show. Like, this happened last week. So how are you thinking about that?
- [12:40]
M.J. Cole Corey
That's been a thing for me, really, from the start. Like, it's interesting, kind of who, like, locks into the work, my work. There's Kardashian fans, There's Kardashian haters. There's people that are into the philosophy thing. There's people that are really into the pop culture thing. Like, it's really cool to see the way people are responding to it. And I don't know. In that sense, there's, like, almost like a meta thing with my work of being someone that's promoted writing through the Internet and has accumulated a community using these forms. Like, sometimes it can be divisive. Sometimes people are looking for something in my work that they're not finding or. And that is when I've left out a Kardashian moment that maybe they know about that I've overlooked because it was a season I didn't see, but I felt like another example was good enough. But no, with audience, it's still a surprise to me every day. And that's the cool thing about having a relationship with your Audience from the Internet to kind of find out what the responses are. Um, it's a good question, but it's, it's, it evolves every day. Honestly, the more the work gets out there.
- [13:43]
Tracey Thomas
Do your patients know that you've written this book?
- [13:47]
M.J. Cole Corey
I hope not. I, I, I.
- [13:49]
Tracey Thomas
You really keep this separate?
- [13:51]
M.J. Cole Corey
Oh, yes, yes. I'm a really boundary therapist. I'm a psychoanalytically trained therapist, which is like the classic, like, blank slate. I'm more dynamic. Like, I am interactive, but I really keep it separate.
- [14:01]
Tracey Thomas
But have you ever had a client be like, hey, mj, your real name. Like, hey, you were viral. And like, I saw it. Like, what do you do?
- [14:11]
M.J. Cole Corey
I know. I, I should really prepare myself for that possibility. I have wondered before, like, there was a little era on the Tick tock page where the videos seem to be going everywhere. Like, it was just a viral moment. For the Kardashians, it was Kim and Kanye breaking up. Those were, those videos were getting so many views, and the odds just seemed like if I had a client that was at all engaged with pop culture, it would probably be popping up on their feed and no one said anything. I've had a lot of the same patients because I do psychoanalytically informed work. It's usually longer term work, since I was a young student therapist. So I think that they're so used to me that they don't feel the need to Google me, you know, because a lot of people do Google their therapist right away, you know, and it's hard. I think it's. If you, you look hard enough, you might be able to find my real name and my stuff. But, um, being a therapist has been an interesting vantage point for this work. Like I always say, I don't psychoanalyze the Kardashians. People think I do as a therapist sometimes, but if anything, I'm psychoanalyzing the audience, the public, all of us. Yeah, yeah.
- [15:10]
Tracey Thomas
I want to come back to this. I want to talk a little bit about them, because I do have a question about this later. Yes, but before we do that, I want to talk about the Kardashians. I want to set this all up perfect. We get Kim K. She's Paris Hilton's friend. She's sort of like the, I mean, not the ugly one, but she's sort of like, not the hot one.
- [15:27]
M.J. Cole Corey
Right, right.
- [15:28]
Tracey Thomas
She has. Eventually she has the sex tape. That sort of really is like, what puts her on the map. They. They make the show. It's Kim and her sisters. Why is it Kim. What is it about Kim that makes us care at all in the first place? There's a lot of people with sex tapes, especially people who aren't that famous.
- [15:48]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes, yes. So that's a great way to kind of start it. The Paris Hilton chapter is a lot about Kim playing this underdog figure next to Paris. And my research kind of showed me at the time. I mean, I remember, too, I was like a preteen during this era. Paris Hilton represented this kind of like Bush era beauty ideal. And next to her, Kim was quite a contrast. And Kim had this more exotic beauty that was kind of resonant in a post 911 landscape. And with the Obama presidency coming in, and they were this multiracial family. The Kardashians were an interesting arrival to the pop culture landscape. The sex tape, also, I kind of talk about in the O.J. simpson chapter evoked, and I quote, a psychoanalyst actually named Manuel Harpin in that chapter about how there's kind of an. It evokes the memories of controversy around race in America. And so Kim had a sex tape that was with a black man. And there was a kind of like, multiracial anxiety in the. In the country, I think, around this and the fact that there was questioning around what were the terms of this leakage, like, did they want this? So between the race factor and kind of the money factor, the capitalistic drive of it, I think there was something unique about the sex tape. And that is something I came across in my larger work in my research of American icons, because the book is structured to kind of approximate Kim to every different American icon she's referenced or dressed up as. I started to see a common theme in the icons themselves. American icons often evoke anxieties around sex, death, race, or money. Actually, all of them. Like, if. Yeah, Elvis, Marilyn, any. Anyone in the book that's referenced, you can find that. So the sex tape kind of contains those things. And that's why I think Kim. That was her genesis myth, at least to set her on this path.
- [17:42]
Tracey Thomas
And why is Kim the one in the family? I know that, like, there's allegedly. The younger girls are, like, more famous or whatever to the kids.
- [17:51]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [17:51]
Tracey Thomas
But I feel like if you say Kardashian to a boomer.
- [17:55]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [17:55]
Tracey Thomas
They're going to know Kim. They're not going to know Kendall or Kylie. I honestly still cannot keep. Kendall and Kylie can be separate. I'm like, wait, which one is with Tim and which one was with that? Like, I like, totally me. They're all the same Totally. So, like, what is it about Kim that makes her the one? Because, like, so much of your book is about Kim. Like, Kim is the focal point of the family. Why her.
