On January 23, the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shared the list of its nominees for the 2025 Oscar ceremony. However, the moment highly anticipated by fans of the medium became a topic of conversation and was not for the reasons indicated.
All because one of the most controversial films of the year, Emilia Pérez, swept the nominations, taking a total of 13. In addition, it did so in categories where its inclusion is truly laughable. Which makes it seem that these awards have already completely set aside their supposed objective of celebrating the best of cinema to become a political event.
Emilia Pérez could be one of the worst films nominated for the Oscars
Where to start with Emilia Pérez? Surely by now you are aware of everything that is wrong with this film by French director Jacques Audiard. From terrible performances, even worse translations and songs that no professional would classify as a piece of music.
Despite everything, it is one of the most nominated films in Oscar history. In fact, it was practically one award away from being tied with the most nominated in the history of the ceremony: All About Eve and Titanic. It even surpassed The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in nominations. Anyone who saw those movies knows that there is absolutely no point of comparison.
While all of these really shined in all their sections, Emilia Pérez is nothing more than a work that borders on the amateurish with a really shallow approach to its complicated themes. Drug trafficking, life in Mexico, disappearances, trans people and clandestine operations. Everything is touched with the subtlety and knowledge of someone who only watched narco-series in his free time.
The Academy actually considers that a parody of the transition of trans women in a narco-novel is at the same level as films that recreated in detail the first decade of the 20th century or even created extensive fantasy worlds. Although the Oscars always had controversies, it is clear that they have already lost their way from what they were.
This favoritism is clearly seen as a political response.
It is clear that the 13 nominations in categories that she does not even deserve have already positioned Emilia Pérez to be the great winner of the night. In fact, at the Golden Globes we already saw that it won the award for best musical film over the totally superior Wicked.
Surely at the Oscars history will repeat itself when she takes the top prize of the night as well as best actress for Karla Sofía Gascón. However, it will not be because he deserves it, but because Hollywood wants to use this film to give a message to President Donald Trump and his policies.
Source: Pathé
Since taking office, Trump implemented several regulations against the trans community. In addition, since his first term he made evident his contempt for Mexicans with massive raids, the elimination of the Spanish-language pages of the White House and recently his attempt to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, he also just classified drug traffickers as terrorists.
Emilia Pérez is just a film about a Mexican drug trafficker who becomes a trans woman. So surely the Oscars saw this and will take advantage of it to become a totally political event. They will award her to send a message in favor of Mexico and the trans community.
However, it is really an irony that to combat a ruler with racist tendencies they use a film that is practically equally or worse racist that trivializes the trans process. After all it was not made by a Mexican, but by a Frenchman. A Frenchman who also filmed it in his own country, with only a Mexican actress in his cast, without any knowledge of the language and who admitted that he did not study the culture at all because ‘he already knew what he should’.
This is not the first time something like this has happened at the Oscars.
At the beginning of its history and even until the 90s, we could say that the Oscars really rewarded the best in cinema. However, over the years it began to become more evident that the awards ceremony became more reactionary rather than a celebration of art.
One of the best known examples is Forrest Gump. A film that, although entertaining, was far from being the best of 1994. After all that year we also had the iconic and well-remembered Pulp Fiction as well as Shawshank Redemption. However, the film starring Tom Hanks took the grand prize of the night for being a ‘celebration of American history.’
Source: Pathé
10 years later we had the whole Crash debacle which curiously sounds quite similar to what we see with Emilia Pérez. This film wanted to address the complicated racial relations in Los Angeles, but was widely criticized for doing so in a very simplistic and even indoctrinating tone. Even so, the Oscars considered it the best because they felt it reflected very well the problems of the time.
More recently we had the Oscar so White movement where African American actors and the public complained that in 2015 the majority of nominated actors were white. The following year, the film that won the top prize was Moonlight, which precisely had a mostly African-American cast. The big favorite that night was La La Land, which curiously is still seen, discussed and finds new fans while Moonlight was practically forgotten.
Will this ceremony make them rethink things?
The Oscars really are no longer what they were, neither in terms of their way of awarding awards nor in their audience. For several years the ceremony has had fewer and fewer spectators. With jobs it reaches 18 million when in other times it exceeded up to 50 million. Now it’s only if a scandal like Will Smith’s or the La La Land mistake happens that they attract people. Otherwise, interest seems to be waning.
We could take this as a reflection that people no longer consider this award as the authority of yesteryear. Winning an Oscar used to really mean something, but in recent years it just means that you struck the right chords in the nerves of Hollywood’s elite.
The Oscars have had these political and reactionary tendencies for a long time. Emilia Pérez seems like the culmination of all these years and unfortunately shows that the ceremony has already left behind any pretension of being a celebration of art to become a purely political event. If they keep this up they’ll really end up with the same credibility as any neighborhood video store.
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