Rampant Virtue Signaling Is The Reason Everyone Hates This Netflix Movie

When I first saw the many YouTube videos decrying Emilia Pérez – you know, that Netflix narco-musical about the Mexican trans cartel leader – I assumed that the creators were all transphobic. Can you blame me?

YouTube is so overrun by hate-spewing ultrabros that I am now wary of any content creator who looks too angry in their thumbnail. However, I soon realized that all the anti-Emilia videos were in Spanish, which was intriguing. Usually the Spanish-language content creators that appear in my feed are harmless vessels of Tears of the Kingdom tips and language learning jokes. Sensing something was off, I began listening to these anti-Emilia creators, who turned out to be Mexicans that were unhappy with how their country had been represented in the film. That’s when I realized that Emilia Pérez – recipient of 13 Oscar nominations – was probably bad, actually, and that Oscar voter virtue signaling was to blame. 

In the weeks since, I’ve seen the actual movie with my boyfriend Renzo, a native Spanish speaker, and can corroborate that everything you’ve heard about it is true. Selena Gomez sounds as natural speaking Spanish in this movie as I do; that is, she speaks like a gringa ordering their first margarita in Cabo. Her Spanish is the linguistic equivalent of that Unfinished Horse Drawing meme that starts out OK before quickly becoming a stick figure and freak of nature. My expert source, Renzo, can confirm this. But Selena’s pronunciation itself is not a problem! Plenty of language learners, myself included, sound like the Unfinished Horse Drawing meme when speaking a second language. No, the reason that Selena Gomez’s Temu Spanish is making Mexicans so angry is that she presumably replaced a native speaker from Mexico to appear in Emilia Pérez. Like, they couldn’t get Academy Award nominee Marina de Tavira? Or Danna Paola? Or Karla Souza? At the very least, Gomez’s character should have been written to be more gringa-coded; but instead, we’re meant to believe that she’s competently bilingual. 

But this is where we get into the problem of Academy virtue signaling. Oscar voters have been so excited to give a spotlight to a foreign movie about trans-ness and Mexican-ness – to stick it to the Orange Man, if you will – that they’ve forgotten to check if their prize unfinished horse was any good. Or even woke. French director Jacques Audiard admittedly conducted very little research about Mexico before making Emilia Pérez, a Mexico-set film, and even decided to shoot it in France. Apparently, the streets of actual Mexico didn’t match the “images in [his] head” of Mexico. Of course, that should have been the first indication that he had no real understanding of Mexico – its people, landscape, or culture – and shouldn’t have attempted to depict it. The second indication should have been that he didn’t know, read, or understand Spanish. And yet, he cagó Emilia Pérez onto Netflix’s front porch and called it a day. 

Speaking of Audiard’s lack of understanding of his subject matter, Mexicans don’t just hate Emilia Pérez because of the non-Mexican accents of its three main stars, Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, and Selena Gomez (who are, respectively, Spanish, Dominican, and Selena Gomez). Mexicans also hate it because it reduces their country to a series of harmful and superficial stereotypes, which, again, could have been avoided if the director had known anything, anything at all, about Mexico. Even Audiard’s first scene, which takes place in a tianguis, or open market, betrays a lack of understanding of tianguis and their function. The scene, along with Audiard’s improper depiction of Saldaña’s character’s university degree, and an inaccurate rendering of a religious procession at the end of the movie, have been excoriated by Mexicans. Even Drag Race icon Katya said that the procession looked like it had been “filmed by a BBC intern.” However, Audiard’s worst offense is his specious portrayal of cartel violence, which he presents as an incontrovertible fact of life in Mexico rather than the complex product of post-colonialism and foreign intervention that it truly is. 

Audiard’s understanding of trans identities is apparently just as uninformed. Again in the words of Katya, Emilia Pérez is “a movie made by a man who discovered trans last week.” Meanwhile, in the words of trans cultural critics, Emilia is either a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” or a story that’s “so cisgender it’s almost satirical.”  Perhaps this is all to be expected from a cis white straight director. However, Netflix reps’ and Oscar voters’ full-throated support of Emilia’s “visionary” agenda have proven that they, too, don’t know the first thing about Mexico or trans people. The worst part is that Netflix is only doubling down on how supposedly progressive their movie is. I recently met a Netflix employee who insisted that Emilia must be a good movie because his “friend from Spain loves it,” thus missing the point entirely. Clearly, Jacques Audiard was counting on Netflix execs and Oscar voters to not know a single thing about transness or Mexicanness, and that they would praise his movie simply for checking a few diversity boxes.

Of course, I’ve barely mentioned Karla Sofía Gascón, the most controversial representative of the trans community since Caitlyn Jenner. She’s not the reason this movie’s going to lose its Oscars. In her case, people have just expected too much of her. Based on her racist, homophobic tweets, she clearly needs to do some reflecting. However, the queer community shouldn’t expect every single trans person on Earth to be a perfect citizen. For some reason, people are treating Gascón like a model minority, ironically supporting the same false narrative as Emilia Pérez: that transitioning can purify a person of their sins. In other cases, netizens are even using their surface-woke critiques of Gascón’s tweets to disguise their own transphobia, halting their own sorely-needed personal journeys in the process. Let’s not forget that Casey Affleck, a man sued for sexual harassment by two women, won an Oscar in 2017 to a standing ovation. Surely, we should be discussing sexual harassment claims with the same horror and shock as we do offensive tweets.

Anyway, Zoe Saldaña is superb in Emilia Pérez and absolutely deserves an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Even as confused, disconcerted day players whisper-sing around her, uttering scintillating musical phrases such as “Penis to vagiiiinaaaaaa,” she soars. Also, in fairness, Gascón’s performance, if observed in a vacuum, is powerful. Hell, even Gomez, despite her gringa accent, is believably formidable and impulsive, commanding the screen. Meanwhile, the movie’s stunning choreography and disorienting camera flourishes are marvelous. Unfortunately, however, none of this matters. It’s impossible to appreciate the movie’s better qualities without remembering everything that was sacrificed – anthropological rigor, authentic trans storytelling, a basic understanding of Spanish – to get there. But clearly, none of that ever mattered to Oscar voters in the first place.