As the days get longer and the flowers start to bloom, pop-culture aficionados everywhere wait with bated breath for the second season that winter’s departure brings: the widely publicized awards season. “Awards season” refers to the period, usually between Late January -early June, when the best entertainment from the last year is given the chance to be celebrated on the big screen. The major American entertainment awards, widely referred to as the EGOTs (Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, Tonys) are the most prestigious and most anticipated award shows of the season. On February 2nd, the Grammys hosted their 67th annual awards show. Pop icons that attended, like Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Chappell Roan, rejuvenated the red carpet, Harper’s BAZAAR calling it “The best [they’ve] seen in a long time”. While the broadcast featured looks for days, most memorably pop princess sensation Chappell Roan sporting a glamorous princess hat that made her, even at just 5’2”, stand high above the heads of the crowd, it also featured historical wins. After more than 22 years and 8 groundbreaking studio albums, Beyoncé finally left with her first-ever Album of the Year for her 2024 country album Cowboy Carter. Even more moving was a 26-year-old American rapper and songwriter Doechii becoming the 3rd ever woman to be awarded Rap Album of the Year.
Despite the Grammys being a long-awaited breath of fresh air, fans and critics alike have called the nominations for the second major awards show of the year, the Oscars, a major lapse in judgment. Many have expressed concern that the nominees for this year’s show are a possible sign of the Academy’s declining standards and, more broadly, a regressive cultural shift. One movie in particular, directed by Jaques Audiard, has raised an eyebrow amongst viewers; the infamous Spanish-language French musical crime film starring Selena Gomez, Emilia Peréz.
And yes, you read that right.
The film, before being released in August of last year, debuted with a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. For those unfamiliar with the rating system of rotten tomatoes, that meant 72% of the reviews were “fresh”, and the other 38% were “rotten”, or under 60%. This is not a bad score per se, but for reference, in the 96 years that the Oscars have been on, over half the winners have a 90% or above.
Even though a measly Rotten Tomatoes score is not necessarily enough to make a film unworthy of acclaim, unfortunately for Emilia Peréz, the Rotten Tomatoes score is the highest approval rating the movie has received across all major movie reviewing platforms. Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcorn-O-Meter, which is compiled from non-critic audience reviews (meaning you do not need to be a certified critic to review it), the film has a whopping 17%. Matching this dismal pattern, Emilia Peréz sits with a 5.5/10 on IMDb, a 2.2 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd (the median being half a star), and a 70% on Metacritic.
If you’re sitting there scratching your head trying to figure out why on Earth this film would be nominated for any Oscars, you’re not alone. Beyond bad reviews, the film’s reception has been riddled with controversy. Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish actress who plays Emilia Peréz, is a current nominee for the Best Actress award. Her victory would stand to be the first win for a trans woman in this category, marking a huge stride for trans women in film. However, Gascón’s reputation, and by proxy the reputation of the film, has taken several hits after she was exposed for past tweets riddled with Islamophobic and racist language. Gascón’s co-stars have rightfully distanced themselves from the star. The Oscars, however, have not. Gascón still has a chance to win in this category, and although her identity as a trans woman would make this a partial success in isolation, nothing exists without its context. If the Academy were to ignore Gascón’s past, they would be reinforcing what Hollywood has been criticized for defending for decades. Her identity does not cancel out what she has said and done, and although she has expressed regret, choosing Gascón as Best Actress would be a disappointing move for the Academy to make.
Beyond the controversy surrounding Gascón, the French source of the film has attracted criticism amongst viewers who have some things to say about Audiard’s directional choices. For one thing, the movie, which took place in Mexico, was shot entirely in France with predominantly non-Mexican actors and crew. Watchers feel that Audiard is doing what European filmmakers have been criticized for decades, which is using non-western countries, in this case, Mexico, as a prop or decoration, profiting off of the cities and culture without giving anything back to the locals in return. The production seemingly had no interest in offering any way that the place that it was based on could flourish as a result of the film, and it showed. Beyond the production, the plot itself centers around the Mexican drug cartels, a very contemporary and nonfictional story. As of now, an active drug war has been unfolding in Mexico for almost 20 years, with the annual death toll reaching a peak of 18,000 in 2022. Given the horrible effects that the Mexican drug cartel has had on the lives of thousands of real people, it seems tasteless to not only exclude, whether actively or passively, the group that is being represented but to also make it a musical. In many ways, it amplified European voices and participated in a long-standing precedent of art taking advantage of Hispanic and Latin countries, leading to exoticization and misrepresentation. However, if this wasn’t enough to convince you, do not worry. The fatal flaws of Emilia Peréz don’t stop here.
Because of its narrative, which involves several overlapping LGBTQ+ storylines, including a relationship between a trans woman and a widowed woman from her past, Emilia Peréz appears refreshingly progressive on the surface. In a culture that is growing increasingly hostile towards trans people, films that put trans characters and trans actors at the forefront of their narrative are inarguably valuable and highly important. However, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization GLAAD has criticized Emilia Peréz for its “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman”. According to GLAAD, all reviews of the film’s transgender representation occurred without input from transgender viewers or critics. The film is not the only place where critical discussion surrounding trans people is happening without trans people. President-elect Donald Trump and the republican majority within the white house have promised. They are rapidly passing legislation to restrict trans people from sports and medical care, and, at the end of January, the white house website removed LGBTQ and HIV resources from its official page. It is dangerous and irresponsible for the Academy to be promoting a film that perpetuates negative stereotypes about transgender people in a political atmosphere that is already so fragile. Media like this can and will cost people their lives.
Despite their exclusion from the forefront of the production and official response, Mexican and trans viewers alike have not been silent about their qualms about the film. Mexican transgender filmmaker, Camila Aurora, posted a 30-minute long parody of Emilia Peréz, poking fun at the inaccuracy and stereotypical representation, entitled Johanne Sacrebleu. In this enemies-to-lovers story, two transgender heirs of dueling Croissant and Baguette empires fall in love with each other. Amongst critics, the short film quickly surpassed Emilia Peréz and currently sits comfortably at a rating of 9.7/10 on ImDB. The film is full of fake mustaches, berets, rat sidekicks, and thick French accents, portraying France with the same mockery they felt Audiard portrayed them with. However, despite complaints from audience members everywhere, the opinion of the Academy appears to remain unswayed by the backlash.
Emilia Peréz is the most highly nominated non-English-language film in Oscars history, coming up with 13 nominations. Parasite, a Korean film released in 2019 by director Bong Joon-Ho that shattered the Tomatometer with a 99% approval rating and a 97% audience approval rating, was nominated for only 6 awards, winning 4 of them. For the Academy to nominate a film like Emilia Peréz more heavily than Parasite is an indicator to many viewers that the standards of the Academy are quickly declining, and that bad Western art will continue to be esteemed before good non-western art is even acknowledged, especially if it aligns the Academy with the contemporary domain. Suppose Parasite, a film that is now the 9th highest-rated film on the movie reviewing platform Letterboxd, can only scrape up less than half of Emilia Peréz’s nominations. What does that mean for the future of foreign art? The Oscars will air live on Hulu on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at 7 PM ET/4 PM PT, and while many of us can still hope for the Academy to do the responsible thing and allow Emilia Peréz to walk out empty-handed, the mere prominence of this film is dismally indicative of culture and society slipping backward in time.