Is Paris Yearning? (Part 3)
A 21st century Uzbek.
In Part 1 I laid out my two aims with this series— 1) resume the debate between Anderson and Berman about the definition of modernity and in so doing 2) move their speculation in the 1980s around what “a genuine socialist culture” in the 21st century would look like, into the present. In Part 2 I began that project by reviewing Berman’s work on Haussmann’s transformation of Paris and how the physical changes of the city enabled and framed a very different kind of person: a modern, urban bourgeoises who could craft a new life out of consumptive habits, voluntary associations, and chosen professions. -db
Paris Hilton
Often credited with inventing the modern influencer and the star of the hit Reality TV show The Simple Life, she has made millions by as they say “being famous for being famous.” However, in the 2020 YouTube-produced documentary This is Paris we see something all-together different. The ditz we thought we knew is revealed to be a mask, a character, of her own design. As her mother Kathy Hilton puts it, the “little Disney child shield”1 hid a brilliant, tortured capitalist. Paris also divulges for the first time that her parents sent her to the Provo Canyon School, a boarding school for troubled teens where she was emotionally and physically abused. She is our contemporary Usbek: adored and revered by those around her, but when it comes to love she fears “I have become numb to it.”
One gets the sense through the documentary that if we asked Paris Hilton if everyone should adopt the attention-getting strategies she pioneered she might say no. Paris is as much a Usbek as she is a Dr. Frankenstein: horrified at the creation she has made that dominates her life. Twice in the documentary she is asked by different people if she is happy to which she always answers “sometimes” in a defensive tone that elides an insecurity about her entire career. She laments having travelled all around and “seen nothing” except the monotony of clubs and hotels. In a particularly dour scene we see her reflection in the sliver of a mirror “I haven’t gotten to experience real life.” she narrates. Her head is leaning on something just out of frame and she is smiling. She looks comfortable like a normal person does. She continues: “Like having a family, and being, like, in love. I want to change.” It is at this point that the angle of the camera changes ever so slightly and we see that she is leaning her head against the shoulder of her boyfriend, Aleks, who she’ll break up with by the end of the documentary. “Anything that tries to control me” she says of her ex that was introduced to the audience as the he-might-be-the-one boyfriend 20 minutes ago, “has no room in my life.”
Paris Hilton implicitly realizes the paradox of the desire for recognition: in order to feel whole, to “experience real life” requires you find an equal who can freely judge you. Not only does she not want to give anyone that sort of control, she doesn’t seem to be able to find anyone to fit the bill. There are only three bad options:
First are her fans who she regards as authentically concerned for her wellbeing, but something is missing. These “Little Hiltons” as she calls them are just that: smaller people who feel privileged to be defined by their relationship to her. They cannot be peers, though one could argue that they have freely chosen to be a Paris Hilton fan instead of, say, a Kardashian fan. In this way, they are capable of authenticating Paris’s life choices. But that free choice says more about the fans’ own identity than of Paris’ relationship to them. They consume Paris Hilton alongside other brands and hashtags that constitute one kind of story to tell about themselves.
In a telling scene Paris lands at the Seoul airport and is greeted by hundreds of admirers held behind rope. Among the sea of fans she immediately recognizes two and asks for them to be brought over. They hug and the Little Hiltons look like they are having a religious experience. One is silently beaming while the other sobs and says how much she loves her. They part and later, in the van from the airport, Paris says to the camera, “My two fans are so cute. They flew 30 hours to get here. So sweet.” She admiringly stares into her phone looking at the Instagram video she took with them. “I feel less alone when my Little Hiltons are there.”
We cannot know what is in Paris’ mind and the true nature of her emotional connection to her Little Hiltons but it is clear that there is a mutual, if grossly unbalanced form or recognition. But herein lies the rub— meeting Paris at the rope line of the Seoul airport is not a peer relationship. They are nonetheless part of an exclusive world where Paris can let her guard down: “I don’t know many genuine people besides, like, my fans.” These fans, by being so dedicated and exuberant in her presence, do seem to give Paris the sense that all of this has been worth it. Off camera the producers asks “But can they take care of you? Is that enough?” With puffy eyes on the verge of crying she simply says, “no.” As Usbek, everything smells of obedience and duty.
Her second option, her family, are the only people who knew her before she was famous and, therefore, have a degree of authentic connection no one else can achieve. If Paris suddenly became a nobody and never had a paparazzi picture taken of her again, they would likely still have some kind of relationship with her. A familial relationship can feel authentic because they have the complete picture. Kathy (her mother) and Nicky (her sister) Hilton both describe the young Paris as a tomboy and someone that would be most comfortable watching Netflix with her dog in pajamas: a description that runs so counter to Paris’s public image that they must have access to hidden truths no one else can see. But they have also betrayed her deeply in the past by sending her to an abusive boarding school and thus cannot be fully trusted. The documentary portrays them as concerned, but ultimately feckless people who cannot comprehend her life. She is a star among old money dilettantes. They interact with the press as little as humanly possible for someone in their station.
