You only have to watch the intro to Sky’s new three-part docuseries House of Kardashian to get a sense of one of its major talking points. “The sex tape was a means to an end, it was to create a controversy,” says Joe Francis, founder of the Girls Gone Wild empire and close friend of the Kardashian-Jenner clan to this day.
Of course, you immediately know what he’s referring to: the intimate footage of Kim Kardashian and her then boyfriend Ray J, which was filmed in 2003, found its way online in 2007, and helped to put the family name firmly on the map. Since then, the question “Was it leaked or was it released?” has been asked so often, you’d think it was one of the major unsolved mysteries of the universe, in line with the Big Bang.
More than that, it has been used as a stick with which to beat Kardashian – now 42, a billionaire businesswoman and mother of four – for the past 16 years. She has been judged, sneered at and called every gendered insult under the sun. And while you might think it hasn’t done her any harm where fame and fortune are concerned, the impact on her mental health has been considered far less often.
We live in a world that has started to wake up to the misogynistic cruelty of the past, the decades in which women were objectified, sexualised, slut-shamed. We now understand that Britney Spears was having a breakdown, and Amy Winehouse’s addictions were not simply a question of her being a “mess”. We’re currently going through a process of questioning how we ever found Russell Brand funny. Yet we don’t seem to be willing to cut Kardashian any slack. Why? Because her story hasn’t ended in tragedy? Because she refused to hide away and instead continued to live her life in front of the cameras? Because she has made money from her appearance?
Perhaps it’s because, as the documentary states, the family is famous for “selling their lives as a modern American fairytale”. That includes crimes such as developing the idea for Keeping Up With the Kardashians just weeks after the sex tape emerged, when their name was at its most potent. In the immediate aftermath, Kim and a tearful Kris Jenner were interviewed by Oprah. “Why would anyone put that humiliation on their family?” Kardashian responded, when asked about rumours she had approved the tape’s release.
Only last year, when it was (falsely) rumoured that some unreleased footage might exist, Kim was filmed for The Kardashians in tears on the phone to ex-husband Ye, crying: “I have four f*cking kids, I can’t go through this again.” Kris took an on-screen lie detector test to deny the accusation that it was she who had brokered the deliberate release of the tape. Cue more media speculation, as well as Ray J piping up to claim that the family had been lying all these years.
You could argue that they put it all out there and kept it all out there, too. But a different way to look at it could be that they have spent all this time trying to reclaim the narrative. “For 20 years, this has been held over my head,” Kardashian said last year. “I’m just human.” In 2016, she wrote an essay criticising those who had “slut shamed” her. “I lived through the embarrassment and fear,” she explained, “I shouldn’t have to constantly be on the defence.”
Needless to say, House of Kardashian doesn’t quite succeed in its quest for the truth about the tape. On this subject, it offers little more than vox pops from a series of Hollywood men, the majority of whom have made money from commoditising women’s bodies, enjoying the sound of their own voices and contradicting one another.
According to Joe Francis, it was “leaked by them together” – meaning Kim and Ray J – but “it’s just ludicrous” to suggest Jenner played a part. According to celebrity agent David Weintraub, who represented Paris Hilton in the Noughties, once the couple had decided to make the tape, “Kim told Ray that they must allow Kris to negotiate the deal.” Then he adds, with a flourish, “The actual truth is starting to come out, finally.”
Is it? None of the family actually appear in the docuseries, with the exception of Caitlyn Jenner – who, one has to assume, does so with their blessing. Much has already been made of a clip in which she says of stepdaughter Kim, “She calculated from the beginning; how do I become famous?” – which is evidence of precisely nothing, given that the majority of people who become famous only do so because they were calculating about it.
So here’s an idea. In the absence of any clarity – which, frankly, Kim doesn’t owe us anyway – how about we err on the side of caution? On the side of the woman? We have other evidence of how emotionally damaging the fallout from a sex tape’s release can be. In her Netflix documentary earlier this year, Pamela Anderson explained how having hers stolen and leaked in 1995 destroyed her personal life and career, and how she still feels violated to this day. In her recent memoir, Hilton called the publication of her 2004 sex tape by ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon a “horror show”.
Maybe the tape was released without Kim’s consent. Maybe it wasn’t. Does it really matter either way? If she leaked it, she did so within the context of the deeply patriarchal culture that defined the early Noughties, and she has spent decades being judged for it, even as her star has continued to rise – her celebrity fuelled by the fact that many people have thoroughly enjoyed dishing out said judgement. As Rachel Sterling, Kardashian’s friend on the LA circuit and one of the few female voices in the docuseries, says sarcastically of that time: “Thank God it ran on misogyny – or I wouldn’t have paid my bills.”
