Like any good mother, Kim Kardashian reminds us that we can always go home again. As a surprise for Kris Jenner’s 64th birthday, Kim secretly replicated the childhood home where she and her siblings (Khloe, Kourtney and the oft-forgotten Rob) grew up in the ‘80s. Kim rented the original house in Los Angeles and recreated every detail down to the table settings and the cars in the driveway.
The gift made headlines. Kim was praised for her thoughtfulness, her generosity. It triggered round-up articles with #tbt-memories of the Kardashians’ youth, along with tributes to their departed father, Robert Kardashian. But there’s something unsettling about the situation — it’s like, of course Kim had to appeal to Kris’ sentimentality, what else would she have gifted to someone with a 190 million dollar net worth? It feels like an act of unfathomable excess: for the wealthy, the past is something that can be recalled at a moment’s notice, as if capital offers the power to manipulate time itself. For the rest of us, nostalgia is something to experience via Facebook Memories, or your old cracked iPhone that only sometimes turns on.
"[…] of course Kim had to appeal to Kris’ sentimentality, what else would she have gifted to someone with a 190 million dollar net worth?"
But there’s another reason why this gift feels so disconcerting — it’s exactly the plot of Guy Maddin’s 2007 “docu-fantasia” film, My Winnipeg. Mixing truth and something slightly beside the truth, Maddin mythologizes the “frozen hellhole” that is Winnipeg, combining childhood memory, historical event, and local legend to create an uncanny yet enchanting portrait of the city.
“Winnipeg has ten times the sleepwalking rate of any other city in the world,” Maddin explains. A city bylaw requires that every citizen be allowed to carry a key from each of their former homes, in case they ever revisit in their dreams. But Maddin only carries one key: “Every night I have the same happy dream, that I’m back in my childhood home.” In the film, he sublets the apartment he grew up in at 800 Ellice Avenue, hiring actors to play his three siblings. He also enlists his mother, who plays herself (although in actuality, she’s played by cult movie icon Ann Savage). Like the Kardashians’ home, everything in the apartment is arranged just as it once was, down to their old “crummy sofa.” The congregate family inhabits the apartment for a month, reenacting key memories from Maddin’s childhood.
Even the dynamics of each family are suspiciously similar — four siblings with deceased paternal figures, yes, but most notably, the role of the matriarch. Guy Maddin’s mother exudes the same degree of authority that Kris Jenner is known for — as they say, the devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder. “My mother, a force as strong as all the trains in Manitoba,” Maddin recalls, as she spies through the window of his train car as he attempts to escape the city.
My Winnipeg does not shy from its artifice — Maddin emphasizes the inner workings of illusion. It’s filmed with an old Hollywood grandiosity, a cinematic sensibility that feels delightfully surreal. He extracts myth from the mundane, spinning stories that range from the underground taxi company that exclusively services the city’s sprawling network of back lanes, to the scandalous origins of the landmark Golden Boy (i.e. a beauty pageant for men, judged by the mayor). We understand that what we’re watching is fabricated, but we have no problem suspending our disbelief in hopes that perhaps, the legends could be true. Darren Wershler, author of the book Guy Maddin’s ‘My Winnipeg,’ suggests that the film is so intriguing because “it is psychologically and affectively true without being historically accurate.” This feels suspiciously familiar to the way that Keeping Up With the Kardashians functions — we willingly accept the fact that what we’re being shown is in fact, not fact.
Is this not the crux of reality television — bringing us into the home, portraying a calculated facade of real life? A manicured version of the truth, per se — a simulated reality meant to stand in for actuality. But it should be noted that we aren’t made privy to the inside of the replicated childhood home on KUWTK. “The family that lives there is extremely private,” Kim says, “it’s gonna be […] just for us, to soak in those memories.” Instead, I must watch YouTube compilations and scroll back two years on the Kardashian socials, collating a portrait of the day through small glimpses of their archived Instagram stories.
