"Made You Look" at "Varsity Blues", or: When Rich People Do Bad Things

 Hey everybody,

Over the last few years, I've gradually drifted away from the intense true crime fixation I've had off and on since I was a teenager.  That is likely in no small part because I am overall happier with the state of my life, at least in the domains I can reasonably control and pandemic notwithstanding.  But instead of being gone altogether, my morbid fascination has simply evolved and softened: instead of gobbling up podcasts, shows, and movies about murder, I know almost-as-ravenously consume media about less murder-y crimes.

I therefore present to you: a double-header of documentaries about rich people being terrible.

The first: "Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art" (2020)

The second: "Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal" (2021)

(Warning: Spoilers ahoy!)

On the surface, these two films focus on very different topics.  "Made You Look" explores the largest art fraud ever discovered in America, and "Operation Varsity Blues" dissects 2019's infamous college admissions scandal.  Setting those differences in subject matter aside, both films expand on a common question: What happens when bad deeds are committed in the context of extreme wealth and privilege?

"Made You Look" reveals how Ann Freedman, the director at a well-established and well-regarded New York City-based gallery pulled a fast one on multiple of her mega-rich clientele, shilling counterfeit art fabricated and sold by con artists far below her social station.  In interviews for the documentary, Freedman claims to have been ignorant of the true nature and value of the pieces she sold.  The mounting litany of expert analysis verifying the pieces' lack of authenticity and Freedman's strident and at times ad hominem attacks against those experts strongly suggests otherwise.  By the conclusion of the film, a bunch of very rich people are very mad they spent a nano-fraction of their immense wealth on bogus paintings, and Freedman has the audacity to open her own art dealership after escaping legal punishment for her role in the scandal she helped create.

Ann Freedman

On the other hand, there are clearly no rich-people "victims" in "Operation Varsity Blues," but rather rich-people co-conspirators.  Damning re-enactments (with admittedly variable quality performances) illustrate how excruciatingly informed Rick Springer's extremely wealthy and powerful clients were about the legal and moral wrongdoing inherent in Springer's "side door" approach to buying admission to elite universities, while experts in the field and reporters who followed the dramatically breaking story highlight the corruption rife in all aspects of admission to prestigious colleges and universities.  The film goes so far as to assail the very notion of "prestige", highlighting that the original meaning behind the French term is actually deceit.  The movie illustrates with infuriating clarity how much the entire college admissions process lives up to that original definition of the term.  Unlike in "Made You Look," mercifully some of the incredibly privileged people participating in Springer's scheme faced some degree of consequence, often in the form of (very) brief stints in prison.

Rick Springer

Each of these movies paint portraits of the criminals at the center of their respective scandals as at turns hard-charging when their schemes are succeeding and flailing when they are ultimately caught.  Springer and Freedman differ, arguably, in their commitment to their duplicity: while Springer was honest with his clients about the dishonesty of his ruse and has largely cooperated with the FBI (in an effort to save himself, of course), Freedman has stalwartly maintained her improbably ignorant innocence.

The films again diverge in how they ultimately emotionally land.  To be fair, neither is altogether satisfying in the comeuppance delivered to their bad actors, because spoiler alert: extreme wealth and privilege arguably inevitably lead to some quantity of bad things, often with aggravating and unsurprising impunity.  That said, the frustration and disappointment at the conclusion of "Made You Look" is easier to absorb than the righteous anger waiting to greet you in "Operation Varsity Blues".  

For me, at least, a prominent emotional note following "Made You Look" is one of schadenfreude: it's hard for me to get my blood pressure up over a bunch of jilted mega-rich people who thought they were hoarding works of art for their own personal consumption.  Very much to the contrary, "Operation Varsity Blues" leads inevitably--to those who care to care, at least--to considerable rage.  This is not because, as of the conclusion of the film, Springer managed to elude prison time.  Instead, it is because the elite universities that were the prize of Springer's plot remain unaccounted for among the entities charged with misconduct, and therefore the grinding societal gears that shore up ever more privilege among the very few--in this case, in the form of access to high-priced college coaches, exclusive high schools, and standardized test tutors, not to mention all the other advantages of fantastic levels of wealth and resultant power--continue to turn unabated.  In their considerable efforts to dubiously protect their reputations, these institutions seem to have completely glazed right over the opportunity the admissions scandal presents to make their admissions process equitable, inclusive, and actually merit-based.

On that bummer of a note: if you're looking to take a little tour of the misdeeds of the rich and (in)famous, I can recommend both of these movies.  I gave both of them 4s.

Both of them are currently viewable on Netflix!

{Heart}