The Bling Ring

“Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends” - Frank Ocean

The Bling Ring by Sofia Coppola (2013) is a movie based on the 2009 scandal where “super rich kids” Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, Alexis Neiers, Courtney Ames and Diana Tamayo burgled celebrities' homes. They stole from Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Meghan Fox and Lindsay Lohan, to name a few. They scouted their favorite celebrities' homes using "street view" and social media to determine when they were out and when the house was empty. They would party in the same clubs as the celebs, and brag about the robberies, which eventually led them to being punished by the judicial system.

In this movie, Sofia Coppola is not trying to be accurate or give us documentary facts, but instead she is painting a picture; one of a superficial youth desperate for attention and a glamorous lifestyle. She is encapsulating the epitome of the 2010’s style: the hipster Gossip girl looks, the indie club music with artists such as Azealia Banks or M.I.A, the overdose of designer bags, blackberry selfies, and drugs. There is no character evolution and the storyline is evasive for the philosophy of this era is vacant. Coppola’s aetherial filmmaking is portraying a bored adolescence, thirsty and fascinated by status and bling.

Coppola casts Emma Watson, our 2010’s idol, to play the role of a teenager obsessed with celebrity. Emma Watson is surprising in this role as she plays a superficial rich kid, differing from the nostalgic and accustomed image we had of her as Hermione Granger. Something we could also relate in Harmony Korine’s Spring breakers (2012), The Bling Ring’s big brother, in which Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez, our childhood idols also portray a shallow and jaded adolescence. However in Coppola’s version, the women commit a crime without any male influence, or any romance influencing them, a refreshing turnout for a Hollywood script.

This was an era where the taste of scandal was your guaranteed rise to fame, an era where high school popularity was transposing from school to online social status. The Bling Ring represents teenagers under the influence of idol worship, striving to become wannabes, indoctrinated by the meaningless of celebrity magazines, reality TV and following in their every step. In Paris Hilton’s own words: "These kids wanted a piece of everyone’s lives and the only way to get it is by stealing it”.

Sofia Coppola ends the movie with the perfect soundtrack, “Super Rich kids” by Frank Ocean, credits rolling as he sings:

“Too many joy rides in daddy's Jaguar

Too many white lies and white lines

Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends”

If you want a taste of the 2010s, the Bling Ring is the ultimate movie that will make you feel part of an out of touch, careless generation.

xoxo, pop juice from Paris