- [18:18]
M.J. Cole Corey
Kim holds back. The rest of the family members are able to kind of play these caricatured archetypal roles. Kim is this, like, has this very incredibly self restrained, restrained neutrality and ambiguity. And so she. Yes, Chloe's into fitness and she's changed her face a million times, and we know that with Chloe. But, like, Kim is this kind of like, middle child. The. She's focused a lot on her silhouette. Her branding is incredibly controlled. Like, if the argument is that the Kardashians are cultural fractals, of all these different things all around, ever flattening, like historical culture, Kim is that within the family. She just. She goes between the family members. She has made a brand about her grit and her hard work. The most. Like, Courtney's performance is that she doesn't want to be part of the system. Chloe's is that she is the glue of the family and goes between everybody in a more of an emotional, relational way. Kim is this ambiguous figure. She just. She endorses this idea of American dream grit, Protestant work ethic.
- [19:24]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah.
- [19:24]
M.J. Cole Corey
And that's really the engine of the family. I would say it's all about Kim in terms of, like, her use of her body as a medium too. Like, she's. She's the one that was branding herself. I was talking to someone the other day about how I was talking to a writer who worked on the Kardashian apps, and she was saying that the Kardashian apps, as early as the 2010s were about these foundational archetypes, like Courtney's the organic girly, Kim's the fashion girly. And Kim has used fashion also as storytelling to kind of treat her body as this canvas for different visual stories through her evolution. So that's also been a big thing. Her message gets across further and faster.
- [19:57]
Tracey Thomas
I think what's interesting to me about Kim and as I was reading the book and, like, thinking about her is it's almost like she doesn't have anything.
- [20:06]
M.J. Cole Corey
Right.
- [20:06]
Tracey Thomas
Almost like she's an actor, like, in the way that you want an actor to be, sort of, like, have no personality. Like, what is Leonardo DiCaprio like? Handsome and talented, but, like, we don't know a lot about him.
- [20:18]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [20:18]
Tracey Thomas
And I feel like she, in a lot of ways, is always, like, wearing a costume. Like, it's really hard to get a sense of, like, who she is.
- [20:25]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [20:26]
Tracey Thomas
But I just wonder, like, obviously she's a famous person. Obviously, she's a celebrity. One of my favorite pop culture analysts, I, Christiana Mbakue Medina, who's been on this show, she talks about, like, the celebrity, the star, and the famous person.
- [20:38]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [20:39]
Tracey Thomas
And I wonder, like, is Kim Kardashian actually a star? Like, does she have that quality about her where you're like, I can't take my eyes off of you, or is it more her grit and her hard work and she won't let us turn our heads away because she commands. She's demanding of attention as opposed to commanding attention?
- [20:59]
M.J. Cole Corey
No, totally. One thing I write about in the Marilyn Monroe chapter is there's more of, like, an enjoyment of the iconizing of Marilyn Monroe because she was this tragic figure. She lost everything. She died young. Where Kim's consent is, like, part of the problem, her desire for fame, her lust for fame, there's kind of like a. There's. And there's something that's kind of unappealing about that for people. And people felt, you know, through like, over a decade that the. What they knew about the Kardashians was not consensual like, that. They were just flooded by media with the images and stories. So it's true. Kim works hard at the image production and at upholding this feedback loop of attention with the public, but she does get our attention. She does. She does demand that we react, knowing that we will react. They have such an understanding, I think, the Kardashians, of the human, like these human drives that pull a mirror to what we crave and what we engage with, and they throw that stuff at us. And I will say, like, I was in the courtroom when Kim testified at her Paris robbery trial. I was in Paris to talk on a documentary about the meaning of that whole event in her life and its impact. And when she and Kris Jenner entered the room, there was like a hush that came over the entire room. The real life presence was pretty intense. To see them beyond the screens, it was kind of. They're very upright. Their faces are very, very, you know, formulaic. And it was quite a presence. But it wasn't glamor. It was power. I kept telling my partner that I was there with, or it was more power than glamour.
- [22:40]
Tracey Thomas
I have an IRL Kim K story as well.
- [22:43]
M.J. Cole Corey
Cool.
- [22:43]
Tracey Thomas
In 2011, maybe early 2011 or late 2010, the one time in my life I ever sat courtside at a basketball game was when I lived in New York. I had courtside tickets to warriors verse well, they weren't the Nets then, were they? They were in New Jersey, though.
- [23:01]
M.J. Cole Corey
Okay.
- [23:01]
Tracey Thomas
They weren't in Brooklyn.
- [23:02]
M.J. Cole Corey
Cool.
- [23:02]
Tracey Thomas
And I'm in the, like, you know, courtside suite, and I, like, look over, and I'm like, oh, my God, that woman is so beautiful. She looks like Kim Kardashian. And I was like, but literally, Kim Kardashian would never be at a New Jersey Netscape. Like, there's no reason for her to be here. And then I'm like. But she's really, like, that's a really beautiful woman. Like, I like. And I never. I usually don't stare. Like, I'm usually not. And I was like, wow.
- [23:33]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [23:33]
Tracey Thomas
And then the next day or like, a week later, the news broke about her and Kris Humphries, and it was her, and she had been there, but it was before people really knew, or, like, it was early days, and, like, media was different then. It was like, you still went through TMZ or whatever. And that's the only time I've ever seen her. She was much shorter than I thought. But I remember genuinely being like, oh, she's really beautiful.
