Recently, the internet has highlighted a fascinating divide between outsider and mainstream art, in part due to Sean Baker’s recent Academy Award dominating indie-hit “Anora,” along with other recent indie success stories like “The Substance.” These recent successes divide audiences into two vocal camps: those who want to bring these more personal, auteurist stories to the mainstream and those who see this brand of outsider art as pretentious. The latter mindset falls in line with Richard Hofstadter’s conception of American anti-intellectualism, rooted in populism, in which mass audiences are wary and disproving of concepts that are perceived as out of touch with the everyday people.
The mistrust of intelligence is a tradition dating back to early humanity. Humans inherently fear change, so informing them of new and inventive ideas is a speed run to public division. This applies to ideas surrounding art, climate change and artificial intelligence usage. Even the simplest changes regarding fashion choices are frequently met with hesitancy or blatant rejection by a large portion of the populace.
Public attention has frequently been skewed towards the median, speaking to the average civilians that prefer digestible media that appeases their needs for entertainment without challenging their attention spans or core values. This is not a claim that the public isn’t intelligent, rather that they gravitate towards content they can easily understand. This is seen through common trends like superheroes, 4/4 beats in music and Jason Statham. Intellectualist media challenges this, begging viewers to look deeper into its messaging, rewarding viewers with personal gratification for choosing to look deeper rather than to simply enjoy and then dispose of media.
The anti-intellectualism trend ironically caught my attention after the fallout of the 2019 Oscar’s season, a ceremony that can draw striking parallels to the 2025 presentation of the Academy Awards. After the independently made Korean masterpiece “Parasite” beat projects made by the likes of legendary directors like Quentin Tarantino, Taika Wititi and Martin Scorsese, the general non-movie-going public were up in arms about what should be seen as a massive win for filmmaking as a whole. Detractors of “Parasite” seldom went beyond the argument that “we had to read” to understand the movie, and when they did, criticism was often a thinly veiled excuse to disagree with the film’s messaging, speaking more about how powerful the film gets its ideas across.
This draws clear parallels to the “Anora” Oscar sweep of 2025. A film made from sheer passion for art won the biggest prize in the industry because that passion bleeds through the screen. A film as impactful as “Anora” shouldn’t be written off as “pretentious indie white noise” because of its low budget and humanist story, it earned its award and forced the masses to know a film that you must look deeper into.
The advantages of reading into art are apparent and go beyond a feeling of personal accomplishment. The best art conveys a powerful message within the confines of the medium, often being hidden by a story’s events. The best art makes a person strive to be better. Anti-intellectualists don’t want to delve deeper into art, holding them back from gaining this brand of artistic gratification and confining them to the basic pursuit of a dopamine rush.
