BAD REPRESENTATION: EMILIA PÉREZ
Welcome to Trans Tuesday! We’re starting off the year by discussing one of the more harmful bits of depictions of trans women to come out in recent years. Here comes BAD REPRESENTATION: EMILIA PÉREZ.
Emilia Pérez was a movie released in 2024, about a Mexican trans woman, written and directed by a French cis white man, Jacques Audiard, based on a book written by Boris Razon (also a cis man from France). If any of that gives you pause right up front… well, it should.
I’d heard the movie was about a trans woman, so I was intrigued and added it to my list to check out. And then I heard it was about a trans woman who’s a cartel drug lord, and my heart kinda sank because already I felt like I knew where it was headed.
But I went into it with an open mind. I’m a screenwriter, I’ve trained myself to approach all art on its own terms, and give it all a chance. But I’m also a trans woman, and I know how cis people writing about trans people often goes. See BAD REPRESENTATION (Lovecraft Country).
As I was watching it, I just felt my heart sink with every passing minute. I think we weren’t even twenty minutes in when the first “what the fuck?” (not complimentary) escaped my lips. I thought I was just gonna watch it and note a few things afterward, like I always do for my “trans rep in media” reports, but I ended up taking multiple notes in spite of myself. Because so much of what I saw was so damaging and dangerous, and I’m so, so tired of it.
And then I thought I’d just talk about it in my TRANS REPRESENTATION IN 2024 MOVIES AND TV write up, but the more I thought about it the more I felt like I needed to talk about this movie on its own first.
Because it won multiple awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and as of this writing it’s shortlisted for a nomination for multiple Oscars (including possibly being France’s official entry as a country). And, again, if a movie about a Mexican trans woman being submitted by the country of France isn’t sending up some alarm bells…
Very briefly, it’s the story of a trans woman cartel leader who hires a lawyer to help her transition, and what happens after that. It’s also… a musical. And it’s a very weird musical. But let me make something clear here: that it’s a weird musical is a point in its favor with me! You can read more about it here.
I love weird stuff that takes bold swings. And I was actually really impressed with Karla Sofía Gascón, the trans woman lead actress who plays Emilia. She was really great with what she was given to work with. The problem is that what she was given to work with is suuuuuper problematic.
And to be fair, I’ve heard that the movie fixed some problems with the book it’s based on, namely that in the book the cartel leader goes on HRT and has gender confirmation surgeries simply to avoid being caught for their crimes. Given that, I’m willing to take folks’ word on it because I’m not gonna read that.
Because that means the lead isn’t actually trans, and it conceptually perpetuates the “trans women are really just violent men in dresses” trope that transphobes use time and again to legislate our rights away.
Imagine being a cis man and thinking that was a good book to write. Imagine being another cis man who thought that was a great concept to turn into a musical. Woof.
To the movie’s credit, they present Emilia as a trans woman who “always knew” she was a girl since childhood and is actually trans. And in movies like this, so so so often, cis men are cast to play trans women and thus even further perpetuate that we’re nothing more than “men in dresses.” See the Trans Tuesday on TRANS ROLES AND STORIES for more on how and why that’s a horrible thing to do.
Not all movies about trans people made by cis people come out bad. I talked in the TRANS REP IN 2023 MOVIES AND TV report about Monica, which is a very good movie starring Trace Lysette. The writer and director of Monica at least brought Trace on board to consult (though he really should have made her co-writer and co-director at MINIMUM), but her involvement behind the scenes showed.
I can find nothing that says Karla Sofía Gascón was allowed to help shape Emilia Pérez in any way, and let me tell you… it also shows. And I cannot imagine telling a story about someone from a marginalized community and thinking you don’t at all need their input on how to do that or if you’re getting it right, never mind that a transition story is one hundred percent not a cis man’s story to tell. Trans voices and stories are routinely stolen from us by cis people to suit their own ends (it’s part of what Matrix Resurrections is about, see my book for more on that).
Let me also state here that none of the harmful representation in this movie is Karla’s fault. There are so, so few roles for trans women, much less starring roles. And who had the absolute least power on that set? As a trans woman, she did. None of the problems are on her.
I’d like to think she’d have seen how problematic it was and turned it down, but maybe she wasn’t in a position to do so, especially with a high profile Oscar-bait film that could possibly make her career.
It’s the same thing that happens in tv shows made in the US. On the rare occasion a trans writer is on the writing staff, they’re the least empowered and it’s not safe for them to speak up about harmful representation without fear of reprisal. Cis people don’t often like hearing that what they’re doing isn’t “being such a good ally, gosh” and is instead actively harming the people they think they’re helping.
