Yeah he always had subversive messaging in his work but at the same time just as you're saying he was known to the mainstream audience back in his heyday as a guy who does schlocky action flicks with loads of gory violence and explicit nudity, bordering on outright porn. I mean the main discourse around Basic Instinct was whether you can really see Sharon Stone's snatch for fucks sake. As a comparison, even if it's a merely ok movie (as opposed to brilliant) the issue of how they made the pencil disappear in The Dark Knight was way in the background.