There’s a very easy story to tell about what happened this year at the Oscars: Emilia Perez, with its record number of Oscar nominations, was on a glide path to a Best Picture win, at least until the end of January, when a series of old tweets emerged from the film’s Oscar-nominated star, Karla Sofia Gascon, featuring a wide variety of offensive and racist comments. Because of that, and only that, the thinking goes, Emilia Perez’s Oscar chances were doomed and Anora won instead.
That’s the take, anyway, from HBO host Bill Maher, a man who never saw a single event or social phenomenon that he couldn’t blame on “wokeness” or “cancel culture.” Maher said on his podcast last week that “there are people who say cancel culture isn’t a real thing and I would say to them, ‘It just happened at the Oscars’… You may not think it happened but the movie that was going to win it all was ‘Emilia Pérez.’”
Maher also said that “Hollywood loved” the idea of a trans movie, and a trans performer, winning the Oscar- but then once Gascon’s tweets surfaced, the film “suddenly was out to lunch.”
False Narratives
This narrative, though, is entirely untrue for about ten different reasons.
First of all… Gascon’s tweets really were very bad! There’s been something of a backlash in recent years when it comes to using someone’s old social media posts against them, but in those cases, it doesn’t usually involve, say, someone saying racist stuff about the Moors. Gascon also handled the aftermath poorly, giving multiple interviews and saying other weird stuff in the process.
And what would a world without “cancel culture” even look like? A mandate that if someone made racist comments, there can be no backlash or reaction at all?
Beyond that… Maher seems not to have followed Oscar season all that closely. Emilia Perez was never, at any point, the unquestioned Best Picture frontrunner. This particular Oscar season was all over the place, with Wicked looking like the frontrunner at times, Conclave and The Brutalist having momentum later, and Anora coming on late. Sure, Emilia Perez won Best Picture Comedy at the Golden Globes, but it was never considered THE frontrunner.
As for Gascon, she was never favored for the Best Actress Oscar at a single moment. Demi Moore was favored for most of the season before Mikey Madison overtook her at the end.
Furthermore, there were plenty of reasons to think Emilia Perez never had a real shot at Best Picture.
Emilia Perez Was Never Beloved
From the very start, when it started to play at festivals last year, the reception to Emilia Perez was very divisive. The film, set in Mexico but filmed in France with not a single Mexican person involved in any major role, was heavily criticized for its treatment of Mexican society, the quality of the Spanish dialogue, and how it treated the cartel world. The treatment of trans issues, meanwhile, has drawn a great deal of criticism from trans people, although some are fans of it.
(On top of those criticisms, let me add: The musical numbers are all terrible, the plot makes little sense, and the ending is underwhelming. Two other films last year, I Saw the TV Glow and The People’s Joker, were much better treatments of trans stories, while Transmitzvah was an even better trans-related musical, also on Netflix.)
If there’s a movie that a lot of people hate, it’s going to have trouble winning a Best Picture race, especially with the preferential ballot punishing movies that have a large hater’s club. With the Academy electorate more international than ever before, things like getting Mexico wrong were going to matter. And there are indications that the Academy has some degree of resentment towards Netflix, which has never won a Best Picture Oscar.
Yet despite all of that… Emilia Perez still won two Oscars, for Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldana) and Best Original Song. But it didn’t win Best Picture, and it was never going to.
