The print magazine industry is dying. Over the past decade, publications around the world have been forced to literally stop the presses. Readers have switched over to more accessible, instantaneous, and cheaper mediums, like blogs and online news portals, over monthly bibles that seem out of date by the time they hit newsstands. So that’s why Paper magazine’s latest stunt featuring Kim Kardashian’s bare butt isn’t all that surprising. It was a publicity stunt. Everybody now knows about the Paper Mag.
The reality star has an army of 25 million Twitter followers and almost as many on Instagram. Just one of her selfies has more reach than most mags can hope for in one issue. Paper tag-lined their Winter issue “Break the Internet” and while this certainly didn’t come true, with just 140 characters from Kardashian, Paper is now an entity that everyone knows about. A shock-factor photo shoot featuring the reality star has generated hundreds of thousands of tweets, online coverage, and even talked about on morning television shows.
While previous Mag shoots went the semi-tasteful route, Paper has completely dropped any illusion as to what could be hiding underneath. These clever props — ties, hands, type — almost distinguished their mass market images from pornography. But Paper has blurred the line between fashion magazine and Playboy. Seemingly, what keeps this shoot from being looped in with X-rated publications is the art and high-profile photographer that produced the images. Jean Paul Goode, who came to fame for shooting his muse Grace Jones and even has work featured in museums around the world, is representing Kardashian as an icon and perpetuating a message.
It remains to be seen if sex will sell this issue of Paper, especially considering most of the images have already been released for the world to see on the Internet, but if the conversations generated and social media chatter that has come about since the photo shoot’s release is any indication, the magazine won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Culled from The Fashion Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment