If Anyone Deserves American Citizenship, It's Anna...

How to become an "Influencer"... Anna wrote the book.

Slavoj Zizek, "Five Ethico-Political Fragments" (Fragment 5)

INVENTING A HERO OF OUR TIME

How can we be free today, in such a desperate situation? Let us conclude on a lighter note. One of the answers is provided by the Netflix 2022 miniseries Inventing Anna, created and produced by Shonda Rhimes. The series is inspired by the story of Anna Sorokin and Jessica Pressler’s article “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People” that appeared in New York magazine in 2018, telling the stranger-than-fiction story of a Russian-born twenty-something Anna Sorokin, a con artist who, through rebranding herself as Anna Delvey, a wealthy German heiress, had conned her way into an extravagant lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with the city’s elite. Almost overnight, Sorokin had captured the internet’s imagination, and, even after her prison sentence, she continues to fascinate the public media.

Most of the reviewers expressed their uneasiness at the miniseries: they find the portrayal of Anna unconvincing because it does not depict the real person beneath multiple masks… But what if this IS the truth? What if there is no self-aware manipulating subject pulling the strings? Anna does not just act following a Ponzi scheme, postponing paying debts, covering one debt with another, trying to convince people that the money she owes them is on the way, etc. In a crazy way, her subjective life itself functions as a Ponzi scheme: she does not just deceive others; she as it were borrows from herself, from her own imagined future. This is what makes her stance feminine, in clear contrast to Shimon Hayut, the con artist portrayed in Tinder Swindler (one should note that Tinder Swindler is a documentary and Inventing Anna—a fiction). Hayut travelled around Europe, presenting himself as the son of Russian-Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev. He used Tinder to contact women as Simon Leviev, and tricked them into lending him money that he never repaid. He would charm women with lavish gifts and take them to dinners on private jets using money he borrowed from other women he previously conned. He then asked his victims to help him financially due to the breach of ‘security’, allegedly hindering the use of his credit cards and bank accounts. The women would often take out bank loans and new credit cards in order to help. His career ended quite appropriately: in late February 2022, he launched an NFT collection and merchandise with images seen and quotes heard in the film on him…

The obvious parallels between the two stories should not distract us from the crucial difference: Hayut is a swindler who coldly manipulates others, has no project he really identifies with, just abandons a woman he deceived and passes onto another woman, while Anna stays with a permanent circle of collaborators involved in the big plan to launch the Anna Delvey Foundation. What distinguishes her is an unconditional fidelity to appearance: her friends often plead to her just to admit that she lied or cheated, but she never breaks down, nor lets the mask fall. We watch again and again how she finds a way to save her face when she is confronted with the facts that prove her lies.

Anna is immoral but definitely ethical. When her lawyer defends her in his closing speech before the jury by claiming she just lived in her dream world and never came “dangerously close” to real success (getting money for her big project), she feels betrayed and reacts furiously. She prefers to be punished much more heavily if this means that she will be perceived as somebody who almost succeeded, not as a ridiculous small dreamer.

It is this unconditional desire that makes her ethical; she literally obeys Lacan’s formula “do not compromise your desire.” This is why even some of those she swindled and are aware of the fact that she doesn’t care for herself continue to care for her. As Lacan said, “the hero can be betrayed without damage done to him,” Anna remains a hero to the end. That’s why the usual psycho-social explanations fail: even her father is surprised by what she became.

To paraphrase a well-known line from one of the early novels about Hannibal Lecter, nothing happened to her; she happened to the world. Yes, her project is a ridiculous fake, but she nonetheless acts as a sublime figure because she elevated this ridiculous project into a Thing, a Cause for which she is ready to stake her entire life. Whatever she is, she is not cynical but utterly naïve, and we need such naivety today for a precise reason: Anna is FREE in clear contrast to Hayut who just follows his egotist need to manipulate others and profit on them. Freedom does not reside in a hidden core of my Self that eludes the grasp of others, a position from which I manipulate others from a safe distance. Freedom resides in my very unconditional identification with the role I decide to play for others.