Parents' Guide to Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir

Hilton's cringey self-produced concert film brings new meaning to the term "vanity project." Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir is the modern-day equivalent of Narcissus staring at his reflection—but Hilton has something the Greek hunter didn't: pools of money. While Narcissus couldn't possess his own image, Hilton has mastered the ability to craft hers, and this is the third time in five years she's told her story, in the way she wants to be perceived (the other two were the 2020 documentary This Is Paris and the 2023 book Paris: The Memoir ).

And it's important to think critically about that aspect of what you're seeing here. Because those who remember Hilton's rise will likely catch that she isn't forthcoming about her active role in getting the paparazzi to photograph her zillions of times; instead, she paints herself as a "painfully shy" victim hounded by the cameras. And she laments that the media "used her as a punchline," when she at least partially did that to herself, by intentionally acting like an out-of-touch ditz in The Simple Life. But the boarding school abuse she describes shouldn't happen to anyone. And her positive messages about turning her pain into purpose, delivered in scripted quotables, may be encouraging to young viewers who are dealing with their own difficulties. All of that said, the whole thing still feels like a "look at me!" publicity campaign. The entire experience feels like being trapped in Hilton's Instagram feed with her, on the receiving end of an exhausting attack of expensively styled selfies. In the end, Narcissus did possess a quality that Hilton doesn't: the understanding that someone else has to tell your story for it to be credible—you can't declare yourself an icon.