Analytical Essay: The Bling Ring Essay Sample

The film The Bling Ring offers an insight into the life or rebellious law-breaking youth. The factors of their activity that trigger the discussion: the youngsters systematically break into people’s houses and may visit the same place 8 times; they steal property, causing 3 million damage in total; they do drugs and drive under influence, which ultimately leads to a car accident. The essay includes an insight into disobedience glamorization, sexualization, gendering and racialization. The causes for such manipulations will be attempted to deduce with further interpreted.
Firstly, the most pressing issue appears to be glamorization of illegal activity. It allows young people to lead the life they see on the screen, in the news and over the web. Stealing gives them fashionable clothes, expensive accessories and money for constant partying, clubbing and boosting their confidence. The latter is achieved by means of sharing on social media and spreading rumors among their friends, with everybody gossiping and praising their provocativity. The young people feel as if they were the elite, with all the luxuries coming from their illegal deeds. They take multiple pictures looking trendy in clubs and simply holding money. We may assume that the media influence and impact on the youngsters is much deeper than it may appear at a glance. Media is capable of making everything look glamorous, thus making celebrities and their lifestyle the main goal for the youth, which should be achieved by all means, even illegal – as characters do. Consequently, media glamorization extends in making unlawful things look glamorous as well – for example doing drugs, as a number of celebrities does.
Glamorization seems to be impossible without sexualization. Girls mention whom they would like to sleep with and address each other in a derogatory way a few times. Also, they are constantly concerned if they look sexually attractive, even during the legal case. Concerning their illegal activity, they steal revealing dresses, underwear and private pictures. It seems that they try to imitate what is portrayed in the tabloids. Since the gang is mainly female, we may assume they feel their body being sexualized. Moreover, the chances are they are brainwashed to conform to this sexualized stereotype. Nicki’s character has a tattoo on her lower back; once she dressed up in a skirt, bra and open west; when meeting a mailman, she unzipped her sweater so to reveal the cleavage. Once again, we see how powerful the media is when shaping our perception of how we are to look and behave.
Having mentioned the female-prevailing nature of the gang, we may notice it is not a stereotypical image of who criminals are. There is only one boy in the gang, though he mainly remains nervous and timid when it comes to breaking in and stealing. He is pressured by more arrogant girls, who lure him into the activity in the first place. The film reveals females can also be impudent criminals, having the effrontery to drive stolen cars and break into a house just to party in one’s private clubbing room. Society usually sees men as potentially dangerous criminals due to plain statistics. However, in the end of the film 3 girls and 1 boy are sentenced. These 3 are young girls, who committed serious crimes in order to be popular and celebrity alike. It triggers us to open our eyes to women criminal activity, especially young girls, pressured by sometimes unattainable societal stereotypes. Of course, their deeds cannot be justified only by these stereotypes. Contrariwise, their fearlessness was ignited by the stereotype that nobody will assume girls can be criminals. However, the portion of negative female pressuring still takes its place, at times leading to what is portrayed in the film.
The last manipulation concerning criminal activity is its racialization. We are now used that Hollywood films try to claim diversity by means of introducing background actors not of a white descent. In this movie, we do not see such characters. Thus, we may imply this was done specifically in terms of racialization. So, the movie offers a non-standard illustration of the cause. All the members of the gang are of light skin color. We now live in a multicultural world, though because of years of propaganda and intolerance, it seems that white society now has a stereotype of people of different races being thieves and criminals, - but not of the white race. Here, not only we see young girls committing crimes, but all of them are white, which needs to be stressed and provoke non-stereotypical acceptation of criminal activity in general.
All in all, the film describes some of the extremes of modern youth activity, which is triggered by both outer factors, such as mass media promoting glamorous lifestyle, and inner ones, such as age-related psychological weaknesses. The characters perform systemic violence to the unacquainted people by stealing their possessions and putting at risk their safety. Furthermore, they are violent towards themselves by means of obeying imposed standards, abusing substance, sacrificing their moral values and pressuring others (the case with Marc) into illicit activity. We may conclude that sexual and glamorous expectations, gender roles and racial stereotypes play a great role in teenage behavior, including its criminal aspects. Such cases could be prevented by various means. Changing media focus, reducing time teenagers are exposed to media platforms, proper moral education and stimuli may be of help. Also, more genuine parental attention during this sensitive age is vital.