Donald Clarke: Revealing Caitlyn Jenner and curse of the Kardashians

Excuse me. Can we start making fun of the Kardashians again? Please!

When Caitlyn Jenner revealed her new female shape two weeks ago she achieved a few remarkable secondary feats. Who knew there were still more ways to spell the name that usually appears as “Caitlin”? All we need now is some bright spark to put an “x” in it and we’ll have reached full Kristen/Kirsten/Kristin befuddlement.

More significantly (and more annoyingly) the former Bruce Jenner suddenly rendered the entire Kardashian parade semi-respectable. The media were so swollen with congratulation that any criticism of the family business ––an international joke 24 hours earlier – came to seem like intolerance of transsexual rights and aspirations.

The image on the cover of Vanity Fair is destined to become as unavoidable as psychedelic Ché, "Hope" Obama or that tennis player scratching her bottom. We may even, on this one occasion, allow ourselves to drag out the odious cliché "iconic". You will never escape.

Made-up blandness

Yet it remains a very peculiar sort of coming-out banner. If commentary is to be believed, Annie Leibovitz’s photograph allows Ms Jenner unexpected degrees of sexuality, sensuality and other S-words.

Really? Over the past decade or so, Leibovitz has specialised in a class of glassy, overly made-up blandness that turns her celebrity subjects into epicene showroom dummies. The annual "Hollywood edition" of Vanity Fair is remarkable only for the way it saps all character from faces that make livings. The Benedict Cumberbatch-bot could easily be mistaken for the Sienna Miller-borg.

Caitlyn Jenner actually looked more human – and more like a woman – in Vanity Fair than most ladies recently photographed by Ms Leibovitz. But this is still a very unreal way of addressing a new reality. Never mind. The image got Jenner into every media outlet and started a necessary conversation about attitudes to trans-sexuality. Old grumps such as this correspondent will press copies of Jan Morris's Conundrum – a small masterpiece about her "sex change" from 1974 – into hands and remember that author's defiantly snappy exchange with Robin Day in very different times. But we can't expect people to read whole books any more. The cover did some good.

Unfortunately, it also managed to momentarily detoxify the Kardashian Klan. It is almost never big or clever to boast about one’s ignorance of some supposedly worthless corner of popular culture. You know how this goes. Halfway down a comments strand on the latest celebrity outrage, some wiseacre will proudly state that he or she has “never heard of this person”.

We said “almost”. Let us show forgiveness – even respect – to those who have failed to connect with the intricacies of Kardashian lore. No worthwhile summary is possible in this space, but you should be aware that the story spins out from the antics of Kim Kardashian. Now married to popular “jackass” Kanye West (blame President Barack Obama, not me, for that epithet), the 34-year-old Armenian-American exemplifies all that is most depressing about the processes of contemporary fame.

Vaporous nature

This is not to suggest that she is an unkind or unintelligent woman. There are many less pleasant people who have achieved a great deal more in their lives. It is, however, profoundly depressing how the vaporous nature of her achievements actually enhances her apparently unstoppable renown. Madame de Pompadour or Beau Brummell didn’t do much, but they weren’t famous for doing nothing either.

Since edging into the tabloids after a sex tape leaked in 2007, Kardashian – a close pal of the equally blank Paris Hilton – has traded brilliantly on her apparent uselessness. A whole series of reality shows, beginning with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, helped make celebrities of her extended family: mother Kris Jenner; sisters Kourtney and Khloé; brother Rob.

The former Bruce Jenner, already famous for winning a gold medal at the Montreal Olympics, gained a different class of celebrity as Kim’s eccentric stepfather. He divorced Kris last year.

Got that? Do you need to know more?

For an astonishing eight years, snooty commentators have (quite reasonably) been making sarcastic comments about the Kardashian Circus. To be fair, the success of the shows doesn’t reflect as badly on the subjects as it does on the hordes who gather round to watch vulgar amounts of nothing taking place.

But this still looks like the institutionalisation of idiocy on an epic scale. Its wretchedness offers useful metaphors for the decline of civilisation and the corruption of media. The vacuous nature of the “characters” invites us to feel better about our own supposed brilliance.

These last few weeks have been trying. The Caitlyn affair has, by briefly forcing us to show respect, revealed how much we need our disdain for the Kardashians. Don’t take that away, please. Who do we have left to look down on?