The Oscars are in their 97th year of celebrating technical and artistic achievements in filmmaking. In these years, they have unfortunately continued to reward films that depict harmful cultural appropriation, while withholding recognition from the underrepresented minorities from whom the filmmakers borrow.
Saying that award shows have a diversity problem is not a profound, radical statement. From granting awards to a lead actor in brownface in 1928 to celebrating a big artifice racial film in 2006, rewarding cultural costuming has become so frequent at the Oscars that it’s almost tradition. Nominating “Emilia Pérez” only serves as a reminder of the Oscars’ inclination to praise films that suffer from a lack of cultural authenticity.
“Emilia Pérez” is a 2024 Spanish-language musical crime film written by non-Spanish speaking French director Jacques Audiard. While the film was set in Mexico, it was filmed in France, as Audiard’s vision of Mexico didn’t match the reality of the country’s streets. This vision is of a stereotypical Mexico, centered around a cartel leader with the backdrop of street markets, deserts and that familiar sepia filter.
While the story revolves around Mexican characters, none of the leads are Mexican actors. Casting director Carla Hool claimed that her team “did a big search” across Mexico, Spain, the United States and the entirety of Latin America. Apparently, despite Mexico’s population of over 130 million, only non-Mexican actors were “suitable” to embody the Mexican characters. Even lead Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays Emilia, has shown hostility towards other minority groups.
From the film location to the actors on set, the directorial choices of Audiard and his team clearly show a disconnect from Mexico and its people. With the lack of Mexican input, details involving what culturally defines characters get appropriated through a western lens. During a court case in the film, there’s a jury present. Mexico’s judicial system has no jury. “Emilia Pérez” does nothing to go against the stereotypes placed on Mexican people, centering its story around the cartels, corruption, murder and poverty that have been prominent for so long in films. The movie only enforces them, paying little to no respect to the Mexican people while using their real suffering to gain critical acclaim.
Even with such an obvious disconnect from Mexican culture and a Mexican way of life, “Emilia Pérez” has become the most nominated non-English film in history. This has confused much of the public, the most common complaints revolving around how it combines serious issues with a bad soap-opera-style plot. Viewers wonder what value the movie holds in the eye of renowned film critics. Apparently, its groundbreaking style has excited these critics. The film goes against what is normally expected from modern musicals. It’s ‘anti-spectacle,’ using dialogue that is spoken through rhythm instead of a belting, grand vision found in this year's musicals like “Wicked.” It breaks the stereotype of musicals needing to produce a spectacle to retain the attention of the audience. Yet, spectacle over the years has become synonymous with musicals, an aid to improving a theatrical performance. Audiard’s ‘reinvention’ of the genre seems more like a denial of what defines musicals.
Audiard stated in an interview with Deadline, “I’ve never claimed that I wanted to make a realistic work,” but he’s ultimately taking an issue that has caused a lot of real human suffering and using it for entertainment. To try and force together an element that is naturally amusing, a musical, with a real, modern issue of 431,000 homicides in a near 20-year period cannot be done, especially by someone who doesn’t even understand the devastation of the Mexican Drug War.
If “Emilia Pérez” wins any of its 13 Oscar nominations, it will not be an award for Mexico but for France — not a win for Latin America but for the Eurocentric perspective that has dominated cinema, awards shows and media as we know it for the past century. It will prove that a white filmmaker can take the identity of a community, shape it to fit his stereotypical vision and be rewarded for doing so.
There remains a hope that in the future there will be more opportunities for people of different identities and cultures to tell their own stories on their own terms and receive just as much praise as the filmmakers that do so without them.
