IDENTITY THEFT
Bling Ring tells the true story of a group of California high school students who rob luxury clothing and jewelry from Hollywood celebrities. The kids never really understand that what they’re doing is immoral, as well as illegal. And the movie, though it satirizes them gently, especially at the end, when they’re caught and brought to trial, doesn’t really make a judgment. Instead it looks more deeply at the way they use their loot (a black asymmetrical Lanvin cocktail dress, a quilted leather Chanel clutch, glossy pink Loboutin heels, a cookie-sized mens gold Rolex) to craft identities for themselves.
Their leader, Rebecca, says she wants to go to design school and have an accessories line, and her sidekick Brad says he wants to manage his own lifestyle brand. And all of them take turns styling one another before they step out together socially. But they’re not deeply interested in fashion, or even in celebrity. What they’re really interested in is crafting identities for themselves, as all teenagers are, both in social media and in the world. Their parents and teachers are absent and distant and monotonous, and the only cohesive, appealing identities they see are those of celebrities.
There’s a lovely, long view of Rebecca inside Lindsey Lohan’s home during one of the robberies. She’s dressed in one of the starlet’s dress and some of her jewels, gazing at herself in the dressing room mirror. The mirror is festooned with bright apple-sized bulbs, a vulgarization of a stage actor’s mirror. As Rebecca looks at herself we look at her, in pure profile, with tenderness and objectivity, not so differently the way we look at Vermeer’s Woman in a Pearl Necklace. What we’re seeing is a young woman constructing and discovering an image of herself, and, finally, accepting it. It’s something that, in American life, as adults, we do and redo, every day.