The category spanning literature concludes that products straddling multiple categories confuse audiences and receive negative evaluation. We relax the assumption of existing literature that audiences’ cognition of products is shaped by a well-developed category system, and argue that a prominent product feature established before the introduction of the category system can exert an anchoring effect on the evaluation of category spanners. Specifically, we contend that during the emergence stage of a category system, the traditionally investigated multi-category membership, or what we refer to as “manifest category spanning,” may not confuse consumers. Instead, “latent category spanning,” which occurs when a product spans categories with unequal distances from the anchor, makes consumers confused about the overall product identity in relation to the anchor, resulting in negative evaluation. By contrast, the state, as a more knowledgeable and agentic non-market evaluator than consumers, may have opposite preferences for ambiguity due to its political agenda. Using proprietary data on the population of domestic films screened in mainland China between 2009 and 2019, we find strong empirical support to our theorizing. Our study makes important contributions by revealing a novel type of category spanning and disclosing the state’s role in evaluating cultural products.