And finally, are the boyfriends that become either controlling psychopaths (they are revealing who they truly are and are therefore a particularly unpleasant kind of authentic) or neutered simps that cannot possibly be her peer and thus fail to register as an authentic person. They seem to have fallen in love (if we can even call it that) with Paris the person but cannot reconcile with the third person in the relationship: Paris the brand.
Indeed, at the very end of the documentary the producer asks, “can you and the brand have a divorce now?” It is dark and Paris is leaned back against a balcony railing, her hair is blowing in the wind yet staying tangle-free because she is a biology-defying creature. “No, it would be an expensive divorce.” She replies, as if she is talking about a legal divorce from a real person, the prerequisite for which is something she can’t even bare to think about. The off-screen producer is skeptical, even a bit credulous: “You can’t do the brand forever. You can’t— you’re going to age out.” Paris just smiles, like she’s talking to a eunuch that doesn’t know any better: “No, I’ll just be like this forever.”
The irony here is that by making This is Paris she has very effectively changed the brand we knew. It is, in fact, this last line that we leave her on that tells us that things must change. The contents of the documentary are themselves difficult to authenticate. We do not know how much of her breakups and rope line greetings with Little Hiltons are totally staged for the purpose of showing us a more “authentic” behind the scenes Paris. The documentary gives the viewer the sense that if they sufficiently dedicated themselves to caring about her feelings, they could climb the ranks of her fan club where at the top is genuine friendship with a celebrity. But here again, we must think about not just Paris the person or the brand but the documentary itself as part of these two things. Is this a cry for help or a rebooting of her brand? How are we supposed to regard the narrator of a story who says that she won’t stop until she is worth a billion dollars? Is she telling us the truth or is she showing us a story she knows will sell? The likely answer, which only she has, is that these are the same thing. Our shared reality is one partially crafted by Paris and the story —not matter how truthful— is existentially2 authentic.
Paris the survivor of childhood abuse, is a much different media figure than Paris the jet-setting celebrity, no doubt. But the possibility of uniting the two —a tortured, sad, and lonely girl can also be a millionaire boss bitch— is an idea with liberatory potential. It makes us feel that our own tribulations do not preclude us from success. This is also why we crave a porous pastiche of authenticity: the real emotional energy is released when we can create a synthesis of otherwise competing ideas.
Paris Hilton as a 21st century Uzbek let’s us consider a few things: first, is “main character syndrome” an expression of vanity and self-centeredness or is it the hegemonic mode of identity formation? One learned and enacted through screens and the media personalities we meet there. Certainly it can be both vanity and existential resolution of the self, but if so, what are the consequences of this mode for political formations? Put another way, will our 21st century socialist culture embrace this modern figure or will it need to overcome it?
Second, what are we to make of this dour, introspective Paris Hilton? Is this just one of several dark, realist turns in media— This is Paris is to A Simple Life as The Dark Knight is to Adam West’s Batman (1966)? Or can we deduce that Paris, knowing full well that she cannot, in fact, “be this way forever” plumbed the depths of the American psyche and realized that seeing vulnerability behind the curtain is really what we all desperately want out of celebrities? Maybe! It certainly is a tempting read of the moment. But what I get from This is Paris is actually a tale of self discipline in spite of vulnerability. This is someone that has a singular vision and actualizes it without external recognition of self. And perhaps Paris the Brand (which is a team of professionals, not just her) have identified something in the American collective unconscious that is worth paying attention to: a new modernist’s playbook for the 21st century. One that turns actualization and validation inward and, in so doing, creates a subject capable of lending solidarity to another?
This is a weird course to take, I know. How is it that a documentary of a capitalist could help us see the way towards a socialist culture? My hypothesis is that such a culture will at least, in part, be made up of a Berman-esque modernism. The indefatigable freedom-seeking nature of humans will be an ingredient. And we can get a taste of that ingredient in our present media. But it will also take the work of building something genuinely new as well. That will be the subject of the fourth and final part of this series.
This and every quote, unless otherwise stated, will come from Dean, A. (Writer) Dean, A. (Director). (2020, September 14). This Is Paris [Documentary]. The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC).
Existential authenticity is a concept I use a lot in my book. It refers to the experience of feeling like one’s true self, though that feeling of true self can be informed (or manipulated, if you will) by media-driven expectations. Originally from: Wang, N. (1999). Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(2), 349–370.