Conservatives often bemoan their cultural losses — and not entirely without reason. Hollywood, academia, and the media lean liberal. Yet every now and then, a quiet victory sneaks through, wrapped in a film that may not “own the libs” but hums with values conservatives should instantly recognize. Rather than taking the win, many on the Right recoil — letting it slip away and, in the process, projecting cultural impotence.
History is instructive. Consider the Elvis-induced moral panic of the 1950s. PTA moms fainted in their pews, and politicians threatened to have him arrested. It seems laughable now, but at the time, the hip-swinging kid from Tupelo was cast as a threat to decency. In reality, he was a good ol’ Southern boy who loved his mama, served his country, and later tried deputizing himself as President Richard Nixon’s top hippie hunter — free of charge. We all know how that story ended: His detractors faded into irrelevance, and he became the King.
This brings us to this year’s Oscar champ, Anora, which my friend Elisha Krauss argues “glorifies prostitution” and Debra Soh dismissed as “a film about a stripper” in a pair of essays slamming the sex trade. These were the more thoughtful takes. Over on Twitter, the Blaze’s Jason Whitlock, wielding the analytical precision of a cinder block, trashed the movie as “a porno.” From his tone, you’d think Hollywood just rolled out the red carpet for a Russ Meyer sexploitation flick.
I’ll admit, it feels odd defending a film that I liked but didn’t love. As I noted in my October review, Anora is fun, albeit raunchy, and it lacks the heart of Nights of Cabiria, the Federico Fellini classic that inspired it. Still, it’s frustrating to see some conservatives hastily reject a film when, beneath its grit, it carries a moral message as familiar as a Sunday sermon — and alienate potential cultural allies in the process.
Its director, Sean Baker — a target of far-left activists for following Libs of TikTok on X — may not have sported a MAGA hat at the Oscars, but his films are often imbued with an unmistakably conservative sensibility. Take his sun-drenched 2017 masterpiece, The Florida Project. Not only is it regarded as one of the best films of the 2010s, but its unflinching portrait of single parenthood and welfare dependency makes it one of the century’s most compelling right-coded movies. Similarly, Anora doesn’t glamorize sex work; it exposes it as soul-crushing.
So why the disconnect? Too often, style distracts from substance. Baker isn’t sympathetic to the sex industry, but he frames his subjects with warmth, and we live in an era allergic to nuance — where mere kindness is mistaken for endorsement. This confusion makes conservatives easy marks for hollow symbolism and sordid characters. That’s how good-hearted people got suckered into championing a movie last year about a Catholic saint that barely mentions Jesus.
Some on the Right also accused Baker and Best Actress winner Mikey Madison of “glamorizing” the sex industry in their Oscar speeches. But their acknowledgments of “sex workers” should be understood as political cover from left-wing critics.
Perhaps what’s most maddening about knee-jerk reactions to Anora is that they’re self-defeating. Trashing original films with conservative undertones won’t punish Hollywood; it only ensures studios churn out safer, yet soulless, franchise cash grabs. It’s also misplaced. If conservatives wanted to critique Tinseltown’s take on prostitution, Poor Things — which presented sex work as a woman’s default tabula rasa — was a far juicier target. Yet it dodged the scrutiny heaped on the far less subversive Barbie, just as CODA, a film that deserved a conservative embrace, was ignored two years before.
Don’t remember the 2022 Best Picture winner? Maybe that’s because reactionary noisemakers — not to be confused with conservatives — were too busy dunking on the ceremony’s (admittedly silly) social distancing rules to notice. But if supposedly conservative influencers can’t rally behind a movie about a teenager helping her deaf parents fight off federal regulators squeezing their family business, then what, exactly, are they even conserving?
As someone who watches hundreds of films a year (I know, I know), I’d argue most conservatives would be shocked by how many mainstream releases align with their values. This blindspot is not entirely their fault, but self-imposed cultural exile is bad for cinema and lowers artistic standards.
Let’s be honest: We’re a long way from A Man for All Seasons. What passes as a “conservative movie” now usually falls somewhere between ham-fisted agitprop and Hunter’s Laptop Part IV: The Crack Chronicles.
Conservatives would be wise to ask why outrage peddlers want them angry all the time. Tune them out, and tune into good artistry. It won’t always be tidy, and it may be challenging. As Pope John Paul II wrote, “Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice to the universal desire for redemption.”
Whether Anora succeeds in that is debatable, and you don’t have to like it. But Sean Baker certainly doesn’t hate you.
Giancarlo Sopo writes about culture and cinema for various publications. You can follow his cinematic journey on Letterboxd and X.