The History-Making Cultural Contributions Of Sean Baker & Mikey Madison

Our Century's Most Culturally Profound Guardian Angels.

A tiny strawberry donut is placed directly on the bag for two friends to share on Christmas Eve. A motel manager lowers himself to the level of a confused little girl watching her mother screaming at child protective service officers to gently reassure her it will all be ok. A newly divorced woman who just underwent an extreme 24-hour period of dehumanization and disposability from her ex-husband and his family finally breaks down in the arms of a man who silently hugs her and allows her to wail in anguish. 

These are just three moments of humanity one can always expect to find in a Sean Baker film. I specifically see Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Anora as an undeclared trilogy whose level of divine majesty is so unquestionable that it can only be described as “The Godfather Trilogy of Independent Cinema.” They are genuinely the greatest films of all time. They will forever stand the test of time. 

It helps that these are all films that are relentlessly rewatchable. Yet, the stories that need to be told most are the ones audiences find psychologically traumatizing to watch, so they rarely ever do. At least, they rarely do with that rush only a true cinephile has inside them.  Some audiences expect an answer or neat solution for everything, as though that’s what life hands out. I am not someone who thinks a film needs to be seen by millions of people to make a difference or be successful, but my god, doesn’t it help? So many films are just so phenomenal that they simply DESERVE to be seen by millions of audiences who will want to talk about it and analyze it with their friends and family and rewatch it to re-experience that level of magic. Audiences should feel safe enough to allow themselves to be vulnerable in order to allow a body of work to impact them. They should feel safe enough to feel traumatized despite the honesty the film is providing them. Especially when the subject matter is personal to them and, of course, when it’s universal.  Only truly great films can make audiences feel that way. 

The way to make the unbearable bearable on screen is to provide audiences with characters the audience will be so invested in, that they’ll loyally sit by their side the entire time. Baker understands this, and he utilizes this necessity to ensure the majority of audiences care too much about them to ever look away from the pain they’re going through. 

Baker’s magic touch has always been his effortless ability to show us the accuracy of his character’s dehumanization without dehumanizing them himself. His films shadow the lives of everyday people living on the margins of society and those who get caught up in their orbit. He never creates his characters solely based on what’s happened to them and what they’re going through. Their humor, heart, fury, temperament, and endurance all intersect over their story. 

To portray the act of sex in itself, not just as survival, but as an act of human dignity and integrity, has to be the most generous validation one can give in this frightening new era of sexual and gender repression. The legalization of sex work is a very passionate stance for Baker.  His films highlight that these are fully fledged people, not playthings. The end context and credits of each film are particularly telling in a display of their individuality and uncompromising humanity. 

In Tangerine, the sex workers in question are transgender, one of whom just got out of 28 days in jail. Set in L.A. and throughout Christmas Eve, one of them furiously and hilariously searches for her pimp/boyfriend and the cisgender woman he cheated on her with while she was in jail TAKING THE BLAME for what he did. Her best friend, who is calm and easy going, can’t keep up with her, but by nightfall, they wind up back in the tiny donut shop the film opened with. Everyone in their orbit shows up, drama ensuing, some of it funny, some blood-boiling, some very tragic. Tangerine ends in a 24-hour laundromat after one of them is doused with a cup of urine by a drive-by of drunken bigots. Her friend removed her wig and put it on her head as they waited. They hold hands, and the sound of the washing machine spinning is heard amongst the credits. 

The Florida Project is seen through the eyes of a six-year-old girl living with her very young mother in a motel along the highway next to Disneyland. Willem Dafoe is the kind and watchful motel manager who looks out for them, but he’s struggling to get by too, and even his warmth amongst the cold heart of the world isn’t enough to save these people. The return of child protective agents to remove the girl is a soul-shattering, brilliantly shot scene, angled from interconnecting perspectives as tempers escalate and the girl runs off with her only friend left to Cinderella’s Castle. The sound of the crowds around them is heard throughout the credits. 

Finally, in Anora, Oscar winner Mikey Madison gives not just a performance but a life-defining scream of resistance against every worldview that made this new era of erased progress possible. Her only ally amongst her world crashing down is one of the Russian henchmen sent to confirm her marriage to the son of a wealthy Oligarch. After a most unenviable first encounter, he kindly looks out for her for the remainder of the film as they search for her missing husband, who ultimately couldn’t care less about her, having only married her for a green card. She bears degradation towards her from him and his family for her profession and financial circumstances. The film ends in a car with her sobbing her eyes out as her unexpected ally hugs her and lets her wail. The sound of the windshield wipers amongst the falling snow plays throughout the credits. 

More than anything I can think of what this world needs right now is ultimately love. Non-judgmental and modern love is amongst the rising evil spreading like wildfires across the world. Baker’s films stand against the vile of the far right but make them without addressing it directly, opting instead to shadow their prey through their daily lived experiences of micro-aggressions and glares without any monologues meant to educate the audience. Baker believes watching observations of truth as it happens in all its forms makes up the complexities of the human experience. He’s right. It does.

