I'm sure you all know that show Keeping Up With the Kardashians. The one that's been running for a decade though honestly I really don't know why this family is apparently so interesting.
Well, as I reflect on reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I realize I'm finding a few similarities between the featured families.
For one, the names are all confusing. There are five Jose Arcadios, and don't even get me started on the Aureliano's (literally over 20; thanks, Marquez!). Meanwhile, the Kardashians don't seem to be much more original in their choosing of names; Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall, Kylie...
It's all quite confusing. One of the other similarities is the apparent "self-absorption" and "absurdity" of the show. Though I can't claim to watch it myself, I'm willing to believe those assertions, at least to some degree. Similarly, the Buendia clan, especially the men, do indeed seem rather self-absorbed; I mean, Jose Arcadio Buendia the First melts his wife's precious gold for the sake of an experiment, Aureliano becomes obsessed with marrying a child despite everyone else's protests and in spite of the danger to Remedios and refuses to heed anything but his own feelings, and Amaranta and Rebeca get into a death feud over a guy they've only known for a tiny bit of time. Practically the only thing keeping the family together is Ursula!
Second of all—"absurdity" sounds pretty familiar, right? Perhaps the Kardashian life is absurd in a different way than is One Hundred Years of Solitude (hopefully no Kardashian has floated away with her sister-in-law's valuable sheets), but the concept is still there.
A weird comparison this may be, but I think Keeping Up With the Buendias would make for a pretty solid alternative title to One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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As a dedicated fan of the show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, I have to completely disagree with you here. For one, I think the names of both families may be similar at first look but upon further investigation the Buendia family has much more complicated names. As you said there are over 20 relatives with the exact same name. In the Kardashian family there are only about 7 people with remotely similar names. You say in your post that Aureliano is self absorbed, but I do not think this is the case. I believe he lives in a almost meaningless cycle of solitude, but I believe this is because of his PTSD, not because he is inherently self-absorbed. The immediate reason he even goes to war which causes this PTSD is that he wishes to uphold justice after a group of conservatives rigged the election. He also witnesses some conservatives murder a lady, which infuriates him. This does not seem to be self-absorbed to me. You also say that the Kardashians are rather absurd, but I do not believe they are any more absurd than any other large family might be with that much wealth. Also in 100 Years of Solitude, mainly the men are the absurd ones in the family, but making this comparison to Keeping Up With the Kardashians you suggest the women are the absurd ones in the family. Although I can see where you are coming from, I cannot agree with you here or stand by idle as you slander the Kardashian name.
Although I can’t claim to be a dedicated fan of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, I guess I’ll comment based on my interpretation of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I don’t think that making this comparison means that only the Buendia women are absurd. There can be parallels between different genders. Plus, nobody denied that the Buendia women aren’t self-absorbed, too; Ally just said that it’s a more prominent trait in the men. And I would actually say that you’d be hard-pressed not to find some element of self-absorption in almost all of the Buendia men. Aureliano, to me, is a prime example. Aureliano is self-absorbed. Besides refusing to answer his men when they need him to command a war he helped start, which I believe he does out of a lack of caring more than anything else, the dude definitely has other issues. He marries and impregnates a child (which is just flat-out disgusting even in the context of all the weird incestuous relationships in this novel). But he’s so self-absorbed that he never thinks, Gee, maybe it’s a horrible idea to have sex with a kid just because I’m creepily obsessed with her. Nope, he just gets her pregnant and causes her to die because he's so focused on what he wants that he never stops to think about the health consequences for this young girl. That’s a prime example of self-absorption. Now, I wouldn’t venture to say that the Kardashians are quite that bad, but they have issues, too. Bruce, you say that the Kardashians are not any more absurd than any other large wealthy family, but the reality is that there are families far wealthier but also far less ridiculous than the Kardashians. More than that, the Kardashians are so self-absorbed that several members of their family have been very culturally ignorant in the past. It seems to me that either they’re so focused on themselves that they fail to recognize that they shouldn’t appropriate/be insensitive to people’s cultures, or they just like the attention because that matters more to them than being decent people. If you want an example, just read this article (http://blackyouthproject.com/amandla-is-right-kylie-and-the-kardashians-are-problematic/). So to end, I'm not a fan of the Kardashians or of Aureliano, and I definitely would not watch Keeping Up With the Buendias.
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