- [23:58]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love that your IRL encounter is so uncanny. You know, like, the fact that it was, like, it looked like her, but it's not her. But then it was her. Like, those layers.
- [24:07]
Tracey Thomas
Like, why would she be at a. Like, because in Brooklyn, I get why people are there, but it was like, you had to go to New Jersey, and, like, she lives in. Like, it was just like, why would she. And this was like, the Nets were so bad. Then it was just like, this makes no sense.
- [24:20]
M.J. Cole Corey
I love that.
- [24:21]
Tracey Thomas
I love. She was as pretty as they say that she is. So, you know, there's some celebrities who I feel like are more beautiful in person, and there's some people who, like, the camera loves. And I think, in my experience, she was more beautiful in person.
- [24:34]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [24:35]
Tracey Thomas
Okay. I want to ask another question, though. So you say she's like, she's the driving force, but there's a lot of conversation about Chris, and. And Chris is really the brains behind the whole operation. Is that the sense that you have given the information? Obviously, you're not, like, in the rooms with them.
- [24:51]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [24:51]
Tracey Thomas
But is Chris really the driving force? Is she really the stage mom? Is she the momager?
- [24:57]
M.J. Cole Corey
So, yes. You know, the answer to that question is a more. It's a. I can give you a better answer to that question than I can even give about Kim, because I think the short answer on the Kim question is really. It is kind of like Kim can be everything and nothing. This blank slate of that's what makes her powerful. I kind of wish I'd said that with Chris. Chris is a very willing, like, tribute to the spectacle of the family. Chris is down to dress up. She's down to get a tramp stamp of her daughter's names on her lower back. She is willing to be in comedy sketches with comedians that satirize her as the actual devil. Like, Chris participates in the myth making. And I think she has exhibited this savvy with the media even before the machinery of the Kardashian was really starting to make itself like. Or as early as, and I write about this in the OJ chapter, the 90s. She showed up at the OJ trial with Caitlyn, pregnant with Kendall, and made sure she got, you know, a moment on the mic for Dateline just outside the courthouse saying, we lost Nicole, but we also lost OJ And I just think that's such a, you know, prophetic, Kardashian esque media approach to say both things. We lost our friend, but we also lost him. It's just that ambiguity, that dialectic. It's so Kardashian. And so she had that media savvy so early on when there wasn't really much at stake besides maybe having a good moment on the news. And so I just, I don't know. Kris Jenner. People will sometimes ask me to, like, who intrigues you the most in a parasocial way. And if I had to. Had to say it would be Kris Jenner. I can say that much.
- [26:36]
Tracey Thomas
I, I'm also fascinated by her. I also just think, like, their connection to the O.J. simpson trial. I know that, like, for a lot of people, especially younger people, that might like, not mean anything to them, but to me, it's like, so important in my mind.
- [26:53]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [26:54]
Tracey Thomas
Like, it's. It's like something that I, I don't know, you can never say, but, like, I don't know that without it, they become the Kardashians. Like, I don't know, without being tied to that. Because that was such a thing.
- [27:09]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. It was like the trial of the century. And it's so essential to media history. It was the beginning of the 24 hour news cycle. It was. I found I came across a theorist. I wish I could remember his name, but I write in the book that there was such. It was not only is this, like, sensational thing of this, like, really appealing American family, this, like, really cool sports star and his Beautiful wife. Like this. This like slasher thing that come. That changes everything. But. And it was so divisive for the country. But there was also a lot with like consumerism. Like there was a theorist that was saying between the glove and the luxury cars. And it was a way for Americans to talk about shopping without shopping. And I thought that was really interesting because I think sometimes more than sometimes, the Kardashians give us similar fodder, you know.
- [27:58]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the. One of the chapters is about the Spice Girls.
- [28:02]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [28:02]
Tracey Thomas
My faves. And we talk so much about like groups that break up and you know, there's this new Michael Jackson movie. The Jacksons broke up. Like it's not uncommon for families to break up.
- [28:16]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yep.
- [28:17]
Tracey Thomas
Why haven't they. Why hasn't Courtney finally been like, I'm sick of you. I'm sick of this shit. Like, why? What is it about them that makes them stick together?
- [28:27]
M.J. Cole Corey
I think that's one of the most compelling things about the Kardashians. The fact that it's been, as Chloe once put it, blood in, blood out, and this. And matriarchy, sisterhoods. It's to. To be a bunch of women trying to make something happen, working together and sustain it this long. With business too. Business partnerships fall apart really easily. Yeah. It's. It's a spectacle in and of itself. I don't know how they do it besides to say that I think that's. Yeah, that's what strikes people so much. But Courtney plays a really important role because being this like reluctant Kardashian, which apparently to some extent is really true for her. Like when I came across really early research about the family signing onto their contract, apparently people just even riffing like said Courtney didn't want to do it. So it's kind of. So there's that back to that the combination of like a real and a staged thing with this family. Courtney probably does have a real reluctance, but the performativity of her reluctance is really good because even haters of the Kardashian family can identify with a Kardashian. It keeps it at the self contained circuit where they can still be packaged in that way. And there's something for everyone, even the haters. Like the I hate Elvis buttons that were apparently really big sellers back in Elvis. This is heyday, you know.
- [29:41]
Tracey Thomas
I want to talk about the haters and then we're gonna take a break.
- [29:44]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [29:45]
Tracey Thomas
Why are we, as a broad cultural group of humans.
