Now streaming on Oxygen.com (for U.S viewers), Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project (KKWTJP) documentary delves into the work Kim Kardashian has been putting in to mitigate long-term sentences of inmates held in various U.S prisons.
Via a January-dated Twitter post, the 39-year-old had told her followers about her plan: “I know a lot of you guys saw me going to the White House this year and getting involved with Alice Johnson’s case. Well, the truth is I have been getting involved in even more cases and we’ve been filming a documentary over the last few months. I can’t wait to share the stories with you,” she said.
The documentary’s genesis can be traced back to May 2018 with West picking up former federal prisoner 62-year-old Alice Marie Johnson’s case, a non-violent first-time offender who was imprisoned in 1993. KKW had famously taken the issue to White House and successfully used her star power to get Johnson an early release after lobbying President Donald Trump.
While many have hailed the former socialite’s new legal advocacy move towards the reformation of the criminal justice system, some believe that it perhaps is a strategy to elevate her brand new ‘social-conscious’ image in the media.
What is the truth, after all?
“Get People To Rethink How People Approach Criminals…”
According to human-rights lawyer Jessica Jackson Sloane, who features in the documentary alongside Kardashian West, this project is aimed at making a dent in the U.S criminal justice system and changing public perception about the incarcerated.
“What you learn (in America) is people who go to jail for prison are bad people who go to prison for doing bad. The Justice Project is where someone for the first time has taken four cases and looked at them not for what was the crime committed but looked at them to see why the crime committed,” Sloane told RadioTimes. “We’re telling the other side of the story of the crime and we’re able to talk about the person who committed the crime in a much more human way,” she added further.
While studying for the bar, Kardashian West had been keeping busy—meeting prisoners who are serving long-term sentences for crimes that have outgrown the punishment term.
In the two-hour-long documentary, she is seen holding intimate conversations with four prisoners: David Sheppard, Dawn Jackson, Momulu Stewart, and Alexis Martin who appeal to West for early release and why. Each inmate’s story guides Kardashian West and her team of attorneys to meet elected officials, prosecutors and other lawyers in the former's quest to get an early release for the convicts.
“Kim’s been an incredible voice in the movement. She entered this field over 2 years ago and did so much good work. She’s extremely passionate about this issue and it comes through in the documentary,” said Sloane.
“It’s going to show a whole new audience of people who like Kim and follow her work who have maybe never thought about this. Her support is extremely meaningful...”
“Garish And Gross For Personalizing An Important Cause…”
While many have lauded the SKIMS Solutionwear founder's latest venture, popular magazine The Variety thinks otherwise. In the blistering review published recently, Variety’s chief T.V critic Daniel D’ Addario wrote, “An always-on personality who, when not in aspiring-lawyer mode, tends to explicitly acknowledge the thuddingly Warholian nature of the existence she’s chosen, Kardashian West metabolizes everything in her line of sight as content. This includes genuine national crises, reframed as stories that change the heart and mind of a famous person.”
Addario did not mince his words.
“This documentary converts into an unpleasant spectacle that was always implicit in the star’s legal project. That, for her, reform of a system that causes chaos in the lives of so many, particularly black American’s, comes in the package of the beneficent gift of individual attention to telegenic and unthreatening cases, rather than...reform.”
Despite the brouhaha surrounding her new line of work, Addario conclusively opined that Kardashian West made the documentary appear more about herself than about the ones affected gravely by a problematic criminal justice system.
“Out of ideas and having used all the footage it had of Kardashian West meeting the public, the documentary ends with the subject—herself, not the cause, who reads a dictionary definition of the word ‘justice.’ One doesn’t sense she’s edged any closer to getting it.”
The Truth After All…
In a riveting interview with Esquire, Momolu Stewart had much to say about the former socialite. When quizzed about how he felt after meeting her, Stewart did not fall short of praise for the mother-of-four: “People say she’s faking it, but that’s so untrue. Just hearing her words, it felt like she was screaming in my soul. She was more than what I thought she would be, because I already had her on a pedestal. It wasn’t just her letter that pushed the momentum of getting my freedom; it touched my spirit to know that Kim believes in me because she sees something in me...she helped me to believe in myself even more. I want to be bigger and better in a lot of ways, and a lot of that, I owe to her.”
To be fair, there’s no denying the truth in Addario’s razor-sharp observations, but a reasonable benefit of doubt must be given to anyone trying to turn into a new leaf, irrespective of the intentions, which, in this case, is pure conjecture to this day.
This benefit must extend to the media-favorite Kardashian and her new content trajectory.
Undeniably, the star has power and if her gaze can help someone even slightly, the effort must be respected, if not celebrated with the media frenzy that comes with anything the famous family does.