So does that trans writer speak up, and risk being fired and thus not be there to possibly effect positive change later? It’s a terrible situation to be in (writers from all marginalized communities face this to some degree in Hollywood, which is still overwhelmingly run by cishet white men).
So what, exactly, did I find so harmful in Emilia Pérez? So glad you asked, because gosh do I have answers for you.
First, and this might just be a me thing, but Emilia almost feels like a secondary character in her own story. The movie’s named after her, and it’s ostensibly about her transition, but we don’t really see any of her transition or anything it involves, mentally or physically (there’s a little, which we’ll get to shortly). As a writer, to me, this movie felt like it was just as much but maybe more so about Zoe Saldana’s lawyer character, Rita, who is hired to help Emilia transition and then befriends her.
And it’s wild to me that in a movie that is, again, supposed to be about a trans woman and her transition, her transition takes a back seat, and she has to play second fiddle (or at best, co-first fiddle) with a cis woman who is just so brave and such a good ally for helping this trans woman drug lord. It feels like a very cisgender-centered point of view, right? That’s often what you’re gonna get when you have a cis person trying to tell a trans story that they have no business telling (and this is one of the reasons why).
But again, to be fair, those are my personal impressions. I think they should definitely count for something as a trans woman screenwriter, as this is my exact wheelhouse, but let’s set that aside. Let’s do what I do when I watch any new movie or tv show: take it on its own terms.
There’s an early scene where Emilia, pre-social transition, meets with Rita, Zoe Saldana’s lawyer character, and says she wants to hire her to help her transition to a woman. Rita says it’s not an overnight thing and takes time (good!) and then… pre-transition, man-presenting Emilia opens her shirt to reveal she’s been on HRT for two years and has already developed breasts. Rita gasps.
I’ve seen some folks say this was a gasp of disgust. I’ve seen some people say this was a gasp of surprise. What I want you to know is that either way this is showing transition as a surprise and something to be shocked by. It’s showing you trans people are duplicitous. See what she was hiding from you? Also this trans woman is a violent drug lord, can you even trust her?
And like… yes, you can say maybe NOBODY would trust a violent drug lord. That’s not transphobic!
I will remind you of what I say in basically every trans allegory write up that I do: everything you see in a movie or tv show is a choice made by the creators. It’s not made in a vacuum, it’s not beyond questioning.
The writer and director of this film chose to tell a story about a trans woman who was a violent drug lord. She could have been literally anything else. This is what he picked.
Trans people can be villains, by the way! We should be, because we can be any kind of character. I’d argue that until cis people demonstrate they can write us as villains without damaging all trans people, however, that maybe only trans people should be writing trans villains.
Because even though Emilia Pérez doesn’t have Emilia transition to escape justice for her crimes, her transition is inextricably linked to it and they thought, in the present horrific climate trans people are experiencing in this world, that presenting us as a violent criminal was a good idea. I can’t imagine the thought process there, other than to think not a second thought was given to it. Which is not what you’d get if a trans person was telling this story.
Early on there’s a musical number, full of trans people (story-wise, I have no idea if any of them were played by actual trans people because they were in a musical ensemble) and a doctor who performs gender confirmation surgeries, singing about how wonderful plastic surgery is and how they all love it.
To me it trivializes that these procedures are vital and life-saving. They’re not goofy or just for fun. It also treats it like something every trans person wants and does, which is huuuuugely problematic in its own right. The movie sadly does this a lot, kinda presents Emila’s transition as the only way to do it, likely because the cis man writer and director literally doesn’t know that’s not true.
As a perfect example of this, lyrics in the song go on about going “ from man to woman, woman to man.” Which ignores that nonbinary people exist, and treats trans women like we were men (and trans men like they were women) and that it is only the surgery that changes that.
This is one hundred percent TRANSMEDICALISM, see that Trans Tuesday if you need more. And here it’s being presented to a wide audience, of largely cis people (cis people are the largest audience for anything, because they outnumber trans people by such a wide margin in the population), that this is what transition is.
I actually think a goofy musical number about gender confirmation surgery could be fucking amazing in the hands of a trans person who understands it, and what trans people go through. In the hands of a cis person, it became a weapon that perpetuates some bad bad shit.
When Rita meets with the surgeon who will perform Emilia’s operations, the surgeon says he can’t change a patient’s sense of self. “If he’s a he, he’ll still be a he. If he’s a she she’ll still be a she.” This is actively transphobic, and saying even with surgery a trans woman is still a man mentally. It’s fucking appalling, when mentally we’ve always been our true gender! This is again perpetuating the horrific real-world violence we face, with transphobes thinking trans women are “really” men.