- [29:50]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [29:50]
Tracey Thomas
Collectively so obsessed with hating them? What is it about them that Makes them so hateable. Because even people who are fans kind of like to hate them totally. It's not like Beyonce fans, where it's like, you don't say about the queen or like, Taylor fans, like, people who watch every Kardashian episode. I've never met someone who's been like, I love them. And they're the best.
- [30:13]
M.J. Cole Corey
Totally, totally.
- [30:14]
Tracey Thomas
They.
- [30:15]
M.J. Cole Corey
And they know that that's the role they play, the culture. They know it. And it's like they're. They're dolls in that way, where there's a lot that can be projected upon them. And that's, again, Kim's powers being this, like, willing mannequin, this neutral figure. But what I found was, okay, so first of all, I think with celebrity in general, that it operates as this. This canvas or stage where we can work out our own stuff. So, like, there's this concept that Aristotle kind of. The concept of catharsis is like, Aristotle talked about, where people needed the Greek dramas and tragedies to release their emotions, whether it's pity or sympathy or anger or lust or whatever. And the Kardashians, I think, are the ultimate figures of catharsis culturally. And when they hit the scene, they were really like. Like I said earlier, American icons tend to evoke a lot of feelings around sex, death, race, or money. When the Kardashians hit the scene, they were doing a lot around sexuality and sex work. So the first season of Keeping up with the Kardashians is a lot of, like, the sex tape, doing a partnership with Joe Francis for a girl's gone wild, like, bikini line, the Playboy shoot, and the stripper pole in the bedroom. Then over time, when cultural appropriation became a much larger topic of conversation. What do you know? They start ramping up the kind of volume on that in their brand. And it was. I encountered a sociologist that I really love named Moussa Garbie, who talked about how the Trump era evoked even greater, more frequent conversations around cultural appropriation. So headlines that had identity cues in them, including, garnered greater engagement. And so it's interesting that the Kardashians were ramping up their imagery around that time. And then in the 2000s, when class rage and class consciousness was really at a high, then they start really talking about Marie Antoinette again. And Kim is showing us crazy house tours of her skims office, and there's like, a tanning bed in there or something, or maybe it was a red light thing, but either way, it's. They. They do mirror what's feeling really urgent and pertinent in culture at that time. Anxiety wise, strong emotion wise. And that's why I think they developed this strange parasocial thing with the audience where we're pulled in, they're demanding attention. Even if they can't, you know, they don't. They're not commanding it.
- [32:38]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, okay. I want to say on this, but let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back.
- [32:41]
M.J. Cole Corey
Perfect. Yeah.
- [32:43]
Tracey Thomas
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- [36:45]
M.J. Cole Corey
That's a great question. I would say it's a feedback loop. This is like my theory and the Kardashians. After the research I've done, when it started, I think that there was, they were living authentically to some extent within the context like of the, you know, Beverly Hills girls, this matriarchal family doing whatever they were doing and then they saw what worked. And I think that what makes them also so successful is really being clear with themselves about what is working strategy wise. What is engaging people and then doing more of it. And over time, there's been this interplay between the real and the staged and what they can turn into infrastructure and kind of industrialized, have put out to the public as product, as story, as images, and they've only gone on to scale and scale and scale and scale. So now they're at this point where, like, they have such a. Like a well, running apparatus. I think that they have kind of become it. And so that's. That's. We're essential to that. We're essential to that apparatus, like our engagement. And now I think data is part of the question. Like when they were viral and central to Instagram era, I think we were all figuring out how these tools worked and surveillance capitalism kind of came into these social media tools that there's just. There's an opportunity with social media to watch us as we watch it. And so the Kardashians were first centralized to virality on this on Instagram because we were clicking, we were watching, we were commenting. And then Kim became too expensive to ignore from Vogue and the legacy media publications. But now they're so big and this has all gotten so institutionalized that I think the Kardashians can see us with data. They see us watch. They're watching us watch them. We can assume. And so there's a theorist that I talk about in the Marie Antoinette. Either the Marie Antoinette chapter or the Barbie chapter or maybe both. And this media theorist, Kevin Munger, writes about how audiences. People talk about audiences being radicalized on YouTube, for example, politically on, you know, extremes on both sides or whatever. But the truth is there's a feedback loop between the audience and the content maker. So the audience's desires are also pushing the content producer to do certain things. So there's a feedback. I think the Kardashians are basically in that feedback loop with us, long story short.
- [39:00]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, well. Cause I. I mean, I think like something that I've seen online about them has to do with their boyfriends.
- [39:06]
M.J. Cole Corey
Right.
- [39:07]
Tracey Thomas
Like when it was Obama era, it was giving interracial. It was giving lots of black men, and then Trump, and all of a sudden we've got all these white boys in the mix.
- [39:16]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [39:17]
Tracey Thomas
And now, you know, Kim's dating a black guy again. Is that response or is that. Is that an indicator that, like, Okay, I can't remember. You know, there's cultural. Like someone says, like, that vampire movies are a recession indicator.
- [39:31]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes, yes.
- [39:32]
Tracey Thomas
Kardashians dating black men. Like, it's going to be a good era for black folks. Or is it her and them just responding to the moment. Obviously, the real option can't be that it's like they like who they like. That's not on the table. But I think I always sort of thought that they were driving the conversation. Yeah, but after reading your book and talking to you, now I'm like, maybe they are just like, they know that if they do these things, it'll garner our attention.
