The Raven Foundation

Many people are turning against Kim Kardashian and her family since her divorce last month from Kris Humphries.  According to the Washington Post, “More than 100,000 people are no longer interested in ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ and would like E! to stop airing the family’s reality show.”  Those 100,000 people have signed an online petition titled “No More Kardashian.”  Cyndy Snider, the petition organizer, justified the petition by claiming, “We feel these shows are mostly staged and place an emphasis on vanity, greed, promiscuity, vulgarity and over-the-top conspicuous consumption.”

I’m not a fan of Kim, but I’m not going to sign a petition to get her banned from television.  To the extent that I care, I’m disappointed that her marriage only lasted 72 days.  I’m disappointed, but of course I’m not surprised.  I’m not surprised because Kim has been set up.  And we set her up.

Kim is a product of our culture.  And we are partly responsible for her life.

Here’s what I mean.  In the United States someone can star in a reality show called “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”  This is a clear reference to the American phrase, “Keeping Up with the Joneses.”  This idiom is based purely on the anthropological phenomenon of mimetic imitation.  This imitation has two steps.  First, we unconsciously learn what to desire by observing what others desire. These “others” become our models for what to desire.  Second, we unconsciously want to outdo our models.  So, we see that a neighbor or a friend just bought a 42 inch flat screen television.  That stimulates our desire for a television, only we won’t be satisfied with a 42 inch television – we want a 55 inch flat screen.

The mimetic principle of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” reflects American consumerism.  It is an unconscious mentality that seeks to outdo our neighbors and it produces “vanity, greed, promiscuity, vulgarity and over-the-top conspicuous consumption.”  It leads to a disease of desire, where we gain a sense of satisfaction by out-consuming one another.  This mimetic competition of purchasing stuff becomes an addiction.  (Credit card debt, anyone?)  Even worse is that in the end, nobody can keep up with the Joneses.

Not even the Kardashians.

Nobody can keep up with the Joneses because once we have the disease of desire the object no longer matters.  In fact, once we acquire the object, we are instantly dissatisfied with it.  It’s not about the object; it’s about an addiction to desire that no object can satisfy.

And this is how we set up Kim and her family.  They are caught up in a mimetic mechanism that is bigger than they are, and they can’t keep up.  We wanted to see them live without the limits of desire the rest of us have.  (Or should have.)  In that sense they are our models for what our culture thinks is an ideal life.  For example, Kim’s fans love her because she does “krazy” things on massive scales.  Because objects can never satisfy her, she continuously purchases big, expensive things, she takes trips to exotic places, and she held a televised wedding that rivaled the Royal Wedding in viewership and in cost.  Nothing in Kim’s life is based on satisfaction; she is addicted to desire, and if that addiction continues she will never find satisfaction.  So, after acquiring the object of her desire (her husband Kris Humphries) she wasn’t satisfied.  She felt disappointed and let down after her wedding. And so she divorced her husband after 72 days.

And now many of us are turning against her. But what we don’t realize is that we are the ones who set her up.  We set her up to be addicted to desire.  The title “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” meant that we looked to her to mimetically keep up with herself – to never be satisfied with what she had and to outdo herself in each episode.  And we loved her for it.  We wanted her to become addicted to desire.  And we turned against her for doing just that.

Indeed, Kim and her family need to take responsibility for the position in which they find themselves.  I hope they do that.  But signing a petition to kick them off television won’t solve our cultural problem of diseased desire that leads to endless consumption and dissatisfaction.  Even if the petition is effective, more Kardashian-like shows will emerge.  The only way for the Kardashians to be cured of the mimetic disease of desire is the only way for us to be cured of the same disease that infects our whole culture.

About 1600 years ago there was a man named Augustine.  He also had the disease of desire, and he soon realized this was a spiritual disease.  The disease of desire is spiritual because it is fundamentally about idolatry.  Augustine lost perspective as he placed himself above God.  He soon realized he would only find satisfaction when his heart rested in something bigger than himself, bigger than the stuff he could acquire, and bigger than his sexual relationships.  In his autobiography called Confessions, Augustine referred to God when he claimed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  The cure to the disease of desire is to realize that a fulfilled life doesn’t depend on acquiring more stuff in order to keep up with anyone.  Rather, a fulfilled life depends on the right perspective.  A fulfilled life depends on opening ourselves to the God who transforms our desires to competitively “keep up” with our neighbors into a desire to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

It seems to me that Augustine's wisdom from 1600 years ago is as relevant for Kim Kardashian as it is for all of us.

“Why are you fighting?” I asked as I ran into their room.

The Youngest replied, “He not sharing!”

The Oldest exclaimed, “I had it first!”

“Why do you want it?” I asked the Youngest.

“Because he has it!”

Silly, isn’t it?  They just woke up and already were in a fight.  This time it was over the tiny Batman toy shown above.  I’ll be honest with you – I’ve seen a lot of toys in my 32 years, and this is one of the most BORING toys I have ever seen.  I mean, you can’t move his head, arms, or legs.  Batman just stands there.  I don’t get it.  In a room full of Superheroes and Transformers, Legos and Playmobil, what’s the fascination with this Batman figure?  To make the fight even sillier, we have two more Batmans that are exactly the same.  So, I did the rational Dad thing: I gave one of the other Batmans to the Youngest – at which point he threw it at my face.

