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Tech

Kylie Jenner's Soap Opera Shorts Are the Future of Snapchat Filmmaking

Replete with product placement.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

Kylie Jenner, the Kardashian-Jenner family's latest omnipresence, has started using Snapchat's Stories feature in a novel new way—making short soap opera-type videos featuring cameos from friends and family. Her latest installment even features an angry Kanye West.

The shorts star Jenner's friend Harry Hudson as a philandering goofball working his way through the Kardashian-Jenner women. In the latest installment, he gets to Kim—the final boss, if you will—and confesses his love before West smacks him. The video ends with a shot wishing us a Happy Valentine's Day.

The shorts won't win any awards for cinematic excellence, but they prove that the Kardashians at least have a sense of humor about themselves, as Kim is shown having her assistants take her "selfies" for her. At one point, Kim makes Harry lift her glass of water to her lips. They're also tirelessly business-minded self-promoters, as Jenner plugs her new line of lipsticks and a completely unnecessary shot shows Kim sipping a Diet Coke, which is possibly paid product placement.

While I'm sure Jenner (username: kylizzlemynizzl) isn't the first to use Snapchat this way, her short films say a lot about her demographic's relationship to the app. It turns out Snapchat can be used for more than just preening (though the first 20 seconds of the short consist of Jenner doing exactly that).

Just as Vine created its own coterie of fresh-faced young celebrities, maybe we ought to brace ourselves for a new wave of Snapchat auteurs.