It's the middle of a three-day weekend and yours truly is just chilling out. Last night I was watching The Bling Ring, a movie written and directed by Sofia Coppola. For those of you who don't know what the movie is about, it is based on the true story of a group of privileged teens from the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas who break into pop culture celebrities' house and steal designer clothes, accessories, jewelry, and so on. They eventually get caught, convicted, and do time for it. The two things that stood out for me were gluttony and stupidity. Gluttony is often associated with food and beverage but I'm assigning this characteristic to material objects. First, the gluttonous celebrities who never seem to be satisfied with just one watch or one pair of running shoes. These pop culture icons have closets and drawers full of stuff whose value alone could provide necessary social and medical services to the under served population of Los Angeles County for a long time. I seriously doubt the use a fraction of the stuff they have. Not only that, it's tasteless crap. It lacks substance in the style. I really have no idea why these pop celebrities are admired for their style. In a way they deserved to be robbed of their crap. I not condoning the actions of the real "Bling Ring" or suggesting that everyone break into the homes of celebrities and commit robbery. It's just that to see these excessive displays of tasteless trash on display in the media is vulgar and maybe getting robbed will teach them a lesson. There was also a show of gluttony on the part of privileged teens. It wasn't enough that they lived a comfortable suburban life, they needed more. They somehow needed designer clothes and accessories. I blame this on their parents. This is where the stupidity comes in.
The parents were presented as either very vacuous or neglectful. These teens were basically left on there own by naricisstic parents who didn't seem to notice what was going on until the police showed up. There was no structure to the families, not even a remote resemblance of it. The parents apparently were trying to be their children's best friends instead parents. Stupid. The mother of one girls came off as particularly idiotic. This woman was home schooling her girls according to concepts I the equally idiotic book The Secret. You could tell from the expression on the girls' faces that they thought the mom was complete clueless twit. Was any surprise that their kids were committing crimes, using, and drinking? No, of course not. To make matters worse, the "Bling Ring" bragged about their exploits on the social media pages. How stupid was that. Just as how stupid are we for holding these pop culture celebrities in our esteem. These are people who really haven't done anything worthy to deserve our praise. If it sounds like I'm being self-righteous, I apologize. One of the things about growing up is you learn to carefully chose who to admire. Just because someone's face is in a magazine doesn't make them worthy of admiration. I'm also being hard not the parents because I strongly believe that once you become a parent, you need learn to balance being the parent and being a friend. Parenting is an awesome responsibility, you've been given the little person and you're task is guide it to responsible adulthood. It's he hardest and most rewarding task in the world. When act like the parent of the real "Bling Ring" did, the failure is monumental.
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