If you have access to the internet, then you’ve heard about Inventing Anna. Netflix’s hit miniseries documents the “mostly true” story of Anna Delvey/Sorokin/Sorokina, and how she conned her way through Manhattan’s elite to score the dream. All over the internet it’s “what Netflix’s Inventing Anna left out”, drawing comparisons and contrasts between the show and the actual person who swindled millions, all while sporting Prada, Gucci, and Channel. I’m not a fan of hers, I swear. But come on, it’s a real life Oceans 8 meets Gossip Girl. What more could you want from a Netflix miniseries?
Speaking of stories, all this talk about the ‘real story’ within Anna’s journey reveals what we should have known all along, as we were led by our valiant narrator: Vivian Kent’s battle against the clock. Vivian Kent, a journalist who fell from grace after one dastardly article tarnished her career. Vivian stakes her fate among those like her, those with ruined reputations relying on Anna Delvey’s trial to fix things for them. But Vivian isn’t just a journalist clawing her way back up to the top, she’s also a wife and expecting mother. Her pregnancy, a fact Vivian herself much denies throughout the early episodes of the show, is not a dreaded fact of her life. In fact, the baby is well wanted, and Vivian’s husband initially calls Vivian out for not caring about the fetus inside of her. But, as Vivian herself establishes, that’s not the problem.
So, yeah, Anna Delvey is interesting- certainly. No one can deny that: she steals a Tesla’s worth of yacht time, racks up tens of thousands of hotel charges playing real life Eloise at the Plaza, sits front row at fashion shows, commandeers a private jet, and almost manages to get 200 million in loans from the most powerful banks in the world. But Vivian Kent is normal. Portrayed in Inventing Anna by actress Anna Chlumsky who gives an extraordinarily nuanced performance in the show. Kent’s normalcy is what makes this story: a story of wealth and power unimaginable to those who exist outside the one percent, yet more importantly, a story of the gender rules and roles that underwrite the realm of the world’s elite. The behaviors expected and allowed, the weaponized incompetence that ultimately gained Anna the ability to con her way through millions.
Vivian Kent’s storyline works two fold: as our narrator and investigator into all things Anna, she guides us through Anna’s story, which simultaneously (geniusly) follows her pregnancy. Throughout the show, Vivian deals with more and more pregnancy symptoms, pains, and difficulties which she ignores as she pushes through in the name of her somewhat obsessive need to finish the story before her baby is born. In the few hours she has to finish the story, she is working with a towel under her chair, for when her water breaks. It finally does, the moment her editor comes over to ask if she is done. And she is. These parrallel storylines, of the story being born as her daughter is about to be, is more than just narrative brilliance. It’s the calling of the modern woman’s need for personhood. To do something, to be someone, without first being a woman or a mother or a wife. We may be forced to accept womanhood, or at least the unbearable parts– but the ferocious need for personhood in a world, a workplace, a home, which so often denies us value–cannot be ignored.
This is not a story of a con woman, or a fake heiress, or about the borderline disgusting world of the wealthy. The mentions of Elizabeth Holmes, a scammer similar to Anna Delvey in that she conned the wealthy of the world into believing in an unachievable business idea, are not lightly used. Ms Holmes, with her own biopic The Dropout released on Hulu earlier this month, is another woman all too aware of her gender and what it means for her in the business world. Elizabeth, Anna, Vivian- they know what we all do, that womanhood must be denied in order to achieve their success. We may lower our voices, choose dark suits over dresses, deny our very biology, all in the name of staking our claim to personhood before our time is up.
One thing I hope this show gets people to think about is why we, as women, continue to choose these subversions of the patriarchal ressures applied to women in the workplace. Subversions which, might I add, did not make Ms Holmes or Ms Delvey particularly better off. I would even argue they are unsuccessful because they are engaging with the patriarchy in order to manipulate it to their advantage. For this, I commend them. Yeah yeah, they’re criminals, stole a lot of money, blah blah blah. That’s extremely girlboss of them.
So, perhaps let’s take Inventing Anna as an opportunity to find where in our work we find the patriarchy- and where we can use it to our advantage, without having to invent new identities and steal millions of dollars. And freaking watch Inventing Anna— without a doubt the best show of 2022.