Ritual, Myth, & Magic in Sofia Coppola’s 'The Bling Ring'
Most of us who have seen The Bling Ring associate it as a cultural commentary film on the fallout of 2000s pop culture through a group of teens who rob celebrity houses. What sounds like a stale and dry plot (and was critically received as so) continues to draw me back. In this writing I consider what elements of ritual, myth, and magic are embedded in the storytelling.
THE GODS
In Los Angeles there is a neighbourhood called Mount Olympus. It is popular with many celebrities. It’s featured on all the celebrity house hunting shows and I’m pretty sure it was shot into Coppola’s film.
In Coppola’s film, we never see the celebrities the kids rob, apart from Paris Hilton who vanishes between cuts of a two second cameo. In Ancient Greece, nobody ever saw the Gods on Mount Olympus. If you did, it meant you were in trouble. It meant you had a curse placed on you. Eventually, a God sees one of the kids. They are arrested and cursed by the Gods.
The Gods in Coppola’s film are Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, and Orlando Bloom. The pagan Gods of the Christianised world are celebrities because there is only one God and He is beyond us. The closest we can get to Him is by reaching for the pinnacles of power and esteem and becoming celebrities.
The Gods (celebrities, who I will refer to as Gods to make the point) in Coppola’s film have no distinguishing qualities. They are simply powerful because they are famous: not because they represent life, death, rebirth, or any qualities that enhance the human experience. No. All they represent are mere appearances, which is what these kids and their broader culture worships.
MYTH
The myths of the Bling Ring that get communicated back and forth are tabloid headlines: “Lindsay got another DUI?”, “Paris is out of town this weekend?”. Each of these myths feeds rituals. Rituals are the enactment and calcification of myth in society. Their rituals are to dress in designer clothes, go out to clubs, get arrested, and be in the headlines.
All the celebrities they robbed at some point got arrested and then were mythologized in the tabloids for these arrests. These are the myths the kids of the Bling Ring learned and lived by.
Joseph Campbell says in every society, we live in accordance with the myths we are presented. If you grew up in California, it’s as if your mythic structure will inevitably inherent a struggle for and against fame.
RITUAL
Rituals are performed to absorb the powers of the Gods.
In ancient times, Aphrodite had rituals as did Dionysus. Aphrodite was worshipped for love and war; Dionysus for fertility.
In the film, Rebecca (played by my friend Katie!) has a scene where she sprays Lohan’s perfume on herself in front of a mirror, literally absorbing the essence of Lindsay. This is similar to how ancients burnt certain sage varietals for the goddesses to find them and bless them. With what? In Rebecca’s case, a spot among the stars.
In the documentary version of The Bling Ring, Alexis Haines talks about how these robberies were highly ritualised, referencing the ring leader in her religious approaches to stealing from celeb homes.
MAGIC
Magic in the Bling Ring is best exemplified by the Leslie Jones character, who exercises the Law of Attraction, which is a method in manipulating our thought systems to “get closer to what we want.” The Law of Attraction is a spell. The lesson in every myth about spells is that once they’re cast, you can’t control them or what will happen.
Just look at Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, when the main character messes around with a magical spell and becomes a donkey. That’s what happens in Bling Ring. A bunch of kids mess around with vision boards and become criminals.
THE DOCUMENTARY
One thing I don’t like about the documentary (as well as documentary in general), is that these mythical elements get lost in the fold.
The beauty of the story Sofia told is it is, at the end of the day, a story that captures a primordial religious impulse, expressed through the culture of late-stage entertainment capitalism.
The documentary rather responds to what critics of the feature film argued: why should we care about a bunch of spoiled teenagers who want to be famous? In the documentary, we learn their stories. We see their wounds. We understand why they did it. But like most documentaries today, we learn this for no other reason than to be entertained and shown something we fear becoming. The feature film, on the other hand, pierces something deep of the human spirit.
That is our desire to be bonded with something greater than ourselves; that is our desire to conquer life’s challenges and achieve immortality; that is our deep awareness of our power. That is what you may call the spirit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Bling Ring is one of the top films I list when I think of Los Angeles. When I was a kid I thought Los Angeles meant “Lost Angels” or “Lost Spirits.” The Bling Ring shows us where (lost) spirits tread when they are emplaced in a culture of diamond-encrusted crud.