The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World by Nancy Jo Sales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
What struck me most about the people and the incidents in The Bling Ring was alien it all was. Here’s a book that reports on a series of crimes, and contextualizes it all with some pop-sociology: discussions on fame, voyeur culture, teenage sexuality, the changing tides of fashion, and so on. None of it could I relate to. None of it. This was as familiar to me as any gossip rag or celebrity bio-pic.
But then, I’m a 41 year old middle-class white guy with a literature degree, a job, and a house in Seattle.
Nevertheless, Nancy Jo Sales has done a good job building as much of a narrative as possible out what’s really not much of a story at all. Some kids robbed some celebrities. I just don’t care—so why did I read it? Was it schadenfreude? Some kind of catharsis? Probably it was just the architect lover in me- I like seeing the structures behind the stories. Crime rings and the mafia and the complication of long, drawn-out political maneuvering. It’s all intrigue.
And since I plan on seeing Sofia Coppola’s film version of these events, I wanted the back story.
The thing of it is, though, there really isn’t much back story. Some kids robbed some celebrities, I said above, and that’s pretty much everything. So Sales’ book isn’t interesting for the intrigue, but for that alien aspect I also mentioned. I don’t feel sorry for Paris Hilton, nor am I glad that anything happened to her. Reading this was like watching a child poke a stick in an ant hill.
Interesting, though, how the kids got away with it while they did: none of the celebrities though to secure their belonging, and they didn’t even know what all they’d had that had been stolen in the first place. I’m not saying this justifies the theft. But it certainly suggests why I have no empathy. It shows how I can’t relate.
Indeed, my wife and set an alarm on our house when we leave, because we know it will make us feel better if we are robbed—if someone is so motivated as to overcome our best efforts at security, there’s larger forces in play than just random victimization.
You see, we all seek meaningfulness in things—and random kids stealing designer shoes from celebrities has no real meaning at all.