Anora, in particular, is a very special treat. It’s a masterpiece one can appreciate without having seen any of his other films. I will say, however, that one appreciates how his films are so interconnected. It’s rare to see a filmmaker as devoted to sex positivity as Baker. It’s refreshing to see sex work so associated not solely with struggle (Though, of course, that often happens and Baker never shies away from that) but with the universal desire of wanting to make a better life for yourself and make things easier for yourself without prejudice. 

When Madison picks up her things from the gentlemen’s club after returning from Vegas, she talks with her friend, who is so happy for her. She talks about wanting to honeymoon at Cinderella’s Castle because that was her dream since she was a little girl. It’s the kind of statement that would sound ridiculous without context, but audiences will feel like they know Anora so well by this point, that they know EXACTLY what she’s talking about. There’s a sentimentality in her innocence. It’s very childlike but not immature. Her accent is adorable, and she’s so effortlessly lovable without ever coming across as someone needing male validation. 

The sex scenes in Anora are so repetitive, and it doesn’t feel so much like a montage as it does the feeling one gets when changing the channels constantly. Baker shows how much of what she does is routine. It’s sometimes amusing but never insincere and never portrayed as something for the audience to mock or look down on. Anora’s eventual dehumanization stems from the universal judgment a woman faces from merely having the audacity to want the very best for herself and have complete sexual freedom to share her body with who she wants when she wants, and how she wants. 

Anora delivers an emotional gut punch towards its finale but remains heartfelt and tender. I would even go as far as to call Anora a happy film. The Florida Project is a devastating drama, and Tangerine, yet hilarious, shares a lot in tone with it. Anora proves that comedies needn’t rely on mainstream immaturity to entertain or sell. In all of Baker’s films, the heroes often fight like they’re in a reality show, but that kind of aggression no longer feels fake because that’s how so many people are now. Baker’s leading ladies merely have the self-respect to give back what they get every day from those who look down their noses at them. There’s also something very revealing about the unspoken sense of globalization surrounding the universally human need for sex. Cultures clash every day, the need still festers like a cat scratching at the door. 

In the case of Anora, both America’s rising hate towards anything relating to the topic of sex and gender, and the emotional defeat amongst the ongoing dictatorship of Russia intersect. Not by being verbally addressed, but the feelings are there in every moment. Russia’s long been a dictatorship with many of its people waiting for liberation and deliverance, while America is gradually becoming more like Russia every day. The Democracy-lessness of both countries is too traumatizing for many to comprehend. That’s why so many DON’T take it seriously, while others like Anora’s Yura Borisov CANNOT. He hasn’t endorsed Russia’s crimes, but he hasn’t spoken out against them either. How can he? He LIVES in Russia with his wife and daughters. Like the worlds Sean Baker explores, no one’s safe except the real enemy. 

Anora also explores a lot of generational resentment towards the immaturity of Gen Z and their confidence and access to freedoms and mindsets that those before them should have had but didn’t. 

Anora, as a film, Anora and Mikey Madison as an actors ought to be (AND WILL BE) recognized as a gay icon. Madison has such a kind and gentle way of speaking. Angelic. She’s maternal to the LGBTQ community the way Judy Garland was. You just want to be hugged by her amongst the hatred in the world. Not since Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz has the community had something as iconic as this. Dorothy and Anora dream of traveling far and wide toward a dreamland representing the best. The opening song of Anora that replays when she gets engaged is the equivalent of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”. She ultimately marries a “Cowardly Lion,” and the Russian henchman Igor is her “Scarecrow” and “Tin Man”. The one she saw as brainless happened to see the situation for what it was and had a warm heart. She confronts “The Wicked Witch” in her mother-in-law, who flies in on her plane or “broomstick” so to speak (My brother says she’s a Russian Melania Trump). There are two other henchmen. One represents one of the poor little “Apple Trees” who can’t seem to do anything right, and the other is “The Wizard,” who is furious to discover he has no real power. 

Where Judy Garland and her queer audiences together birthed the term “Friend Of Dorothy,” Mikey Madison will birth “Ally Of Anora.” Just wait and see.  As for Baker, for one, I think he’s officially earned his status as a gay icon as well. Whether he knew he was doing it or not, he’s given marginalized communities, and specifically the queer community, not just a voice in our ongoing battles in this culture war against the far right but what so many of us have fought for centuries for: A safe and loving home. 

Now is the time to binge Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Anora. Reflect on them and you will see how they are among the most culturally relevant and liberating films. Through the continuation of Baker and Madison’s work and their free spirits, may we as people finally find our way home. 

r/oscarrace. (2024). Mikey Madison and Sean Baker for “A Rabbit’s Foot Magazine.” Reddit. r/oscarrace. Retrieved April 7, 2025,.