The Kardashians season 8 trailer puts Kim in a hospital bed, and the word she says is not cancer
Kim Kardashian says the word esophagitis from a hospital bed, and the camera cuts to her mother, who cannot finish her sentence. Her father died of oesophageal cancer in 2003, two months after his diagnosis. Those are two different illnesses, and the trailer does not say otherwise.
Hulu released the trailer for the eighth season of The Kardashians on Thursday. The season starts on 8 October, and the six seconds everyone is clipping show Kim Kardashian in a hospital bed saying she has something called esophagitis.
Esophagitis is inflammation of the oesophagus. It is not cancer, and nothing in the trailer says it is. What the trailer does instead is put the word next to a memory and let the family react.
Robert Kardashian died in 2003 of oesophageal cancer. He was 59, and he died roughly two months after the diagnosis. Asked on camera whether her daughter's condition is connected to that, Kris Jenner does not finish the sentence.
"I can't. It makes me want to cry." — Kris Jenner, in the season 8 trailer
Two words that are not the same word
The difference matters, and most of the aggregation today flattens it. Inflammation of the oesophagus is common and treatable; reflux, infection and certain medications are among the usual causes. Oesophageal cancer is a different diagnosis with a different course — the one that killed her father inside two months.
The trailer does not bridge those two things with a claim. It bridges them with an edit: the bed, the word, the mother's face. That is a legitimate way to cut a trailer and a bad way to read a medical fact.
What is actually established:
- 17 September — the trailer goes out
- 8 October — season 8 premieres on Hulu
- Kim, on camera: "I have something called esophagitis"
- 2003 — Robert Kardashian dies of oesophageal cancer at 59, about two months after being diagnosed
Read more: Lady Gaga had a daughter in June and nobody knew until a birth certificate surfaced
Robert Kardashian is not a minor figure in this family's public story. He was the lawyer on O.J. Simpson's defence team, the reason the surname was famous before any of his children were, and he has been dead for twenty-three years. The trailer is trading on all of that in a single cut, which is why the moment works and why it deserves to be read carefully.
What the trailer withholds
Not much is dated. The trailer does not say when the hospitalisation happened, how long it lasted, what treatment followed or how she is now. Those answers are inside the season, which is the point of releasing the clip three weeks early.
The same trailer also has Kendall Jenner denying the rumour that she is involved with Cara Delevingne, which is the other thing being written about tonight. One health scare and one denial: that is the standing trade this series makes with its audience, and it has made it for seven seasons.
A trailer is a promise about what a season will contain. This one promises a hospital.
Kardashian has spoken publicly about her health before — psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis among them — and each time the disclosure has arrived inside the show rather than outside it. This is consistent, and it is also the mechanism by which a family illness becomes a season arc.
Season 8 lands on 8 October. Until then the only sourced facts are the ones in the clip.
Read more: The child actor from Role Models was sentenced to 30 months over a stolen gun found at 104 mph
