Final post on Inventing Anna

[olivermoss]

The good - They show the role social pressures play when it comes to approving funding for the highest end of society. The show features the higher of the 1%, it's the 0.05%. Not quite the 0.01% like Bezo and co, but people who are rich by the standards of low-end 1%ers. When your peer group is that small you don't fuck up their projects.

I can buy that the funding didn't get due diligence due to both that and also the profit potential of the project.

OMG Racquetball and racquetball clubs! Are those really still a thing? Those courts were giving me 90s flashbacks.

The bad - Literally everything else. Anna just laying hundos on the table to skip a line? No, honey no, high end society is not that flash especially on the east coast among the old money. Her whole thing, allegedly, was seeming like old money.

I wanted to finish the story, see where it went. But I table-flipped when she laid money on a table to cut a line. Just, so many layers of no. In NYC you don't even tip openly. You palm money to people. The cash flows are hidden. Cutting lines does happen. When it does it's because the person is known, is a VIP or or on a list. If it's a bribe it's a covert one. In NYC if a line was skipped due to flashing cash... just no. The people in line would not tolerate that.

Cash is crass. Upper class polish is signalling waiters and paying the bill without your quests even noticing. Create a fantasy like money doesn't exist, we just go places and food appears and wine is brought and then we walk out into the night like we'd been guests, not customers. At many fine NYC eateries, the menus don't have prices unless you are the one paying. It's all about that illusion.

I don't know if the writers were ill-informed or if they just changed shit into what they assumed would be fun for the audience.

Also, the whole 'boyfriend didn't know her real name' thing continues to be a plot point.

Well, that shortens my to-watch list. Might re-watch Ocean's 11 or something to cleanse my mental palette.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Just finished watching that show (or... having it on in the background.)

Yeah... sometimes they seemed to really emphasize the "living like money isn't even a thing" aspect of her con as well as how it let her fit in... so throwing away that fairly key aspect to make her flash that much cash as a bribe is so... weird. I guess it was just to emphasize it and look ostentatious to the audience.

Apparently the "real" Anna did tip extravagantly for a while, but I imagine that was very much not "laying hundreds in a pile on the concierge desk".

[olivermoss]

An open bribe like that would have the rich people in line very upset and calling for the manager. The idea that you can buy access like that if you have the cash... that's what people like to dream having money is like. Like it can buy anything. It read like wish fulfillment.

I'm glad it's not just me who found things odd. I was also watching it in the background most of the time. But, it got to be too much for me. The Connecticutian in me went NOPE.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? And once they called for the manager, her savvy hookup concierge friend would have been facing some shit, too.
And yeah, I guess it was probably just trying to sell the fantasy. The real fantasy IS the whole "money isn't even a thing" aspect, but a stack of cash looks more impressive on screen, I suppose.

Or maybe it's more about selling the fantasy from the other side - the idea of how it would feel to be drawn into her circle, and sympathy for the people she did "befriend". The idea that this supposed heiress is just laying hundreds down on your desk in exchange for your attention. Could you (presumably middle-class-at-best audience member) resist?

Even if that was the point, though... it still made part of her characterization clumsy, and I don't think that was worth it.

Since I did have it on in the background while I was doing other stuff, I'm willing to admit I could have missed some things. And aspects of the story were genuinely pretty interesting... but there were a lot of things like that that just felt *weird*, and therefore broke the immersion. Like... how can I believe she's a great con artist if even I can spot things that seem out of place?

[olivermoss]

In the first ep when I was paying attention a bunch of stuff didn't make sense.

Or maybe it's more about selling the fantasy from the other side - the idea of how it would feel to be drawn into her circle

That's a very good point. It was like they just went for certain emotional beats and didn't much care how they got there. It's like a fantasy of easily breaking in or getting swept up in her wake. A bunch of wish fulfillment that makes no sense just doesn't work for me... especially since it involves things I am familiar with like NYC and air travel.

[mistressofmuses]

Agreed. And I understand wanting those beats, but... paying for it with a big chunk of the believability of the whole con was... not the best choice.
I think a lot of it was portrayed in a very wish-fulfillment way, despite how badly it all ends. The idea that you too could somehow con your way into this lifestyle for a while, or that someone could bring you along for the ride... Idk, I'm not terribly familiar with a lot of it, and bits of it still felt weird. I imagine there's plenty else that was off that I just don't understand well enough to see!

[olivermoss]

The show may have ended badly, but in a rare exception she was able to get paid by Netflix for her story and will probably go on to leverage this fame unless she can't shake immigration problems. Usually, you can't profit by crime by selling your story, but she was allowed somehow

[mistressofmuses]

That's true. I read about that - a lot of the money that would have gone to her went to paying off her debts, but she was allowed to keep something like 22k? That's pretty garbage.
I think I saw something about her planning to write her own book and like... a podcast or something? Of course.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, she was only able to keep 22k so far... I think the girl ain't done monetizing all of this.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, she absolutely isn't. And I don't get how she's being allowed to monetize it at all, honestly. It makes the whole thing feel ickier.