The victories of Emilia Pérez, a French musical about a Mexican transgender drug lord, at the Golden Globe Awards this weekend have prompted a wave of outrage and disgust in Mexico and throughout Latin America from critics who say the film trivializes the mass death caused by the drug war in that country.
Social media users in Mexico lamented the movie’s “stereotypes, ignorance, lack of respect, the exploitation of one of the gravest humanitarian crises in the world” following its wins. Critics lamented that the issue of transgender identity serves in the film to absolve a vicious drug lord of any responsibility in the destruction of thousands, if not millions, of lives. The criticism has swelled far beyond initial rejection of the movie by the Hispanic community when it was first released in November, when Hispanophone viewers lamented the poor quality of singer/actress Selena Gómez’s Spanish language proficiency on screen.
Emilia Pérez is a musical by French director Jacques Audiard that tells the story of a ruthless Mexican drug cartel criminal who retires from crime, decides to undergo a vaginoplasty to live as a woman, and invests in a charity to help victims of drug violence. The titular Pérez, critics note, does not at any point in the film face any significant legal repercussions for his outrageous crimes but is presented as redeemed, in some way by the decision to live as a woman.
The film won four Golden Globe awards on Sunday, including best musical or comedy film, outraging fans of the global blockbuster Wicked. Taking the stage to celebrate the victory, the star of the movie, transgender actor Karla Sofía Gascón, proclaimed the win a declaration of support for “freedom” and LGBTQI+ identity.
“You can maybe put us in jail. You can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, our existence, our identity,” Gascón said. “I am who I am, not who you want.”
The awards prompted a wave of condemnation from Mexican viewers, the vast majority of it not related to the transgender theme in the film. Many noted that Adriana Paz, the only Mexican star in the movie, was seated far away from the rest of the cast and crew of the movie during the award ceremony. Many others focused, however, on the film itself.
“A musical produced in France, about corruption, violence, and disappeared persons in Mexico, where the central plot is a sex change by a drug dealer who magically, upon being operated on, becomes a good person,” one comment on social media lamented, according to the Argentine news outlet Infobae.
Infobae quoted another critic who lamented, “Emilia Pérez is a terrible movie, made with disinformation and Google Translate.”
“Offensive. Frivolous. It will will awards, but the rejection of the victims,” another observed.
Writing at the Mexican outlet El Sol de Tijuana on Monday, commentator Gerardo Fragoso M. condemned the movie as using LBTIQ+ issues to “romanticize” the human rights atrocities of Mexican drug traffickers.
“The movie Emilia Pérez is a panegyric that seeks to whitewash the drug trafficker, romanticize him, make him seem like the ‘good guy,’” he wrote. “It is not a movie meant to vindicate the LGBTQI+ community, that is just an excuse, a topic used as a Trojan horse.”
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) had similarly panned Emilia Pérez as presenting a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” in November and a “step backward for trans representation.”
“Emilia is very ‘regretful’ about their crimes, but note, never, in the entire movie, does [Emilia] hand herself over to be judged and may for her atrocities,” he continued, “her form of ‘paying’ for being a murderer, corruptor of minors – selling them drugs and making them kill, and other things – is to use her foundation to help victims. How easy and convenient.”
Fragoso concluded condemning the entertainment industry for being “more than willing to cover up for organized crime and its members more than willing to receive their disgusting money to pay for their Beverly Hills mansions and trips to paradise.”
A review of the film on Monday in the Spanish newspaper El País referred to the film’s refusal to discuss the horrors of drug trafficking in Mexico as “truly unforgivable.”
“In Emilia Pérez, everything is superficial. There is a great leap of faith demanded of the spectator,” the review observed, “who witnesses in shock as a violent drug trafficker is reborn, thanks to their new sex, into a brave activist in favor of the disappeared.”
Mexican critics on social media began circulating a meme message to the Academy in anticipation of the Oscars this week, following the movie’s success at the Golden Globes, urging it not to award the project. The message described the movie as a “racist, Eurocentrist mockery” of Latin Americans and references the prodigious loss of life from the Mexican drug wars that the movie, according to critics, ignores.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Mexico has experienced 431,000 homicides between 2006, when Mexico officially declared war on the cartels, and August 2024. Another 116,386 people appear on the registry of disappeared people in Mexico as of August. Not all of these cases are confirmed to be linked to the cartels, but many are, and the confirmed cases are likely a fraction of the true toll of the drug wars.
Emilia Pérez had already faced months of condemnation from Hispanic viewers for the poor Spanish proficiency of Selena Gomez, an American pop star and actress of Mexican descent. Gomez received a wave of intense criticism after legendary Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez commented publicly that her Spanish was “indefensible.”
“I was there [watching the movie] with people, and every time a scene came [with her in it], we looked at each other to say, ‘Wow, what is this?’” he remarked.
Gomez apologized on social media, writing, “I did the best I could with the time I was given.”
“Doesn’t take away from how much work and heart I put into this movie,” she added.”
Gomez has since confirmed she will continue working on Spanish-language projects in the future, despite her embarrassing turn in Emilia Pérez.
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