On The Couch
With Manchán Magan
“Nobody knows who I really am,” says Paris Hilton in various ways, and in various designer out ts, in the YouTube documentary, is is Paris. Nobody in this instance includes her sister, Nicky and her parents, Kathy and Richard, as the 39-year-old opens up about the abuse she allegedly experienced as a teenager. Such revelations had not been part of Paris’ original plan. She had signed up for a show celebrating her life as a successful businesswoman. Instead we get a couch trip, with Hilton revealing her real side. Yet the subsequent headlines are all about the rebranding of Paris Hilton as if that’s all she ever was and ever will be: the double-edged sword of reality TV.
Once upon a time, Paris Hilton was “famous for being famous” - hounded by the paparazzi, parodied by the media (from Saturday Night Live to South Park), the star of 2003 reality TV show, e Simple Life and an infamous sex tape that copper-fastened the image. I met Hilton, the “original social in uencer”, in LA in the early noughties. She was with her Simple Life co-star, and then bestie, Nicole Richie (daughter of Lionel), two to s slumming it with farmers where we get to see them attempt to milk a cow and where Paris wonders if Wal-Mart is a shop that sells walls. Richie seemed real, Hilton was like a 3D doll with a baby voice.
Now we know that it was all a fabrication, even that voice. “I’m not a dumb blonde,” Paris told the world last week in her real voice. “I’m just really good at pretending to be one.” Ah, the cynical might wonder, isn’t this just the latest in a line of documentaries where celebrities like Taylor Swi , Justin Beiber and the Jonas Brothers open up about their real lives? Yet is is Paris does something di erent, a reality show that questions the very nature of such shows. Where we see a gradual shi in Hilton, from the globe-trotting all-business businesswoman (19 product lines, $3 billion empire, never photographed in the same out t twice) to when she breaks down.
Hilton talks of a recurring nightmare that has dogged her dreams for years where she is dragged from her bed by two strangers. Probed by the lmmaker, she opens up a Pandora’s Box, talking about how her parents, as a last throw of the dice to rein in their rebellious daughter, sent the 16-year-old to “an intensive psychiatric residential treatment centre for youth” in Utah. Over 11 months, Hilton alleges, she was physically and psychologically abused. She had never spoken publicly or privately of this before and the tears that ow, the voice that tells them and the face that breaks, seems the real deal. Or else reality TV is eating itself.
is is Paris is available on YouTube.