Because one of the most emblematic things of the millennial generation is pop culture-oriented retromania, it’s no wonder that the story of Anna Delvey, not even five years old (from the time of her arrest), has been given a “historical” treatment by Shonda Rhimes. One that seeks to, as was the case with Joker or Birds of Prey, “humanize” this “highly complex” person and why she did what she did. Except The Joker and Harley Quinn are characters, and it’s easier to buy into DC Comics’ attempt at showing us how a sociopath becomes one. What childhood circumstances and adult disappointments, etc. might lead to it. Per Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), the journalist covering Anna’s story, “It’s not so simple, she’s not a sociopath.” She announces this with passion about Anna Sorokin a.k.a. Anna Delvey (Julia Garner—but Anna, to be clear, specifically requested Jennifer Lawrence for her part). “How do you know that?” her husband, Jack (Anders Holm), demands in irritation. Vivian replies, “Because of what happened at the Chateau Marmont.”
Of course, what Vivian doesn’t know is that “what happened at the Chateau Marmont” a.k.a. Anna’s “suicide attempt” has nothing to do with a cry for help and everything to do with more sociopathic machinations. Having unearthed a little loophole in the U.S. immigration system that stipulates the clock stops on a visa’s imminent or full-stop expiration when a health (or mental health) issue is involved, Anna—at least Rhimes’ version of Anna—decides the best thing to do would be to down plenty of Xanax mixed with rosé. This gets her to the very place Britney never wanted to be—Cedars Sinai—with the very restriction Britney never would have wanted—a 5150. But it’s all part of her grand design to get a psych evaluation that will recommend her attendance at rehab. Clearly, this is a part of the “totally made up” aspect of the disclaimer at the beginning of the show that seeks to dramatize (as if that were really necessary to an already dramatic story) Anna’s fall from grace. And to further play up that she was willing to do whatever it took not only to con people out of their cash, but also con her way out of any consequences. Even fabricate another story about her father being a drunk that she had to get away from. And maybe that last part is true—she had to get away from him because he represented a lifestyle she found abhorrent. Preferring instead to retreat into the glossy world of high-fashion magazines, a realm she initially aspired to break into the “honest” way by going to school at Central Saint Martins and “studying,” or whatever.
But it didn’t take long for Anna to drop out of college in favor of two internships at a PR firm in Berlin and Purple Magazine in Paris, respectively. When she ended up in NYC for Fashion Week in 2013, she quite simply never left, claiming it was easier to make “friends” there than in Paris. Or, more accurately, it was easier to find more gullible marks there than in Paris. Because, even though New York is known as a city of “savvy” and “jaded” people, there are just as many “fresh off the boaters” willing to be taken advantage of—in addition to those who don’t want to question anything, especially in the world of the upper class, when they’re told a certain story. For Anna delivered hers with the kind of confidence that only a “classic” millennial could. In that millennials are consistently stereotyped as the first of a generation that received trophies and gold stars just for showing up. In short, they were conditioned to believe that doing nothing warranted just as many accolades—demanded just as much respect—as actually trying to be “legitimate” at something. But it’s not as though Anna was an American child conditioned in this way, instead brought up in Russia before the rise of Putin at the dawn of the new century. The century, in fact, when millennials truly came of age despite having cemented memories of the 90s a.k.a. a time before the internet really popped off—something Gen Z will never know.
And, obviously, Inventing Anna wants us to ask: is it her fault, really? Having been conditioned by all those magazines and media outlets telling her who she should be and what was “acceptable” in order to be noticed in “high society”? If anything, we have only mass media to blame for holding up impossible “ideals” of capitalism as a benchmark for those who could never truly succeed at it without money to begin with. Right from the start of their existence—just like the people Anna managed to con for a while. Even so, Vivian wants Jack, and everyone else, to believe, “There is more to the story than you or I or anyone knows.” But really, the only thing “to” the story is that Anna has served as the sacrificial lamb for representing the “average” millennial in the eyes of most, even to this day, when the new focus should theoretically be on Gen Z as the “shitty generation.” But no, they with their supposed climate activism (despite all of them being just as “busy” on TikTok as millennials on Instagram) and deeper concern for gender fluidity have somehow made them come across as a “nobler” breed (even if Billie Eilish just hangs out in her bedroom all day saying “chink” into the camera). Perhaps because, once you cast a certain group of people in a particular light, it’s impossible to shift said negative light elsewhere. It’s just too ingrained in the collective consciousness. And hating millennials is one of those things ingrained. Mostly due to their “lazy,” “entitled” nature. In addition to the way in which they have no “practical” skills.
Because millennials are accused of being mere “curators” rather than creators, Bret Easton Ellis perhaps summed it (and the likes of Anna Delvey) up best when he said in White, “Your only hope of elevating yourself is through your brand, your profile, your status on social media. A friend of mine—in his early twenties—remarked recently that millennials are more curators than artists, a tribe of ‘aestheticists.’ Any young artist who goes on Tumblr, he told me, doesn’t actually want to create art—only to steal the art or be the art.”
Swap out Tumblr for a more relevant app and the truth about—as well as the perception of—the generation remains. Delvey wanted to be the “art” (ergo her “Cindy Sherman soliloquy” in Inventing Anna), to curate herself as someone who was an actual socialite. Someone like Edie Sedgwick, who Anna posted a video of only recently on her Instagram, when Sedgwick declares, “I’d like to turn the whole world on just for a moment. Just for a moment. It’s strange, wherever I’ve been, I’ve been quite notorious, and quite instantly so. I’ve never been anywhere where I haven’t been known.” Delvey, of course, sees herself that way as well, even though she’s, at best, a very New York-specific curiosity in the style of her newly-minted “bestie,” Julia Fox. In the same video, the interviewer asks Sedgwick what her family thinks of the movies she’s making with Andy Warhol. She replies, “They think I’m just beyond belief…and they’ve decided I shouldn’t have any money.” Anna studied under this idea of making others believe she genuinely was rich, it just so happened that her family controlled the purse strings, and her father could be quite tight with them if displeased, like “Fuzzy” Sedgwick with Edie.
Anna additionally appeared to have taken a cue from the nauseating Edie quote, “I came to New York to see what I could see—that’s from a children’s book, isn’t it?—and to find the living part.” But how can one be living when their soul is this dead? When their concerns are this shallow? Well, the answer, according to stereotype, is: because they’re a millennial. Vacuous, without skill, hopelessly narcissistic. So thanks, Ms. Delvey, for fortifying the trope that ought to have been left in the 2010s. And thanks, Ms. Rhimes, for counting on the retromania of other millennials who want to see themselves as they were, in a period of their twenties when it was so much easier to be frivolous and cavalier. Especially because no one yet really knew that everything posted on social media lasts forever. A document of vanity ad infinitum.