- [40:01]
M.J. Cole Corey
I think they react to us. I mean, I remember when there was a lot of virality, and it's hard to measure such a centralized virality as it was before, I think, with the TikTok algorithm. But there was a really huge tidal wave of conversation about just their responsibility to speaking to their impact on beauty standards. Like, that was a huge, huge, huge conversation for a while on TikTok. And then the think pieces were reporting on that virality. And then what do you know? The Kardashians have Kylie talking about her boob job and her regrets. So they will give us little nuggets that I think speak to viral discourses. As far as the entrance of Lewis Hamilton to the story, I think he makes a ton of sense for Kim in the sense that he is. Well, what Kanye once said, like, he won when she was dating Pete. He was like, I don't think this is real. It's not gonna last. He's not. He's a white guy. She's not gonna fall in love with him. I think Kanye said that. And so Lewis Hamilton seems aligned with what Kim has been interested in in a few different ways. He. He's excellent at what he does. I've learned a lot more about F1 since he's kind of entered the story. And he's global. He's associated with luxury. He has a, like, kind of an American Dream style story. Even though his story is in England. It's, you know, he was working class and made his way up in this incredibly hierarchical old money type of world. Yeah. So that suits where she's at with what she. What kind of story she's trying to tell. He's a Met Gala icon. And so such a crazy thing.
- [41:34]
Tracey Thomas
It's like on your dating list. It's like, is he nice? Is he rich? Is he a Met Gala icon?
- [41:41]
M.J. Cole Corey
It tells us a lot about where she is. And I think, you know, Pete Davidson was really important for her post Kanye to, like, seem youthful, seem fun, be relatable again. And he had this, like, boyish thing that was. It made so much sense for the purposes of that time, whether it was real or staged. Or whatever. But this, especially the way they're kind of drawing it out and breadcrumbing it is reminding me a bit more of how they drew out the arrival of Timothy with Kylie. And that has proven to have some posterity or some staying power. And I just feel like we might. Lewis Hamilton will be here to stay for a while. So, yeah, I don't know what it will indicate about any cultural shifts. Trump is still, you know, in the middle of his term, basically. But I just do have to say this gut feeling that we're going to be seeing Lewis Hamilton more and more. And do you think, do you think,
- [42:31]
Tracey Thomas
like, obviously the way that we're talking about it is very removed. It's not our lives.
- [42:35]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [42:35]
Tracey Thomas
But do you think that they're having sit downs that are like, okay, here's some eligible bachelors, like, Lewis Hamilton's a Met Gala icon. Like, do you think they're really, like, okay, Pete Davidson, he's younger, he's going to make you seem young. Or do you think there is some, like, organic to them?
- [42:53]
M.J. Cole Corey
I, I think it goes back to that, like, interplay that they've gotten very, they've likely, I feel like perhaps they've gotten very comfortable with of. There's a vibe here. This kind of makes sense for these reasons, but I'm, I'm into it or. But it's so the same way Kris Jenner knew what to say at the O.J. trial in front of the courthouse, which was, I think, real for her, but then it was also just really savvy. I think they probably live their lives in ways that kind of like move between instinct and strategy. That said, I find myself really fascinated by what their calendars must look like, because what is true is that they layer stories in, like, major ways. Like, they, they. When Kim was doing her testimony at the Paris robbery trial, inside the courtroom, she was declaring live in real time. I'm here because I want to be a lawyer. Outside the courtroom, the All's Fair trailer had just dropped where she's playing a lawyer on tv. And so that's like intentional layering, you know.
- [43:49]
Tracey Thomas
Right. And so like, the content calendar must be insane. Yes.
- [43:52]
M.J. Cole Corey
No, like, years out. Years out, you know. Right.
- [43:55]
Tracey Thomas
Because like on the show, they sometimes like, oh, I have this idea. Like, I thought about, like, I want to do this thing. But, you know, there's like a staff. Like, it's not just them. Like, there are social media people at different levels. There are marketing. Like, there's a whole team. And like, that is the episode I want to see. I want to see, like, them, like, legitimately, what does it look like when they sit down to plan a year. This is where we are. Q1. This is where we're going to be. Q4. We want to make sure we have at least one romantic storyline. Like, like, who are, like, I. I so desperately want to see that because I, I don't buy the organic ness of it, nor am I interested in that. I think organic is, like, fine for everyone else, but it's like, no, you guys are supposed to be business geniuses. Like, I want to see what the meeting. Who is. Who is on your social media team? How old are they? How long have they been there? Like, I'm so curious about Team Kardashian Jenner core. Like, yes, I know.
- [44:57]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. Like, what the scaffolding is. It's like, it's like, what's. It would be equivalent to, like, in the Truman show when, like, the lights start falling from the, like, set. And, like, the door. He sees the door and he sees there's a backstage to his world. Like, I totally feel you. Yeah. That's where the story is.
- [45:12]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah. And like, so one of the things that you do throughout the book a lot, especially towards the sort of, like, middle to the back.
- [45:17]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [45:18]
Tracey Thomas
Is we. Trump is brought up a lot. He's compared to them a lot. There's obviously, like, you talk about when. When Chloe was on the Apprentice and how he, like, called her a fat cow or whatever. Like, charming surprise.
- [45:30]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [45:31]
Tracey Thomas
And I feel like in some ways with Trump, because of the nature of his job and his current job as the president and also his previous jobs, we've always sort of gotten to see a. Of the scaffolding.
