Abstract
Even though media producers alluded to the fact that they aimed to determine the true nature of fraudsters, they did not attempt to find out who the real Anna Sorokin—a fake German heiress—was. A journalistic piece, a memoir, and a Netflix television show together reinvented Sorokin and invited the audience to co-construct the “truth” about a character called “Anna”. Her character was like a mirror for other characters and the audience to reflect upon themselves. This character was purposefully contradictory, eliciting both sympathy and contempt from the audience. However, the audience could not make a range of meanings about Sorokin because they were supposed to dislike her for trespassing into the male entrepreneur territory in capitalism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Anna Sorokin” is used to refer to the person who committed a crime. “Anna” refers to the character in the television show Inventing Anna.
References
Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author. In Image-music-text (S. Heath, Trans., pp. 142–148). Fontana.
Baudrillard, J. (2017). Symbolic exchange and death. Sage.
Benjamin, W. (1969). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 1–26). Schocken Books.
Best, S., & Kellner, D. (1997). The postmodern turn. Guilford.
Daly, K. (1989). Gender and varieties of white-collar crime. Criminology, 27(4), 769–794. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1989.tb01054.x
Melendez, P. (2024, September 20). Anna Sorokin speaks out after dramatic exit from “Dancing with the stars”. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/anna-delvey-sorokin-speaks-dancing-stars-dramatic-exit-rcna172914
Pressler, J. (2022, February 8). Maybe she had so much money she just lost track of it. New York Magazine. https://www.thecut.com/article/how-anna-delvey-tricked-new-york.html
Stabile, C. A. (2004). Getting what she deserved: The news media, Martha Stewart, and masculine domination. Feminist Media Studies, 4(3), 315–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468077042000309964
Williams, R. D. (2019). My friend Anna: The true story of a fake heiress. Gallery Books.
Zemler, E. (2022, February 17). Breaking down Anna Delvey’s best looks in Inventing Anna. Shondaland. https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/shondaland-inventing-anna/a39110504/anna-delveys-best-looks-inventing-anna/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2025 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lee, M. (2025). Anna Sorokin: “The True Story of a Complete Fake”. In: Media's Investments in Untruths. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-85280-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-85280-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-85279-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-85280-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)