
When All We Have Are Antiheroes: What the Kardashian-Swift Feud Says About Us
Late in August, as the day came to a close, Taylor Swift released her song ‘Look What You Made Me Do,’ providing the latest installment in an endless feud with the Kardashian-Wests.
Anyone who’s been online in the last year, or some could argue the last eight years, has followed the story to some degree. There was an interrupted speech, a very public exoneration, an offensive lyric, a phone call leaked in the dead of night, a row of wax mannequins in bed together, and now, a snake poised to attack. It’s been a strange era of pop culture.
This story, the one we follow with rapt attention and gleeful animosity, is unlike anything before it. What makes this celebrity feud more than just tabloid fodder is the unique position that its participants hold: none of them are likable.
A cursory Google search will bring up no shortage of criticism for Kim, Kanye, and Taylor. The Kardashians are known for appropriating Black culture and styles, for stealing hairdos and fashion trends with no credit given to their inventors. Kanye has been writing blatantly misogynistic music for years, and was, in what some would call his worst offense, photographed with Donald Trump in New York earlier this year. Taylor Swift, beloved by the alt-right, was caught blatantly lying on Kanye, causing whatever sympathy we harbored for her to grind to a halt.
So if we’re not rooting for any of them to win, why do we keep coming back to watch? Because we want them all to lose. That phenomenon makes this trio the perfect study for what it means to be a celebrity in 2017. We live in the age of the “problematic fav,” the celebrities we know have questionable morals or hold offensive political stances, but we continue to support anyway. With the advent of Twitter, we can at any time conjure that one shaky statement a person made in early 2008, even if they’ve since matured. More than creating a culture that’s often accused of being too politically correct, it has created a culture of disillusionment. We as fans, viewers, and consumers no longer believe in the untouchable perfection of celebrity. Everyone is a person, everyone has faults, and everyone is a candidate for public shaming, whether or not they have a blue check next to their Twitter handle.
Watching a battle with the hope that all participants are defeated is a strange and bloodthirsty practice. We love so much to see people killed that we’ll cheer from the bleachers, even if we also hate the person killing them. This begins a cycle of verbal abuse and temporary victors that we perpetuate online every day. Someone needs to end Katy, so we support Taylor. Someone needs to end Taylor, so we support Kim. Someone needs to end Kim, so we support Chyna. Kardashian proved too strong to be taken out by one hit, so we scan the crowds hoping a volunteer will take her place. And to what end? Is this not just another way we’ve sacrificed our compassion to the instant gratification of the internet?
“Kim is the worst,” we say to our friends over coffee. “She’s so rich, and she doesn’t donate any money to charity. If I was that rich, I’d give all of it away.” Would we, though? Do we make any effort to redistribute our wealth now, no matter how small? “Kanye is trash,” we nod. “He doesn’t respect women and he’s working with Donald Trump.” Do we uplift and protect the women in our lives? Do we make sure to divest from harmful systems that benefit us? “Taylor is so annoying,” we moan. “She’s not even a real feminist. She just said that to sell albums.” Are you a “real” feminist? Do you feel that you’ve strayed so far from capitalism that you can make your political statements in a vacuum?
The rush that comes from intellectual and moral superiority is a specific and dangerous type of addicting. The easiest way to feel it is by criticizing celebrities, because they can’t talk back. They can’t stand up for themselves, because they’re just characters; flawed and disappointing punching bags on which we project our insecurities.
Every day we become more comfortable in these tendencies. A combination of anonymity and desensitization has seemingly absolved us of any responsibility, both for our actions and our words. So maybe the only way to preserve our humanity in this wide and frightening coliseum is to stop watching, stop clicking, stop voting.
But before I’ve even finished this essay, a new music video has dropped. Swift sits in a bathtub filled with diamonds. A snake curls around the foot of her throne. And I just can’t look away.