(Okay.  Maybe it wasn’t directly at my face, but it was close.)

How is it that the boring Batman action hero became sacred?  The Youngest knows why: “Because he has it!”  There is nothing inherently desirable about that toy – except that the Oldest possessed it.  And this is how desire works.  We desire certain things because another desired that thing first.  This is the way human desire works, from children to adults.  As the anthropologist Rene Girard has pointed out, humans have “an irresistible desire to desire what others desire” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 12.)

This key to understanding human desire is counter-intuitive to our modern world.  Our modern world idolizes our individuality.  It tells you that your desire starts and ends with you.  You came up with it and you need to fulfill it.  It’s all about You.  You are your own man!  In fact …

You are the MAN!!!!  (Or the WOMAN!!!  You know, depending.)

But, and I really hate to break this to you, it’s really not about you.  And it’s definitely not about Batman, the perfect house, car, or job.  It’s about relationships.  (Which for this introvert, that’s hard to admit.)  No one exists as an individual.  Rather, the key to understanding desire is that we exist as inter-dividuals.  Our desire for objects is given to us by others, who desired them first.  And you can see how our shared desires can easily lead all of us, from children to adults, into conflicts.

So, you’re probably wondering how I solved the Batman issue.  The important thing that I’ve learned is that our desires need to be redirected to something positive, deep, and meaningful.  So that’s what I tried to do.

“Who wants breakfast?”

It worked.  It was simple.  And, I’ll be honest, I was hungry.

Raven Founder Suzanne Ross was a keynote presenter at the Theology and Peace conference held in Baltimore, MD, in June 2011. Her paper, Beyond Power Struggles: Teaching Without Rivalry, illustrates how the teaching of Maria Montessori supports child development while avoiding teacher/child rivalries.

Sandor Goodhart, author of Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays, is a Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Purdue University and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Classical Studies. Professor Goodhart is a Raven Foundation Board Member and one of the founders of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R). In this interview, Professor Goodhart examines the talent of Sondheim, his message and his audience.

Author Debra Anstis is a part time lecturer of New Testament Greek at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. A longtime reader of the work of Girard, she is a member of the Australian Girard Seminar a well as COV&R. Her interest in mimetic theory primarily relates to biblical studies and theology, however, she believes its engagement with other fields makes it especially thought-provoking. In this essay, she examines mimetic rivalry in the world of hip hop.

Ever since Prince William and Kate announced their engagement last week, Kate’s blue dress has been flying off the racks at British retailer Harvey Nichols.  The Issa London dress became an instant sensation.  Averyl Oats, buying director at Harvey Nichols, claims that “Since the announcement of the royal engagement we have been inundated with requests regarding Issa.”

What could possibly explain a sudden demand for a dress that CBS online describes as “understated”?

The best explanation is René Girard’s mimetic theory.  Girard claims that humans imitate the desires of one another.  We imitate the desire for “stuff,” such as an “understated” blue dress, a high end car, and wealth, but we also imitate the desire for transcendent qualities, such as fame, popularity, power, and prestige.  We tend to think that those who possess that kind of “stuff” or those transcendent qualities also possess the fullness of life we associate with their owners.

People generally react to mimetic theory in two ways.  First, many think it is obvious and simple.  Indeed, as Matt Malone claims in his fascinating article exploring Middleton’s dress and mimetic theory, “the basic gist of the theory can be grasped by any ten-year-old, let alone the frenetic adults who were shaking down the racks at Herrod’s last week.”

Still, others have a different reaction to the theory.  Western culture tends to honor autonomy.  We are told to “Be your own man/woman!”  But here’s the catch, someone must first tell us to be our own man or our own woman before we can claim to be our own man or our own woman.  Even here the desire to be our “own” person is given to us by someone who has told us to “be your own person.”

A certain sense of freedom is important, but human freedom is finite.  Freedom, ironically, comes when we accept that human freedom is limited.  Our desires are not autonomous, but are bound to our cultural models.  Kate Middleton, as Princess Diana before her, is now one of Western cultures greatest models.  And yet, even she is not “free,” for she is also bound to the mercurial desires of fashion culture.  Intentionally or not, Kate has entered the game of desire.  Directing our desires to an “understated blue dress” has given her some prestige in this game.  But she is now bound to cultural views of fashion.  So, what will happen when the cameras catch her making a fashion faux pas? 

Unfortunately, we will likely turn on her.  She will be relegated to the inner pages of Us Weekly’s fashion police.  Which leads us to scapegoating, the second aspect of mimetic theory.  But, that’s another blog.

The Raven Foundation developed a video explaining our mission and mimetic theory. Under the skilled direction of Gerard Jamroz, the amazing actors Molly Brennan and Adrian Danzig of 500 Clown created the roles of the Raven and the Narrator, respectively. Cameraman John Boston and Sound Engineer Jude Lemrow rounded out the crew. Suzanne Ross and Gerard Jamroz wrote the script. Maura Junius was the producer, costumer and gofer.

The title is A Higher Cawing. Enjoy some photos from the filming and the outtake reel.

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!