In contrast, My Winnipeg invites us into the home and demands we get comfortable. Not only are we one of many voyeurs to Maddin’s replicated life — the woman who now owns the apartment decides she doesn’t want to leave, and tags along for the entirety of the experiment — but he speaks directly to the film’s audience, through voiceover, narrated by Maddin himself. Even visually, the film carries an undeniable quality of assemblage, utilizing archival footage and home videos. At one point, Maddin recounts memories of the hair salon once owned by his mother. He combines hazy Super 8 clips with photographs of women under hooded dryers (“helmets,” he calls them), all clouded in a fog of aerosol spray. As the snips and buzz of the shop grow louder and more frenetic, the voiceover drones: “At school, I reeked of hair product. Pomades for the elderly, lotions for the elderly. I smelled of corn plasters and Barbicide. Of girdles and talc. Fur coats and purses. The inside of purses.” Maddin’s rendering of the salon is rigorous and precise, a crystalline image patch-worked together from these disparate details.
"You could say that these revisitations merely show that when we mythologize a space, we inevitably bring it further from the truth […]"
But really, do we even need to see the inside of the Kardashian childhood home? The intricate details aren’t really important at all — it’s the premise of nostalgia that makes the surprise so alluring. The sentimentality of the whole thing is mentioned constantly on the show, social media, and in the tabloids: how evocative, how meaningful. Kim even ends her Insta recap of the day by writing, “But at the end I went into my old bathroom, closed the door and cried so hard.” This too, feels inconspicuously close to Maddin’s objective: to come to terms with “the heinous power of family and city.” Both Kim’s gift and My Winnipeg essentially tell the same story about the act of letting go.
You could say that these revisitations merely show that when we mythologize a space, we inevitably bring it further from the truth — how by re-inhabiting these homes, Maddin and Kim have only tarnished their memories of the original dwellings. They are, after all, in pursuit of the spectacle, whether that be through an indie film or reality TV. But I can’t think of a greater indulgence — to slip into the past and sit within it for a while.
Like any good mother, Kim Kardashian reminds us that we can always go home again. As a surprise for Kris Jenner’s 64th birthday, Kim secretly replicated the childhood home where she and her siblings (Khloe, Kourtney and the oft-forgotten Rob) grew up in the ‘80s. Kim rented the original house in Los Angeles and recreated every detail down to the table settings and the cars in the driveway.
The gift made headlines. Kim was praised for her thoughtfulness, her generosity. It triggered round-up articles with #tbt-memories of the Kardashians’ youth, along with tributes to their departed father, Robert Kardashian. But there’s something unsettling about the situation — it’s like, of course Kim had to appeal to Kris’ sentimentality, what else would she have gifted to someone with a 190 million dollar net worth? It feels like an act of unfathomable excess: for the wealthy, the past is something that can be recalled at a moment’s notice, as if capital offers the power to manipulate time itself. For the rest of us, nostalgia is something to experience via Facebook Memories, or your old cracked iPhone that only sometimes turns on.
"[…] of course Kim had to appeal to Kris’ sentimentality, what else would she have gifted to someone with a 190 million dollar net worth?"
But there’s another reason why this gift feels so disconcerting — it’s exactly the plot of Guy Maddin’s 2007 “docu-fantasia” film, My Winnipeg. Mixing truth and something slightly beside the truth, Maddin mythologizes the “frozen hellhole” that is Winnipeg, combining childhood memory, historical event, and local legend to create an uncanny yet enchanting portrait of the city.
“Winnipeg has ten times the sleepwalking rate of any other city in the world,” Maddin explains. A city bylaw requires that every citizen be allowed to carry a key from each of their former homes, in case they ever revisit in their dreams. But Maddin only carries one key: “Every night I have the same happy dream, that I’m back in my childhood home.” In the film, he sublets the apartment he grew up in at 800 Ellice Avenue, hiring actors to play his three siblings. He also enlists his mother, who plays herself (although in actuality, she’s played by cult movie icon Ann Savage). Like the Kardashians’ home, everything in the apartment is arranged just as it once was, down to their old “crummy sofa.” The congregate family inhabits the apartment for a month, reenacting key memories from Maddin’s childhood.