- [45:41]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [45:42]
Tracey Thomas
He's been sort of proud of that part of his work. Like, we, We've. He not only wants us to know who works for him, but he wants us to know them. Like, Pete Hegseth is a pick not only because he's will do whatever Trump says, but because he's a known quantity.
- [45:56]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes.
- [45:57]
Tracey Thomas
And so I'm sort of just interested in, like, where you see what you can draw between Kim. I think it's mostly Kim that you compare to Trump. Not the whole family so much, but Kim and Trump. And, like, is there a reason why they're both where they are right now? She's the icon of our time, according to you. And he is the president of our country for the second time. Like, what is that?
- [46:23]
M.J. Cole Corey
It's so. They're so aligned. I really wish there had been more Time and space to. To explore the Kim Trump parallels. They are really.
- [46:35]
Tracey Thomas
I feel like that's a whole book.
- [46:36]
M.J. Cole Corey
Totally. No, it might be the next book, honestly. There might be a Trump book on its own, to come, to be honest. But, yeah, I, I think some of the key. Some of the things we can talk about are like, their ability to simplify their messaging in incredibly compressed ways that maximize reach and reception. So, like, apparently Trump speeds. It's in the book. It's at a fourth grade level or second grade level or something like that.
- [47:00]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah.
- [47:00]
M.J. Cole Corey
And people kind of like fourth grade
- [47:02]
Tracey Thomas
and other presidents were like, stuff sixth and seventh or something.
- [47:04]
M.J. Cole Corey
Exactly, exactly. And so no matter what it's. And people like to clown on that, but it's actually essential to getting the message out there to as many people as possible. It's about simplifying it and it's about repetition. And the Kardashians also do this. They speak in incredibly media trained ways. They compress their messaging to make sure it gets across. They do the same thing with imagery. Trump and the Kardashians both play with memes and highly memorable images to make iconic moments. And they understand the power of a photo op. So it's like you could call, you know, Kim dripping in diamonds in front of the Paris courthouse. You know, a photo op that could have been iconic at a different time in media. The same way Trump raising his fist with the American flag behind him after the assassination attempt was a real photo op. They have a real sensibility for the outcome, for the headline, how it will be represented in media. And that's just a few things, but their use of repetition and compression is major.
- [48:00]
Tracey Thomas
I feel like also they're sort of. I don't know. You're the genius here. I'm just, I'm just spitballing, but I do feel like there's something in both of them that allows people who will never be them to feel like it's possible to be absolutely like that. There's a real accessibility about both of them.
- [48:16]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yep.
- [48:17]
Tracey Thomas
And that also that, like, that they are the rest of us.
- [48:22]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes, yes.
- [48:23]
Tracey Thomas
Even though, like, they're so rich and they're so from upper echelon communities, like, they were just born on third base in a lot of ways. But people really believe that they're like a true bootstrap narrative. And I think that's really interesting because they, they do allow people to believe in the American dream in a lot of ways.
- [48:41]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes, yes, they do.
- [48:43]
Tracey Thomas
But it's like, not true. Like, they're real. Neither of them are really American dream stories. Like.
- [48:48]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah. At all? No, no, they're total. They're total populists. And I think they do, you know, it's an everyman thing that they try to evoke. And Kim does it by being this blank slate and very proudly performing her function as a mannequin to Kanye at the time of their power coupledom and then to an ongoing series of fashion designers and presumably plastic surgeons. And we know that Kim is constantly under construction. And Trump does this in a much more overt spectacle of a way where he's talking to, you know, like highbrow political people and then he's talking to the WWE fans at the event, you know, where he was. And what was kind of funny is what I uncovered in my research also is that like Trump did, I think it was a record breaking appearance at WWE in the arts, like 2007 or something like that. And then Kim was right the year after him doing a WWE appearance. And I, like, really found that useful because WWE is a great comparison to the Trump brand, the Kardashian brand. It's this, you know, really elaborate storytelling that collapses this line between the real and staged and gets across to audiences and gets them riled up.
- [49:59]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, yeah, Okay. I teased this way earlier, this question I've been saving.
- [50:03]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yeah.
- [50:04]
Tracey Thomas
Combining your two jobs as Kardashian cultural media philosophy expert and psychotherapist, what do you think their impact has been on our mental health as a country, as individuals? Have you noticed a shift in your clientele, in the people in your life? Like, what is, what is the mental health impact of all of this?
- [50:31]
M.J. Cole Corey
I think the same way that I think the Kardashians represent new media and social media. So the same way that I'm situating Kim as the icon of this form of media, I think social media and new media have been extremely stressful for all of us. And so when people resist the Kardashians, they are also resisting and reacting to the direction it feels that things are going. And we're all out here writing and thinking and talking about how dystopian everything feels things. And so my book really looks at how. One of the underlying messages in my book is that media started in one place, which is cinema. These big screens, we're looking up at the objects of our consumption, and they feel distant from us and almost godlike. But it's gotten closer and closer and closer to us and faster and faster and faster. So from Cinema to television, TVs in our living rooms, parasocial figures like JFK looking at us through the screen to us in bed, our phones in our hands, consuming the Kardashians. You know, that hasn't, in my opinion, Like, I will share this. I don't like to share my opinions too often. I like to have restraint with my analyses. But I will say I don't love that. Like, I'm on the side of, like, social media. Media has been really harmful to us. So in that sense, I think my, my goal with the book is to encourage people to. Knowing the history that hopefully I present in a way that's effective enough. Encourage people to consume media more actively rather than passively. And that, that the Kardashians are essential to that. You know, they're, they're, they're massive amounts of media content. So that is my hope. I don't love what the direction it's been going. It's done to us.