When the scene ends, the doctor says Rita should tell Emilia to “change his mind,” as in he believes she’s still a man and, as such, misgenders her. Cis bullshit.
And the doctor says he can’t “fix the soul.” Trans people’s souls don’t need fixing tho?! Rita then says that fixing the body fixes the soul, and fixing the soul fixes society. That’s some weird contorted cis justification for helping trans people because it might help society? But that’s not our job? We just want to exist as ourselves, it’s not on us to fix transphobes’ hearts.
And also, why are two cis people debating a trans woman’s transition here?! What the fuck.
Guess we can’t allow a trans person to talk about how they actually feel and what it’s actually like for them. You’re telling me that Emilia the drug lord, with mountains of money and seemingly unlimited resources, couldn’t have used a burner phone to call the doctor Rita found and talk to him herself? Again, all of these were active choices made by the writer and director, and they’re some bullshit.
Emilia tells Rita that she has to send her wife and kids away, and they can never know about her transition. No reason is ever given!
I feel like this is a carryover from the book, right? Oh, I’m a criminal and I’m transitioning to hide, so if my family knows they can point the cops to me. But when you (rightfully) change Emilia’s motivation there, and then you have this scene with no reason given for why they have to be sent away and can’t know about her transition, what do you get?
You’re left to think Emilia’s ashamed of being trans and doesn’t want them to know, or that it’s required as part of her transition (spoilers: IT ACTUALLY USED TO BE, see that TRANSMEDICALISM Trans Tuesday). And again we find that, either way you interpret that, you’re perpetuating bad bad shit.
In the hands of a trans person, this could be a powerful scene about how society wants us to be ashamed of ourselves, about how society wants us to think no one could ever love us for who we are, and how all of that is bullshit.
Instead, we get confirmation that that’s just the way things are for trans people. It infuriates me.
Emilia has a later song about how all she cares about is transitioning. Now, like, yeah, it’s super important for us for a whole host of reasons, but not to the exclusion of everything else. We don’t stop caring about other people or loving our kids! The song paints us as selfish, self-absorbed assholes who only care about ourselves. Because if we cared about others we wouldn’t transition, right?
Transphobic bullshit.
Emilia has a scene where she instructs Rita to destroy all evidence of her transition. Again, a possible artifact of changing her motivation for transition from being nothing more than escaping justice. But what you now have is a trans person who’s going stealth and doesn’t want anyone to know they’re trans, as if trans is something bad to be. BULLSHIT.
Emilia then apparently has all the surgeries (at once) and her face is entirely covered in bandages, and she uses a hand mirror to look at her crotch. Then suddenly she’s out of bandages and putting on women’s clothes and it’s all over. As if it’s that easy and not an incredibly lengthy and difficult process. As if it’s a quick switch you flip.
They show none of her adapting to it, or how it affects her, or what it means to her. The movie immediately skips ahead four years, so you miss all of that. It’s the kinda stuff that feeds into “teachers are gonna trans your kids at school, and you send your son to school and he comes home a girl” bullshit transphobes use to gin up hatred towards us.
So when I said earlier that Emilia and her transition, which again is what this movie is supposed to be about, plays second fiddle, this is what I mean. And on the one hand I’m kinda glad because, given what we’ve seen already, I would not trust this cis man writer/director to get any of it right and not perpetuate more misinformation and harm, but in not showing what it’s actually like, he still perpetuated misinformation and harm. This is why cis people need to stop taking trans stories from us.
Then years later, post-transition Emilia shows up to surprise Rita at a dinner party, in a “you didn’t recognize me, but this is me now!” way. Again playing up the trans women are liars and tricksters aspect, and the “we’re just a surprise to cis people” angle.
One derogatory term for us is “traps,” as if we exist only to lure cishet men into a trap because they think we’re cis women and then when they go to have sex with us, surprise! We trapped you into doing sex stuff with a trans woman. Which I think scares so many cishet men because they worry it somehow makes them gay, when in fact being attracted to a trans woman is the most straight thing a cis man can do because we’re women.
And you can draw a straight line from the portrayals of us as “traps” and tricksters to things like THE TRANS PANIC DEFENSE. It’s a mess!
Emilia later decides she can’t live without her kids anymore, so Rita brings them to her in Mexico under a story that Emilia was their dad’s cousin. Emilia’s wife and kids do not recognize her, more lies and secrets from trans women.
There’s a scene of Emilia lying next to one of her kids in his bed, and Karla gives a really great performance here when the kid sings a song about missing his dad. But also the kid tells her she smells like his dad. But at this point Emilia’s been on HRT for six years.
