The Bling Ring by Nancy Jo Sales – review

Young, hot and upset ... A film still from the film of Sofia. Photo: Merrick Morton

For a satire on modern celebrity culture of America, The Bling Ring is hard to beat. And, like all tales that come from the United States that sound too far-fetched and redolent with symbolism to be true, it's all true.

Between 2008 and 2009, a group of five teenagers, a boy and four girls, spent their weekend on the outskirts of Los Angeles by typical modern American teenager stuff, borghese: update their Facebook pages, going to Pilates lessons, reading celebrity gossip on the internet, take pictures of themselves on their iPhone. And then when were done with everything, would get drunk, get high and get in the car. But after that they did something else: pillaged the homes of celebrities who had spent the day reading on the web.

The celebrity, perhaps feeling protected by its fame, often left the keys under the doormat and rarely turned on their alarm systems. Many noticed that even had been robbed, because they had so much stuff. All in all, the children were able to take over 3 million dollars-worth of paraphernalia celebrities before the LAPD finally cottoned on to them. But that was only the beginning of strange bleeding between celebrities and wannabes in this saga.

Nancy Jo Sales, a writer for Vanity Fair, who specializes in youth and celebrity stories, written on what has been dubbed the "Bling Ring" in 2010, and she was the perfect person to do it. Sales is the journalist who you can blame or credit for bringing Paris Hilton nationally and then internationally, when he wrote the first great story on heir in 2000. Hilton and the breed of celebrities who have followed in his wake – sadly dubbed "celebutards" for some blogger who wrote obsessively on them – were the celebrities were raiding the Bling Ring. Not because they were warriors who were giving class these spoiled "heads heir" (another popular term) have earned it – but because they wanted to be them. And if it could not be, well, wear the clothes, which, like many of their victims were famous mostly for being fashion plates, was essentially the same thing.

The Bling Ring is the extended version of the original story of selling the magazine, which has since inspired a movie of the same name directed by Sofia Coppola. Just like an article about celebrity-dazzled Vanity Fair – a magazine that has recently taken the sparkling culture commentator Pippa Middleton as a columnist – occasionally can scare with its sharpness, this book is much more memorable and insightful than you might initially assume. Sales deals to find the burglars obsessed with fame within the context of the time, if occasionally to a degree quite tenuous. She is excellent in increasing victims of this ring Bling, as Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and model Miranda Kerr and the role that they have played the Bling Ring. But I was convinced by his contention that "malice and aggression" that dominated American politics in the first decade of this century have contributed to narcissism and self-potential destructiveness of celebrity and the Bling ring. But it's hard not to be charmed by its parallel of the rise and fall of Hilton and Bush.

During the Bush Presidency, there was sales is described as "a new style, celebrity means reporting" and the type of women that has attracted the most attention were "young, ' hot ', female and quite troubled. Became famous through the most birdies, as leaked sex tapes and reality TV. Some celebrities had talent, but his fame came from their bad behavior, and the line between fame and infamy has become irrelevant, as long as they looked good in their mug shots. Hilton, Lohan, Nicole Richie and Britney Spears were figureheads of the group, followed by the diluted versions of today, the sisters Kardashian, famous thanks to triple play a sex tape, a reality TV show and a father who defended O.j. Simpson.

For this new breed of celebrities, could not just be rich and beautiful – it should be aggressively unpleasant. I'm sure that, say, Jack Nicholson was not a Saint in his time, but he has never starred in a reality TV show in which he humbled working?class people like Hilton and Richie has done for four years in The "Simple Life". Snarky yet obsessive coverage of celebrity culture on websites like tmz.com and Gawker and in magazines like Us Weekly, has helped make be a celebrity seems more desirable is even more accessible than ever. Significantly, the Bling ring knew which celebrities were out of town looking for their movements on tmz.com.

The difference between A list (ish) and aspiring now is almost indistinguishable, especially in Los Angeles. While it was going on the case, a member of the Bling Ring, Alexis Meiers, was filming her own reality TV show and sales, to his great embarrassment, was allowed to interview you just in front of the cameras. Detective Brett Goodkin, who worked on the case, proved unable to resist the starving himself, and appeared in the film by Coppola. He could now lose their jobs.

Then there is Chapman, a filmmaker who is fascinated by fame throughout his career, sometimes an interesting effect (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation), sometimes less successfully (Marie Antoinette, somewhere). She showed her weight as a Director independent of his father, but it once was, as Hilton, famous only because of his last name. Is a name that remains irresistible to publishers by sales, since they have splashed across the cover of the book. We're all vultures feasting on the carcass of celebrities.

Be awesome ‧ Hadley Freeman: modern living for the modern woman is published by fourth estate

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