- [52:09]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, we're gonna. Now we're gonna talk a little bit more about you and your opinions. Cool. Which is first and foremost, how did, how did you write this book? Where were you? How often? How many hours a day? Snacks or beverages? Music or. No. Did you have rituals? How did you fit it in with your clients and your other work and your social media? Like, how did you actually write this book?
- [52:32]
M.J. Cole Corey
So the book was in my head for a while before I signed the deal. I really felt good, even about the process of figuring out the proposal and the pitch with my agent, going back and forth. Like, I wanted to write like this like, thing that surfed through the philosophy and the history and the family. But when the time came to actually write it, I had writer's block for about a month. Like, it felt. Suddenly it was real. And once I looked at an encyclopedia called American Icons, I'm looking at it right now. It's a three part old out of print edition of American Icons. And it was these just little passages on different icons that constitute American culture or have impacted it. And that really helped me break it down. Like Kim herself has made herself this amalgamation of these images and stories. I'll have that be the through line. And so that made things unlock. But then it became a real tidal wave. So I was writing like 12, 14 hour days. Sometimes I wrote on a treadmill, like a walking desk in my kitchen. I live in New York, so it's tiny, tiny, like treadmill in the kitchen. And I lived on allergy safe protein shakes that my ex found. Like I just lived on those and wrote at my treadmill most of the time or in bed. Actually, for about a year and a half. And I had a year to write it. I extended it for six months. I felt very conscious of the deadline, so I wrote as fast as I could. And that was how I wrote it. It was a harrowing experience. It changed me as a person. I learned so much about media that I felt never the same again. And I'm really grateful. I'm just so grateful I had this opportunity, truly. I sound like a Kardashian, but it's true.
- [54:13]
Tracey Thomas
Do you watch other reality tv?
- [54:16]
M.J. Cole Corey
Not really. I. I do watch Love is Blind sometimes. Like, I watched a few early seasons of it, then I kind of fell off. And then I watched the most recent one, but not. Not so much.
- [54:24]
Tracey Thomas
I feel like that is like fodder for a therapist. Yeah, I feel like you could really be. Do it. Like, I don't feel like you could shut your brain off, because I feel like for most people, it's like, oh, I watch reality tv. Like, shut my brain off. But Love is Blind. Of all the shows I watch is the one where I'm like, I am diagnosing these people and I know nothing totally. I'm, like, diagnosing this city. What is the culture of this place?
- [54:44]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. Holy cow.
- [54:46]
Tracey Thomas
Do you ever watch the Traders?
- [54:47]
M.J. Cole Corey
No, I've never seen that one. Is that.
- [54:49]
Tracey Thomas
It's so good. You need to watch it.
- [54:51]
M.J. Cole Corey
Okay.
- [54:51]
Tracey Thomas
It's great. And you could, like, do, like, a little, but it's also really fun. It's. That's my favorite.
- [54:56]
M.J. Cole Corey
I've heard it's good. No, I've heard it's really good.
- [54:58]
Tracey Thomas
It's really good. And it's a game show, so it's like, there's other. There's, like, a lot. There's a lot at play and, like, about dynamics, like racial dynamics and, like. And, you know, who do we trust and how do we trust them? And what does that look like? And. Well, anyways, it's really good.
- [55:13]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. Yes. I'm curious about it. My. My partner sister loves it. She. She's wanted to theme her bachelorette party around it, actually, so I will check it out. I do Love. Actually, I think this counts as a reality show, kind of. The Netflix is Netflix propaganda for wwe, because they just bought WWE or did some partnership with them. But it's this. This show called Unreal, and it's like, fake behind the scenes on professional wrestling, but it's really just an ad. But it's. It's. It kind of like unlocks my brain a bit like the Kardashians. Do I find it. It's entertaining. I do enjoy watching it.
- [55:43]
Tracey Thomas
Well, I feel like wrestling is it. There's so much in wrestling. I don't watch wrestling because, you know, I have boundaries. What's a word you can never spell correctly on the first try?
- [55:54]
M.J. Cole Corey
Oh, you know what's scaring me? And this is to my point about my concern about how social media is impacting us and just AI and everything that is happening. I've become a worse speller. And I was always good. I was always bound to be a writer. I always like love to read and write. And I was a kid, I was great at spelling. And I'm noticing I'm messing words up.
- [56:16]
Tracey Thomas
So are you messing words up or is it the keyboard change on Apple? Because my have been worse.
- [56:22]
M.J. Cole Corey
Yes. Okay.
- [56:22]
Tracey Thomas
How are you when you type versus if you say it out loud versus on your phone?
- [56:26]
M.J. Cole Corey
True, true, true, true. And I actually am notorious for mispronouncing words because I get my vocabulary through reading, especially with the self study of the postmodern modernism. Like I was calling John Berger. John Berger and Walter Benjamin. Walter Benjamin for such a long time. So in videos. Yeah. So yeah, I'd have to think on the word thing. But I do. I want to be more rigorous lately with that.
- [56:46]
Tracey Thomas
Okay, okay, that's fair. What's not in the book that you wish could have been?