Y’know what one of the first things to change for most people on HRT is? YOUR SMELL. I smell like a girl now, and it was one of the earliest changes from HRT that gave me GENDER EUPHORIA. This one shows the person writing it knew jack shit about what hormone replacement therapy does to a body, and as my brilliant friend Jessie Gender mentioned to me, this points to a “biological essentialism” and is essentially saying it doesn’t matter what you do or who you say you are, you’re still “really” a man.
Emilia has another song later about how she’s “half him and half her” and doesn’t know who she is. I should add at no point in the film does Emilia actually struggle with her identity or her gender. This is not one of the things trans people actually go through where we wonder if we’re trans enough, or if transition was right (btw YES YOU ARE TRANS ENOUGH).
It makes zero sense for this song to be where it is in the movie, with no other context. It feels like it’s doing nothing but adding to the “trans people are just confused” nonsense that’s used to take our rights away, because we can’t really know who we are or what’s right for us. Perpetuates more. Bad. Shit.
There’s a portion of the movie where Emilia gets mad at the thought of losing her kids, and when that happens… her voice drops. Not to just being unmodulated or what have you in the way that can happen when we’re stressed or upset (Monica does this brilliantly, actually), but her voice becomes the exact same as the one she used pre-transition at the beginning of the film.
What’s worse is she then gets violent with her wife for threatening to take the kids away, and assaults her on a bed. It’s not a sexual assault, but her wife is on her back on the bed and Emilia is on top of her, choking her, possibly even straddling her (I’m not going back to check that one, sorry), and speaking in her pre-transition voice in anger.
And if you don’t see this as directly perpetuating the “trans women are violent men in dresses” trope that is being used to ban us from public bathrooms and schools and take our ability to exist in public away, like, I don’t know what to tell you.
Perpetuates SO MUCH MORE. BAD. SHIT.
Emilia later becomes a victim of violence at the hands of her wife (who still doesn’t know she’s trans or her husband), which is now perpetuating the “trans women are victims” trope that pops up in media again and again and again.
Her wife then, upon learning Emilia’s true identity, misgenders her… after tying her up and throwing her in the trunk of a car.
That car then explodes, and Emilia dies.
Somehow this movie managed to hit every harmful trope about trans women at the same time.
We’re for shock value.
We’re duplicitous.
We’re selfish.
We’re confused.
We’re violent.
We’re victims.
We can’t be trusted.
Like, how do you hit every single fucking one of those without even trying? It’s like a transphobe writer’s checklist of things to include to be sure they’re stickin’ it to the transes.
Other folks have also written about how damaging this movie is to Mexico and Mexicans, with the director even admitting he didn’t bother researching Mexico before telling this story about Mexican people in Mexico! And if he didn’t do that, how much do you think he researched about trans women?
Clearly, from the results in the movie, the answer is NONE.
If you’d like to read more about the horrible depiction of Mexico as nothing more than full of violence and drug gangs (ALSO at a time where those tropes are being used to hurt Mexican immigrants BY THE SAME PEOPLE using transphobic tropes to hurt trans people!), here’s an article for you.
Here’s another great article outlining a lot of issues with the movie.
It’s so bad that GLAAD felt they had to write about it and the harm it’s done (this also collects a lot of other quotes and statements from trans and queer reviewers who are just as appalled as I am).
This movie perpetuates every bad lie you’ve ever heard about trans women, and confirms for transphobes everything they think they know about us. I don’t give a shit about bigots, but think about what this movie is going to do to the people who just don’t know much about trans people, but have heard the propaganda. This is going to confirm all the bullshit lies, and it could make them support the people trying to take our rights away.
When you tell a story about a marginalized community you don’t belong to, you HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO DO NO HARM.
But you also better think long and fucking hard about whether or not it’s your story to tell. No cis white man has ANY business telling a story about what it’s like for a Mexican trans woman to transition. If you think that’s an important story to tell, HIRE A MEXICAN TRANS WOMAN TO TELL THAT STORY. I ASSURE YOU THEY EXIST.
If you feel the need to defend this movie, do something for me. At every point where I said this movie went wrong, ask yourself if a Mexican trans woman writer/director would have made those same choices that a white cis man did. The answer is unequivocally NO, and therein lies the problem.
This is what happens when our voices are stolen.
This is what happens when our stories are appropriated by people who don’t understand us and don’t care to learn, and think they know us better than we know ourselves.
And it has GOT TO STOP.
Art can change the world. The question is: do you want to change it for the better, or worse?
Hire more trans writers. We need these gigs.
The world needs our stories told by us, maybe now more than ever.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