Even the dynamics of each family are suspiciously similar — four siblings with deceased paternal figures, yes, but most notably, the role of the matriarch. Guy Maddin’s mother exudes the same degree of authority that Kris Jenner is known for — as they say, the devil works hard, but Kris Jenner works harder. “My mother, a force as strong as all the trains in Manitoba,” Maddin recalls, as she spies through the window of his train car as he attempts to escape the city.
My Winnipeg does not shy from its artifice — Maddin emphasizes the inner workings of illusion. It’s filmed with an old Hollywood grandiosity, a cinematic sensibility that feels delightfully surreal. He extracts myth from the mundane, spinning stories that range from the underground taxi company that exclusively services the city’s sprawling network of back lanes, to the scandalous origins of the landmark Golden Boy (i.e. a beauty pageant for men, judged by the mayor). We understand that what we’re watching is fabricated, but we have no problem suspending our disbelief in hopes that perhaps, the legends could be true. Darren Wershler, author of the book Guy Maddin’s ‘My Winnipeg,’ suggests that the film is so intriguing because “it is psychologically and affectively true without being historically accurate.” This feels suspiciously familiar to the way that Keeping Up With the Kardashians functions — we willingly accept the fact that what we’re being shown is in fact, not fact.
Is this not the crux of reality television — bringing us into the home, portraying a calculated facade of real life? A manicured version of the truth, per se — a simulated reality meant to stand in for actuality. But it should be noted that we aren’t made privy to the inside of the replicated childhood home on KUWTK. “The family that lives there is extremely private,” Kim says, “it’s gonna be […] just for us, to soak in those memories.” Instead, I must watch YouTube compilations and scroll back two years on the Kardashian socials, collating a portrait of the day through small glimpses of their archived Instagram stories.
In contrast, My Winnipeg invites us into the home and demands we get comfortable. Not only are we one of many voyeurs to Maddin’s replicated life — the woman who now owns the apartment decides she doesn’t want to leave, and tags along for the entirety of the experiment — but he speaks directly to the film’s audience, through voiceover, narrated by Maddin himself. Even visually, the film carries an undeniable quality of assemblage, utilizing archival footage and home videos. At one point, Maddin recounts memories of the hair salon once owned by his mother. He combines hazy Super 8 clips with photographs of women under hooded dryers (“helmets,” he calls them), all clouded in a fog of aerosol spray. As the snips and buzz of the shop grow louder and more frenetic, the voiceover drones: “At school, I reeked of hair product. Pomades for the elderly, lotions for the elderly. I smelled of corn plasters and Barbicide. Of girdles and talc. Fur coats and purses. The inside of purses.” Maddin’s rendering of the salon is rigorous and precise, a crystalline image patch-worked together from these disparate details.
"You could say that these revisitations merely show that when we mythologize a space, we inevitably bring it further from the truth […]"
But really, do we even need to see the inside of the Kardashian childhood home? The intricate details aren’t really important at all — it’s the premise of nostalgia that makes the surprise so alluring. The sentimentality of the whole thing is mentioned constantly on the show, social media, and in the tabloids: how evocative, how meaningful. Kim even ends her Insta recap of the day by writing, “But at the end I went into my old bathroom, closed the door and cried so hard.” This too, feels inconspicuously close to Maddin’s objective: to come to terms with “the heinous power of family and city.” Both Kim’s gift and My Winnipeg essentially tell the same story about the act of letting go.
You could say that these revisitations merely show that when we mythologize a space, we inevitably bring it further from the truth — how by re-inhabiting these homes, Maddin and Kim have only tarnished their memories of the original dwellings. They are, after all, in pursuit of the spectacle, whether that be through an indie film or reality TV. But I can’t think of a greater indulgence — to slip into the past and sit within it for a while.