- [56:54]
M.J. Cole Corey
We cut. We cut it down a lot because I wrote like double what it is. But there's a few chapters that I'm really fond of that we put into a pre order campaign as like a little chapbook one is about. It's a little bit like me, waxy and poetic about the role that the backyards play in the family's stories. It's like these like Garden of Eden type spaces where there's kids running around like cherubs. And also they use them as blank canvases for whatever they want their worlds to be. So they put parties up. You know, they install parties of like, now they're in Hawaii, now they're in Cuba. So the backyards chapter was kind of fun. There's a wax figures chapter that we didn't include where I talk about, you know, the history of Madame Tussaud and their relationships with Vox figures. There's one with roller skating, the idea of the roller rink as a medium because the Kardashians kind of hopped in on that trend for a second after the pandemic interest in roller skating. So those, those were darlings I had to cut. But I think more thematically I Do wish there was even more rigorous unpacking of the Trump stuff. Like, I did it. I touched on it. But it's. It's fascinating. And I. I would. That's probably book number two.
- [58:02]
Tracey Thomas
Do you know about this book, Dream Facades?
- [58:04]
M.J. Cole Corey
I do. That writer reached out to me and I can't wait to read his book.
- [58:08]
Tracey Thomas
I haven't read it yet, but when you were talking about the backyards, it made me think Dream Facades is all about, like, reality TV and, like, the architecture and the spaces and what that says about so cool. Us for people. Wait, I should have asked you this before. Have you ever interacted with the Kardashians? Have they ever reached out to you? Have you ever heard from their camp about anything?
- [58:28]
M.J. Cole Corey
Once I posted this years ago, I posted something that was anticipating a collaboration. When Kim was really early on starting to do luxury collabs with Skims. I think it was Skims and Fendi. Someone on their team reached out and asked me to take down a video because it was too soon. It was, like, ruining the, I think, surprise of this. And I don't. Yeah, I should go look that up again and see, like, what the. I. Because I kind of was like, I don't want to get started sued. I'll take it down. But I did tell everyone that they'd asked me to take it down.
- [58:54]
Tracey Thomas
You gotta get your points. Like, I.
- [58:56]
M.J. Cole Corey
Exactly, Exactly. But besides that. No. They've watched my stories before, but I have not heard from them. The closest was that courtroom moment, and it was very fascinating, but interesting. Yeah.
- [59:07]
Tracey Thomas
They know about the book.
- [59:08]
M.J. Cole Corey
They. I think so. I mean, I would have to think so. I'm sure they've got antenna out there.
- [59:12]
Tracey Thomas
Yeah, I think so, too. They must. Yeah. For people who love the book, what are some other books you'd recommend to them that are in conversation with it?
- [59:20]
M.J. Cole Corey
Ooh, Well, I just was made aware of a book by Margo Jefferson called On Michael Jackson, I think, sort of. Yes. And so I have to read that. That's my plan to. I'm going to read it when I'm done with this book rollout. There was another one called Dead Elvis or something by a culture critic named Grill, Marcus or Marcus Grill that was quite, I think, similar. And then there was one about Marilyn Monroe that's important to me to, like, highlight here, actually, because I felt this like, the writer is a. Was a academic in her 30s who actually died young in New York City, and she wrote this amazing postmodern analysis of Marilyn Monroe. American Monroe, the Making of a Body Politic s. Paige Beatty. And so I just have the soft spot for that writer in particular because she had a passion for applying postmodernism to an American icon. She did it so, so well. I quote her a lot in the Maryland chapter, and she's very mysterious to me. I. I tried looking her up. I don't know much about her. And so those are the books that I would. I would suggest, I guess.
- [60:19]
Tracey Thomas
Okay. And then one last question. If you could have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it to be?
- [60:25]
M.J. Cole Corey
Kris Jenner.
- [60:26]
Tracey Thomas
Okay.
- [60:27]
M.J. Cole Corey
I love it. No, no hesitation. I want to know if it resonates and if it's feels true for her.
- [60:32]
Tracey Thomas
I love that so much. All right, everybody, you can get your copy of Deconstructing the Kardashians wherever you. You get your books. I listen to some of the audiobook. It's fantastic. You do the introduction. You have a real narrator. Not. Not that you're not real, but you have a nar professional narrator. Do the rest of the book. And mj, thank you so much for being here.
- [60:50]
M.J. Cole Corey
Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.
- [60:52]
Tracey Thomas
And everyone else, we will see you in the stacks. All right, y', all, thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to MJ Corey for being my guest. And a special thank you to Rose Cronin Jackman and Julia Partro for your assistance in making this episode possible. Our book club pick for May is Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu, which we will discuss with Chanta Prescott Weinstein on Wednesday, May 27. If you love the show, if you want inside access and bonus content, go to patreon.com the stacks join the Stacks Pack and then you can also check out my newsletter at. Tracy Thomas, please take a moment to just look at your phone and double check that you are subscribed to the Stacks, wherever it is that you're listening to my voice right now. And if you listen through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave us a rating and a review for more from the Stacks. You can always follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram, threads, and now YouTube. And you can check out our website atthestacks podcast.com Today's episode, episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian D with production assistance from Sahara Clement. Additional support was provided by Sheree Marquez and our theme music is from Tagiragis. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This message is brought to you by Apple Card Apple Card is a no fee credit card that you can apply for right from the Wallet app on your iPhone, subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their Variable APR in the Wallet app or at Card App. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa, Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at applecard. Com.