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Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'
The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World by Nancy Jo Sales
1 review
informative
slow-paced
This is a really interesting book about a high profile, and highly misunderstood, robbery spree that rocked Hollywood in the mid- to late 2000s. The book is incredibly well researched and brings in a lot of cultural/pop-culture elements that I would not have considered when thinking about the case but that I found really add to the understanding of the crimes, the perpetrators, and the suspects.
There were a few things that held this back from its 4 star potential for me.
1) Nancy Jo Sales cannot decide if she is impartial or not.
I would be fine if she wasn't, thrilled if she was, but she flip flops between more neutral reporting and a judgemental gossip blog style. I think this is a similar style to how Vanity Fair articles are written—which is where Sales works, or worked while covering this story—so it makes sense but also doesn't work for this kind of journalism.
2) Nick Prugo is given too much forgiveness.
Perhaps this is my own bias appearing from what I've seen when reading about this case, but Sales frames Nick as almost another victims of circumstance or culture. Maybe this is because he was one of 2 perpetrators willing to speak with Sales, but it's very noticeable. Sales extends a more neutral tone and gentle attitude towards Prugo despite him being an admitted part of all of the crimes she judges the girls of the Bling Ring for. That brings me to...
3) She's way too judgemental towards Alexis Neiers.
Neiers was the only other perpetrators willing to speak with Sales but she does not get the same treatment Prugo does. Sales misses no opportunity to talk about her squeaky baby voice, her tattoos, the fact she teaches a pole dancing class (it's a very legitimate form of exercise not just stripping). All this while also lamenting the oversexualization and infantilization of girls in media at the time. The irony is palpable.
The end of the book seems to "redeem" Neiers by mentioning that she's had a child, but it comes off instead as if Sales thinks that respectable women behave and become mothers and that by not doing so the girls of the Bling Ring, and Neiers before the birth of her first, are somehow bad people. Certainly the break and entering, driving while impaired, etc are enough for a reader to judge them, but Sales adds an undertone of misogyny that wasn't needed.
4) This one is brief, but Sales should have expanded on the public reaction to the crimes.
She briefly touches on the kind of comments left on sites like TMZ, mostly to frame them as horrible for glorifying the actions of the perpetrators. However, there's a sentence long story of a cab driver who expressed his admiration of the Bling Ring to Sales because he thinks the Hollywood elite don't deserve such luxury while everyone else scrapes by. She briefly explains this was likely an opinion influenced by the 2008 economic crash that happened right before the crime spree, but brushes it away by saying the Bling Ring was made up of mostly upper middle class young people.
I wish she would have talked about that more. Why is upper middle class different from middle class? Why does she term them as being closer to the social class of their victims but still say they stole from rich people, implying they themselves were not rich? The perpetrators all rubbed shoulders with celebrities in the LA nightclub scenes: did this close or widen the gap being their upper middle-class-ness and their victims upper class-ness?
I would like to know, especially as someone who did not grow up in the States and doesn't really remember the financial crash of '08.
Overall though, if someone is interested in learning more about the Bling Ring this would be the book I recommend to them. It's comprehensive and factual, if a little opinionated.
There were a few things that held this back from its 4 star potential for me.
1) Nancy Jo Sales cannot decide if she is impartial or not.
I would be fine if she wasn't, thrilled if she was, but she flip flops between more neutral reporting and a judgemental gossip blog style. I think this is a similar style to how Vanity Fair articles are written—which is where Sales works, or worked while covering this story—so it makes sense but also doesn't work for this kind of journalism.
2) Nick Prugo is given too much forgiveness.
Perhaps this is my own bias appearing from what I've seen when reading about this case, but Sales frames Nick as almost another victims of circumstance or culture. Maybe this is because he was one of 2 perpetrators willing to speak with Sales, but it's very noticeable. Sales extends a more neutral tone and gentle attitude towards Prugo despite him being an admitted part of all of the crimes she judges the girls of the Bling Ring for. That brings me to...
3) She's way too judgemental towards Alexis Neiers.
Neiers was the only other perpetrators willing to speak with Sales but she does not get the same treatment Prugo does. Sales misses no opportunity to talk about her squeaky baby voice, her tattoos, the fact she teaches a pole dancing class (it's a very legitimate form of exercise not just stripping). All this while also lamenting the oversexualization and infantilization of girls in media at the time. The irony is palpable.
The end of the book seems to "redeem" Neiers by mentioning that she's had a child, but it comes off instead as if Sales thinks that respectable women behave and become mothers and that by not doing so the girls of the Bling Ring, and Neiers before the birth of her first, are somehow bad people. Certainly the break and entering, driving while impaired, etc are enough for a reader to judge them, but Sales adds an undertone of misogyny that wasn't needed.
4) This one is brief, but Sales should have expanded on the public reaction to the crimes.
She briefly touches on the kind of comments left on sites like TMZ, mostly to frame them as horrible for glorifying the actions of the perpetrators. However, there's a sentence long story of a cab driver who expressed his admiration of the Bling Ring to Sales because he thinks the Hollywood elite don't deserve such luxury while everyone else scrapes by. She briefly explains this was likely an opinion influenced by the 2008 economic crash that happened right before the crime spree, but brushes it away by saying the Bling Ring was made up of mostly upper middle class young people.
I wish she would have talked about that more. Why is upper middle class different from middle class? Why does she term them as being closer to the social class of their victims but still say they stole from rich people, implying they themselves were not rich? The perpetrators all rubbed shoulders with celebrities in the LA nightclub scenes: did this close or widen the gap being their upper middle-class-ness and their victims upper class-ness?
I would like to know, especially as someone who did not grow up in the States and doesn't really remember the financial crash of '08.
Overall though, if someone is interested in learning more about the Bling Ring this would be the book I recommend to them. It's comprehensive and factual, if a little opinionated.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Stalking
Minor: Domestic abuse, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Sexual violence
The "stalking" warning is a bit of a stretch but there are detailed accounts of how the Bling Ring found their way into the homes of public figures. It can be a bit unnerving to read about how easy it was to do so.