Hear Me Out: If you think the ‘Anora’ Oscar sweep was undeserved, you didn’t pay enough attention
“Streaming over theatre at the Oscars this year,” someone commented on an announcement post of Anora winning ‘Best Picture’, along with an eye roll emoji. It was a win that no one expected. Up against the titans that the Oscars typically love, like a musical biopic, a nearly four-hour long epic, and several hyper-serious dramas, the victory of a movie like Anora, which is technically billed as a ‘comedy’, was a surprising one. But for anyone brushing their wins off as a placid prize for a ‘nice’ movie, they’re completely missing the point, not just of the film itself, but the importance of their place on the stage.
There is a lot going on in the world right now; there is no denying it or way to downplay it. It is also impossible to remove culture from that fact, and it would be wrong to remove a night like the Oscars from it, either. We are all standing in a truly historic moment and, if we’re being honest, on the precipice of a sharp, dark cliff plunging us into outright fascism. As the Oscars took place in America, their president had just had a shouting match with the Ukrainian president, essentially threatening allyships and global protections that have been there for decades. Worldwide, we’re witnessing genocides, wars with dictators, human rights being ripped away, gendered violence on the rise, and epidemic misogyny levels – things are bad.
Then you look at Anora, Mikey Madison’s sparkly tinseled hair in the photos and the joy of her co-stars at these events. It’s easy to brush it off as just a fun little movie, perhaps even write it off as trite. Especially alongside the other ‘Best Picture’ nominations, it’s understandable why Anora would be mistaken for a ‘soft’ movie or even misunderstood as a kind of rom-com. In comparison to some of the other ‘Best Picture’ nominees and their historical subject matters or obviously weighty, adventurous build, Sean Baker’s Anora, like all his movies, is polished with a shine of joy, fun, and humour. It is undeniably a film that people will watch and enjoy over and over, and it could be argued that out of all the nominees, it does feel like one that is ‘streaming appropriate’ as opposed to something like The Brutalist, which requires dedicated viewing.
But that doesn’t take away from its impact. For those doubting whether the movie deserved to be honoured and celebrated so heavily, it simply feels like people couldn’t, or refused to, look beyond that shine or wouldn’t engage with the heavier world of Anora because Baker refused to make it slap you in the face – a movie made to respect the reality of sex work and the realities of the lives of sex workers as people, not caricatures or statistics.
Anora is a film about sex work, exploitation in many ways, trauma, and the complexities of the sex industry. Played perfectly by Madison, the main character of Ani grapples with so much weight in that film, breaking through in those powerful final scenes where her devastation, distress, and manipulated relationship with sex and her own body crashes through the film’s more slapstick start.
For those who doubt Anora’s significance, they might be quieter if her suffering was presented in a more overtly brutal way. If, instead of being abandoned, Ani had been violently assaulted—something that happens to an estimated 45-75% of sex workers—or if her distress at the film’s end were depicted in a more conventional, recognisable manner, rather than through the complex hypersexualisation that PTSD can sometimes manifest as the point might have landed harder.
In a world where discussing OnlyFans or figures like Bonnie Blue is commonplace, people often overlook the harsher realities of sex work: the dangerous criminalisation that puts workers’ lives at risk, the alarmingly high rates of violence and mortality, and the way stigma prevents access to proper support. It is a heavy, often dark world, but it is not trauma porn. The lives of sex workers are not just tragedies, and their stories are not solely about sadness, drama, or violence, despite the way films often portray them.
The power of Anora and the importance of the movie Sean Baker and his cast lie in the fact that they refused to do that. So much of Baker’s career now has been dedicated to honouring sex workers. He is so passionate about this topic, and he shows it in truly radical and meaningful ways. He doesn’t just give sex workers a token shout-out. He doesn’t just meet up with a few people; he takes notes on their stories and uses them in his script. He doesn’t go along to a club, hire it out to shoot in, putting the workers out of a job for a few days. No, he listens to them, hires them, brings them along and dedicates himself and his project to honouring them first.
It is so powerful to see sex workers on the stage at the Oscars accepting the Best Picture prize. When so many major Hollywood movies use sex workers as a trope or when so often the only representation for this industry is in the dead girl at the start of a crime movie or the damsel to be saved by some man, Anora radically honours them as people and as real workers. Not only did Baker hire real strippers to be in the movie, paying the workers for their time and ensuring no one lost any money while they shot in their club, but the film also revolved around their experiences. They’re leading the way, and Mikey Madison was merely following them, learning from them, and building her entire character to be a true reflection of this industry that has forever existed but is never respected.
Anora respects it. Its cast respects it so loudly and proudly, and powerfully, with Baker and Madison reminding audiences of that time and time again on some of Hollywood’s biggest nights with some of the most powerful people in the world in the room. Anora is not only a far more nuanced and necessary depiction of this world, but the joy so many are shrugging off as unworthy of the Oscar is precisely what is so powerful about this movie that is determined to make sex workers 3D, visible and celebrated – with the film’s sweeping victory being one for their world too.
