Recent years have seen an onslaught of true-crime documentaries and movie adaptations (The Tinder Swindler, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.) , and with it, a dramatic surge in the public’s unthinking obsession with criminals as well. Our latest beloved malefactor is Inventing Anna’s diva-swindler: Anna Delvey.
The ostensibly innocuous miniseries Inventing Anna has found itself acutely enmeshed in the crosshairs of critics. Even Anna Delvey’s (Julia Garner) bizarre German-Russian accent does little to deflect attention from the show’s panoply of issues.
What is Inventing Anna?
Netflix’s Inventing Anna tells the grippingly bewildering true story of Anna Sorokin, a self-proclaimed German heiress who inveigles her way into the high society of New York under the alias of Anna Delvey, single-handedly defrauding society’s cream of the crop of a total of $275,000. This true-crime series shines an investigative light on Sorokin’s swindle, with the mystery of her long con unravelling as new perspectives are introduced to viewers each episode.
The seemingly enthralling premise of the series meteorically launched it into the height of international popularity. Inventing Anna easily clinched 196M viewing hours between February 14 and 20 alone and comfortably became Netflix’s most watched English-language series in a one week period, even outperforming fan-favourites such as hit-series You.
An ill-fated series?
As with many other viewers, I came into this series expecting an insightful exploration of the perplexing character that Sorokin encapsulates — her motives and rationales. Yet, 9 long episodes later, I am left just as, if not even more, confused about the driving forces behind Sorokin’s grift.
Inventing Anna confoundingly places at the forefront a disgraced journalist Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), rather than the obvious choice — its eponymous character. Kent spends the entirety of the series tunnel-visioned-ly grovelling after Anna for details about her swindle, in an attempt to get the scoop of her career and rid herself of the infamy she earned after having mistakenly written an erroneous story of a kid who had claimed to make millions of dollars.
Kent seems to be a representation of us viewers as we struggle to make sense of Sorokin’s swindle. Unfortunately, the limelight on Kent inevitably means that the relatively more interesting character, Anna, is sidelined in her own story. Viewers lose access to the mind of the con artist, and are instead confusedly strung along in Kent’s journey.
Anna Chlumsky as Vivian Kent in Inventing Anna
Would the show have benefited from an increased focus on Anna? Perhaps a telling of the story from Anna’s perspective could have enlightened viewers about her psyche to a greater extent.
Here’s where a conundrum is conceived. Unfortunately, the real Anna has not actually revealed much information about herself, or her rationales, in the countless of interviews she’s been involved with. Most of what we can glean from said interviews is rather shallow (“The thing is, I’m not sorry”, she said to the New York Times). Whether or not these interviews show that she is purposefully playing coy, or that she is just a genuinely mean-spirited person, is unclear. One thing is unambiguous though: the show is crippled by its lack of substance to work with when it comes to Anna.
With the odds so insurmountably stacked against their favour, it seems increasingly (and painfully) evident that the choice made by showrunners to even produce Inventing Anna, and by extension, attempt to circumvent the aforementioned limitations, is one that was sorely myopic.
Girlbossifying Anna
The dearth of available information on Anna seemed to have forced the showrunners’ hands when it comes to purposeful (or accidental?) embellishment of facts. Inventing Anna seems to hail Anna as a feminist hero of sorts, perhaps as a cheap way to provide a plausible rationale for her swindle. Quips that accentuate this portrayal of her are regularly shoehorned into the episodes (Anna often inappropriately laments about how much easier it would be to secure funding for the construction of a Soho House-esque visual arts foundation, which she calls the Anna Delvey Foundation, had she been a man).
Ironically, this feminist take on Anna comes at the expense of other women in the series, most strikingly Anna’s former friend Rachel Deloache Williams (Katie Lowes), who was scammed out of $62,000 by Anna herself.
Inventing Anna vilifies the actual victims of Anna, whilst simultaneously uplifting Anna and her con. Anna is business-savvy and adaptable, while Rachel is emotional and greedy. Anna is depicted to unapologetically possess a proclivity for manipulating and lying to others to get her way, yet her unpleasant behaviour seems to be intentionally, and rather effectively, excused away as a by-product of her resolve, drive, and business ambitions.
Inventing Anna’s Anna is not the apathetic criminal that she is in real life, but rather a caricatural, likeable, and scarily sympathizable, mean girl who is reminiscent of a Russian Regina George. Sure, Anna is by no means construed as the next Mother Teresa (Anna wonders aloud, “Are you pregnant, or are you so very, very fat?” to an expecting Kent in the first episode), but the show’s ambivalent portrayal of Anna as a snobby feminist crusader leaves too much room for viewers to ultimately grow fond of the character and her schemes.
Was her feminism genuine or a fabricated shtick? Was Anna’s desire to create the Anna Delvey Foundation born out of narcissistic hedonism or an actual knack for business and passion for the arts? Struggling to piece together this ambiguous, ragtag group of factors, I must confess to have resigned to the prevailing, glorified narrative, that portrays Anna as a feminist icon and her scam an attempted defiance of the patriarchy.
Is it all bad?
Admittedly, not everything to have come out of this series is vapid. Julia Garner’s performance and her uncanny ability to mimic Anna’s distinctive accent is surely commendable. However, one actress’ performance is incommensurate to the deleterious repercussions birthed by the series.
Was this series necessary? Not by a long shot. The decision to dramatise the story of a notorious criminal such as Anna inherently meant that it would take a Herculean effort for showrunners to avoid making Anna a compelling and rootable character, an effort that is evidently absent, or at the very least, confused. Inventing Anna birthed a new Anna. An Anna with nobler motivations. An Anna we can like.
The cherry on the top of Inventing Anna’s blithe disregard for correspondence to facts is this cheeky disclaimer (“This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are completely made up.”) shown at the start of each episode. The show acknowledges its misconstruction of Anna’s swindle, and perhaps even problematically embraces it.
Disclaimer shown at the start of each episode
So, while Inventing Anna is peppered with tons of iconic quotable scenes, the Pandora's box of ramifications that it opens up is too much of a trade-off.
Watch or Drop?
While the marvels of Anna’s colourful life of crime remain so (unhealthily) fascinating, Inventing Anna’s 9-hour long runtime should be more than enough to dispel potential viewers. If you are in search of an entertainingly irreverent series (think: A milder Scream Queens or Mean Girls) , Inventing Anna just might be your cup of tea, assuming, obviously, that you are willing to make that 9-hour commitment . Otherwise, for those interested in a more grounded and insightful peer into Anna’s glamorous life of crime, you are likely better off spending a fraction of that 9 hours on the myriad of available documentaries and podcasts about her.
Ultimately, it is indeterminable whether Anna’s $275,000 scam or the viewers’ 9-hour viewing experience was more tragic of a swindle. One thing’s for sure though, only one person seems to have benefitted from this vacuous exposé, ironically. Walking away not only $320,000 richer (Anna was paid by Netflix to adapt her life story for TV) but also with a reality television deal is none other than Anna Sorokin, who has once again swindled us all.
Written by: Reyess Peh (22A15)
Edited by: Ryan Tan (22S75)
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