The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

This isn't to say that Hollywood thinks everyone is dumb, but they recognize that all these different people who grew up in different places aren't going to understand the same idioms, or may miss subtle, cultural clues. The director has to spell things out. This explains a lot of what the author coins New Literalism.

Serpell's interpretation of Anora is dismissive and shallow. the point is Disney infects the American mind and Baker's made that point across half his movies and in some cases incredibly blatantly. its implied and Serpell categorizing it under New Literalism goes to show they're probably right in many cases, but also use it as a convenient excuse to avoid analysis

Would a "common denominator" person really watch that movie and afterwards be confused about anything that happened? What aspect would they remotely be confused about? What aspect would be "deep" to them?

From what I saw, it was nothing but the most basic character drama combined with some "suspenseful" races against time thrown in here and there. For the second half it turns into just one of those movies where the political/social message is effectively just beaten into your face, there's no subtlety at all.

They took no risk that the viewer wouldn't get their message, they make it plainly obvious. In my mind it's a perfect example of "the new literalism". It's almost up there with stuff like Don't Look Up, Snowpiercer, The Big Short, Parasite, etc. These movies mostly solely exist as a conduit through which a political/social message can be force fed to you, in the form of a movie, rather than existing as an actual movie.