Inventing Anna premiered on Netflix in February. The latest Shondaland and Netflix production follows one of the most famous recent white-collar true-crime cases. Anna Delvey (Sorokin is her real last name) is a scammer that robbed luxury hotels and elite banks in New York. Presenting herself as a German Heiress, when in reality she came from a middle-class family from Germany, she was able to create an image that the people who belong to the social groups she wanted to be a part of were drawn to.
The eight-episode miniseries is a fast-paced narrative that follows the perspective of Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky). She is a journalist who deals with the backlash of committing a grave mistake in a past article she wrote for the Manhattan Magazine. When Vivian hears about Anna Delvey’s (Julia Garner) case, she is immediately intrigued. Anna and Vivian become the protagonists of this story which seems too incredible to be real, largely thanks to the imaginative lies of Delvey; as every episode states, “This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.”
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Rhimes warns the audience to view the miniseries as not the ultimate truth of what happened, but as a fun story based on incredible circumstances, indicating the postmodern reality that no one version of the truth is the whole truth. The two characters, both based on real-life people (as all other characters in the show), have to face a lot of things to be able to tell their story. Amongst the hardships they have to endure is the fact that they are both women trying to make a living in male-dominated environments. This led to a lot of debate over sexism and what is ‘white feminism,’ amongst other things.
Shonda Rhimes’ latest Netflix miniseries has received controversial criticism almost as much as Anna Delvey herself. Some claim that the show denunciates sexism and others use Anna as an example of a feminism that isn’t inclusive. Here is a brief explanation of how Inventing Anna tackles sexism.
Sexist Moments In The Show
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The series protagonists are two women who are living in very different situations. Vivian Kent is a journalist who works for an online magazine. At the beginning of the series, she is constantly punished for a supposed journalistic mistake that she committed a few months back. Vivian keeps having to fight her boss and her superior (both men) to pursue Anna’s story - which she thinks is more complex than it seems.
Later in the series, the audience finds out that she didn’t commit any error: she asked her superior to fact-check a story, and he said he would. However, he didn’t do it, and there was a piece of wrong information in one of the stories that composed the article they published. That led her to be punished and only get the worst stories to write while her superior got a promotion and new office, and Vivian thus seethes with a desire to smash the patriarchy
Anna Sorokin deals with sexism constantly, even if in different ways than Vivian. Anna is not taken seriously once she starts to try to get a loan for her fake foundation. The bank managers say that they only want to get in her bed. They also say that she won’t be seriously considered for a loan because she dresses like a woman in her early twenties (her actual age) and is stereotypically feminine. Anna then changes her appearance to try to look older and ‘more serious.’
After that, she has a lot of business meetings in expensive restaurants, with a majority of male lawyers. In one instance, she dines with two bank managers in the restaurant of the hotel she is living in (one of the many hotels she scammed and didn’t pay her bill). The dinner ends, and she walks to the elevator. One of the men follows her. He then proceeds to try to touch her body and insists that he wants to come to her room, even when she expressly told him that she doesn’t want it. He only goes away when another woman, Neff (Alexis Floyd), who works in the hotel and becomes Anna’s friend, interferes.
Anna Sorokin Is Not A Girlboss
The term ‘girlboss’ is loosely used nowadays. It should represent a self-made woman who owns her business and is her own boss. It is easy to understand why people started to call Anna a girlboss when the series came out. However, just like the real person she is based on: she is a criminal. The major fault of the show is trying to make the audience root for Anna when she is the villain of the story. Anna constantly says that if she was a man, she would already have the loan for her foundation. That is, most likely, correct. However, it is not an excuse to scam people and commit crimes.
Even though the show depicts sexist situations, Anna Delvey is not a feminist character. She is based on an extremely smart woman who scammed New York’s elite. While she did have to overcome sexist environments, she has not once made a feminist action that didn’t benefit her. She scammed her (women) friends just like everyone else in the show. The idea that she represents the ‘if every woman wanted to do it, they could’ fantasy is very simplistic. Anna is a white European immigrant: she represents a small percentage of women. It is impossible to state that her ethnicity didn’t have anything to do with the trial’s outcome and how people perceived her. Anna committed various serious crimes, for which she went to jail, and is not someone who should be looked at as a role model for young girls. In fact, she’s an abhorrent, unlikable monster, and if the world was filled with her, it’d be a much darker, nastier place.
The true-crime Netflix series is an admittedly fun watch. The amazing wardrobes, electric soundtrack, and incredible acting (especially by Julia Garner) are entertaining and capture the audience’s attention from the get-go. The real crimes should not be, however, something to be overlooked due to Garner’s accent, charisma, and acting talents, combined with being a Shonda Rhimes and Shondaland TV show.
