Project Description:

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This paper is a semiotic analysis of an image sequence found on Kim Kardashian-West’s Instagram page. The analysis applies Walter Benjamin’s (1936), The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, to demonstrate how Kardashian-West’s appropriated aesthetic re-imagines and updates authentic, original art pieces’ aura and visual aesthetics, thereby producing entirely new works for social media advertisements. It was written for a course at Toronto Metropolitan University titled Introduction to Visual Culture.

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Thesis:​

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By applying corporate communication practices in order to produce her Instagram image sequences, she is able to consistently keep updating and developing her brand image for the purpose of selling products. Furthermore, Kardashian-West is reproducing the aura and visual aesthetics of historical images — including the vernacular of contemporary American cinema — that have impacted visual culture and popular entertainment. In spite of that, Kardashian-West has created new works (images) through mechanical reproduction by repurposing visual aesthetics to produce and author new content. Kardashian-West is taking on new creative ownership of images that would have been deemed as appropriation in art before the rise of peer-to-peer content sharing on social media.

 

To read more about my analysis of Kim Kardashion-West’s Instagram image sequence, please download a copy of my paper for yourself.