A 2009 Guess campaign featuring Paris Hilton in a bejeweled baseball tee that reads, “Can you afford me?” is precisely the kind of imagery that explains the height of celebrity culture during the dawn of social media in the early aughts. It’s also the same imagery that is displayed in Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film The Bling Ring. Inspired by the Vanity Fair article “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” and the real life string of celebrity burglaries that occurred between 2008 and 2009, The Bling Ring is further investigation into the cult of celebrity and rise of internet culture that motivated a group of LA teens to rob their idols.
Obsessed with luxury brands like Chanel and Balmain, and a desire to fit in somewhere between the fashion and entertainment world, the teens involved in the real heist were lucky enough to be immortalized in one of the most glamorized and heavily reported scandals of the decade. Of course in the film, their names are changed to Rebecca (Katie Chang), Marc (Israel Broussard), Nicki (Emma Watson), Chloe (Claire Julien) and Sam (Taissa Farmiga), but nevertheless the allure and seductive nature of fame is translated into the film. Paris Hilton, one of the most significant victims of the burglaries, allowed Coppola and her crew to film in her home and even cameoed in it. It’s even revealed in a recent Netflix docuseries that one of the LAPD officers involved in the investigation appears as himself in the film. Clearly, between the screen adaptation and its true inspiration there’s evidence that our culture of celebrity worship makes any semblance of fame almost a necessity, which is exactly what the film explores.
As far as Coppola’s artistic interpretation of a group of amateur teen robbers, she’s able to capture an overwhelming sense of euphoria and belonging that is prevalent in the film’s clubby soundtrack, featuring artists like Azealia Banks and Phoenix. Scenes featuring the kids at LA nightclubs provide the obvious opulence and vanity of a bunch of privileged teens, but also reveal an odd comradery between each other. In a much different manner, usage of phone camera and laptop footage reminds us that these lavish bandits are really just teenagers recording photobooth videos in their parents homes, desperately seeking validation from their peers. Their search for validation and status is what drives the characters to rob, and with a youth culture so focused on branding and sharing your achievements online, it seemed almost praiseworthy.
Watson’s take on Nicki (or the actual Alexis Haines) gave us one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in The Bling Ring: “Let’s go to Paris’s, I wanna rob!”, but regardless of its humor, it also reveals a consensus within the group’s friends and other young people they socialize with at clubs. This is that most of their young friends weren’t shocked by their crimes, but even encouraged it. Not only were they committing high level felonies, but they were carefree enough to post them on social media to assert themselves into the lifestyle they aspired to live. This of course, being the reason it was so easy for law enforcement to match them with their crimes.
However, with the principle of social media being to publicize your accomplishments (burglary) and to hide your faults (insecurities) factored in with the accessibility of celebrities, it’s no wonder the Bling Ring kids felt that what they were participating in was actually a victimless crime, or rather not a crime at all.
Coppola’s The Bling Ring stylishly examines how youth culture was affected by the rise of reality TV and the accessibility of celebrities through the internet in the 2000s while also reminding us that our collective hunger for notoriety can be an insatiable one. It’s another reminder of how detrimental the cult of celebrity can be and the lengths one will go to have their Vanity Fair moment.
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