Documentary "This Is Paris" on YouTube: Why Paris Hilton needed the monster in her life

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Paris Hilton in "This Is Paris": There are good reasons for the scarcity of trust as a resource

Photo: YouTube

In Paris Hilton's bedroom, soft toys watch over her sleep if she finds any.

In a disturbing scene of this documentary, the animals become witnesses, because Hilton hides tiny spy cameras in the small plush objects and she can be filmed.

When asked why, she tells of a new friend who comes to visit her.

But since she has to leave earlier than he and she doesn't know him so well, she wants to be able to watch what he is doing in her apartment when she is not there.

Paris Hilton lives in a bizarre world where trust is rare and money is the sun.

Alexandra Deen's documentary "This is Paris" explores why that is so.

Originally intended for festival programs, the film has now been put on YouTube due to Corona.

Paris Hilton is a forerunner in many ways.

It was said that she was famous for being famous.

Example of all the influencers, it girls and brand ambassadors who are advancing their careers between marketing, advertising and social media today.

Paris was the first to take permanent selfies and branded itself for any number of products.

She says in the film: "I helped create a monster."

It's a film that explains why Paris Hilton needed such a monster in her life, what it was supposed to protect her from, and it's worth it, even if the first half hour is a kind of retrospective of her oeuvre.

You just have to sit it out.

It reminds us of the specific taste of the late, pre-digital age, when certain characters were cult and sometimes amused, often annoying and always wanted to sell something.

We see Paris in an early reality soap called "The Simple Life," in which she plays the spoiled luxury brat who doesn't know what Wal-Mart is or how to clean.

The truth is different.

Kidnapped on behalf of the parents

The founders of the Hilton hotel empire had eight children, explains the mother of Paris Hilton, five of whom received millions of dollars, while the youngest three received nothing.

The parents from Paris had to work, but the daughter shouldn't have to suffer as a result, rather it should radiate the exact opposite: golden effortlessness.

"We were brought up to always convey that everything is perfect".

It wasn't, because where is it on earth?

The parents are religious, conservative and very strict.

“My mother wanted me to be a Hilton, but I always wanted to be Paris” - this is how the film announces the beginning of serious rifts in an almost classic formula for family conflicts between parents and daughter.

The parents respond by appealing to an astonishingly sadistic institution.

As an adolescent, Paris Hilton went to Provo Canyon School, a kind of prison boarding school.

You don't go there, but are picked up in the middle of the night, forcibly out of your own bed.

The child thinks he is being kidnapped, but the kidnappers are their own parents, who watch crying as their daughter is transported to Utah at night.

In the film, her sister Nicky will explain that it was not discussed, even though the cries for help woke the whole house.

It was only said that Paris had come to a

.

Nicky Hilton, who seems to lead a relatively quiet life, acts as translator in the documentary: She talks about her sister's greed for money, her inability to refuse a check, and links this trait with the trauma of her teenage years.

Because not only the procrastination there, the months at school are also permanently stressful.

Paris Hilton complains of nightmares, insomnia and other symptoms.

In this school there was yelling, medicine was given, and once she was put in a kind of solitary cell.

The mother of the two is shocked by the details of the abuse, but does not want to have known about it - but defends her strict upbringing with regard to the daughter's financial success.

The film mutates into an educational work about this school, which is probably not the only one of its kind.

Hilton gets in touch with former classmates who also suffer from complex symptoms to this day.

They also report that they always watched "The Simple Life" with amazement, because they knew that their former classmate knew how to clean and wipe, because hard, disgusting and humiliating work was part of the program at the Provo School .

The fictional character Paris Hilton, however, had nothing to do with such experiences; she repressed.

Explosive message

With her, the violence she had suffered, the betrayal of her parents also expressed itself in a tendency to assault and violent partners.

She tells of how she was repeatedly the victim of physical violence by men.

The famous sextape episode should also be understood in this context: an untrustworthy person has recognized an opportunity to make some money in the private recordings.

There are good reasons for the scarcity of trust as a resource.

Paris Hilton's instinctive response was to protect yourself with your own fortune.

At first the goal was a hundred million dollars, but now it's a billion.

That the money can't help her against nightmares is the truth that the film works out, and it has an effect far beyond the individual story.

Towards the end, Paris Hilton walks through one of her immense walk-in closets, more relaxed than at the beginning of the shooting, in cozy clothes and declares that all the stuff here she has never noticed, hardly worn, that it is not important.

This is not a banal, but an explosive political message, because capitalism thrives on the promise that money can also buy external security and internal peace.

Many resources could be saved if these goods could be produced in other ways, through a more humane society and more comprehensive education.

In this respect, the film is neither voyeuristic nor whining on a high level, but raises questions that should occupy even those who are not interested in Paris Hilton.

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