Obviously
everything that is happening to Karla Sofia Gascon the Academy Award nominee
for Emilia Perez who has gone from hero to villain even faster than
usual in the era of social media, is completely and utterly her fault.
She made the
mistake of expressing opinions on Twitter that were the kind of opinions that
would not be uncommon on conservative websites about Islam and George Floyd.
That she did so while she was a citizen of Spain, years before Emilia Perez was
being considered made and streamed for Netflix, is completely and utterly
irrelevant. She committed the unforgivable sin of having opinions that were out
of line with the values of Hollywood years before she was going to be embraced
by them, which as we all know, shows how ungrateful she was. If you are going
to be the symbol of how inclusive the industry is, you must be beyond reproach
even if it you have no idea you’re going to be that symbol until weeks before
it happens.
Gascon has apologized
but that is not nearly enough. She must, to be clear, return every single
critics awards she has received in the leadup to the Oscar nominations, never
attend another awards ceremony leading up to the Oscars, and never make another
film again. And of course after the Oscars Netflix should scrub Emilia Perez
from its site altogether. It’s the right thing to do.
These paragraphs,
as most of you who know my writing by now, are completely satirical. The fact
that the first two paragraphs are basically being used to pillory Gascon and by
extension Emilia Perez on social media and have become a ‘controversy’
strikes me as the kind of thing that is both tragedy and farce. And I have little
doubt that in some corners of the web so many enlightened people are thinking that
would be too light a punishment for Gascon.
I’ve spent a lot
of time arguing about free speech as an absolute right and part of that free
speech is the freedom for people to say whatever they want even if it goes
against everything you personally believe. That old statement by Voltaire: “I
completely disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it” is one I completely agree with. It has become very clear
to me in so many of the articles online that there are too many people who don’t
share that opinion and make it very clear in ‘criticism’ of comedians as well
as other social figures.
I once engaged
with someone who pilloried Dave Chapelle’s last comic special and was infuriated
Netflix filmed it. I argued that Chappelle had a complete right to say what he
wanted and that this reviewer didn’t have to watch it if it offended them. The reviewer
turned on me and accused me of being a homophobe and a MAGA extremist. It
degenerated from there and I ended up blocking them. I’ve encountered similar
issues involving such now controversial figures as J.K. Rowling and Chris Rock,
who were once the darlings of the left and have now become pariahs because
their views are not inline with this next generation.
But the case of
Gascon is excruciating in my opinion because Gascon is a transgender, the
current cause célèbres of the last few years, particularly in America. With
their rights under threat and in particular after the most recent election, I
suspect many in Hollywood seized upon Emilia Perez and Gascon as a sign
of resistance against this movement. This was supposed to be a battle cry, an
argument for inclusion against the next four years.
Then in the past
two weeks, Gascon’s old tweets became a matter of public record and the furor
has developed. As far as I know none of this has anything to do with whether Emilia
Perez or Gascon’s work as an actress’ quality: if it was good enough to be
loved the last few months by the Academy, it should still be good enough now.
And yet when these remarks surfaced – and to be clear they are all years old,
so it’s not like they’re even that recent -
everything that was inclusive about Hollywood seems to have turned on
Gascon in the blink of an eye.
Now you’d think that
this could be a teachable moment, not just for Hollywood but for the world.
First of all, even though Gascon is the first transgender nominee for an Academy
Award, the idea that she somehow is supposed to be the representative not just
for transgender actresses but every single transgender person on the face of
the earth, really shows Hollywood’s inflated opinion of itself. I have little
doubt that Gascon’s nomination was supposed to be a sign of how inclusive the business
is more than anything. We’re willing to nominate a transgender woman who isn’t
even born in America. Doesn’t this show how good we are?
I’ve argued
repeatedly about Hollywood’s ridiculous attitude towards it self-importance in
numerous articles as well as its own brands of racism and xenophobia,
particularly when it comes to the Academy Awards. And it’s clear to them that both
Emilia Perez and Gascon were more important symbolically to them then
the actual film. The Oscars, as we know, considers itself an American
institution and foreign – pardon me, international films – are almost
never allowed to crash the party. Even their myths of inclusivity go can be contradictory
as we all saw with the way that so many people were infuriated about Greta
Gerwig being ignored for Best Director, they omitted Justine Triet had been.
The only reason I
suspect Hollywood put this much weight behind Gascon was less because of Emilia
Perez but rather who she was and what she represented. This brings me to
the second and more frustrating point. Has anyone defended Gascon while this
controversy has been going on? Because I sure as hell haven’t seen in online.
Where are Selena
Gomez and Arianda Grande speaking up for their co-star? Where is Zoe Saldana,
who has been winning various awards left and right and may very well win Best
Supporting Actress for her work in Perez? Where is the defense of the
small but critical American transgender community such as Laverne Cox
and MJ Rodriguez? Hell, where’s the entire remainder of the LGBTQ+ community in
Hollywood defending Gascon? Isn’t she one of your own? You’re the ones who have
been arguing how inclusive Hollywood has been to you when the rest of the world
isn’t? And one of your own is under attack - not for doing anything bad, but for
expressing her own opinions years before you knew her – and you have
nothing to say?
Gascon has already
given multiple apologies, gotten off of Twitter and has made it clear she won’t
attend the Critics Choice Awards or the Producers Guild. To be honest, all she
should have needed to ever say was: “I have a right to my opinions, even if you
don’t agree with them.” In my opinion
that’s all anyone in the world – certainly even a celebrity – should ever have
to say when old statements from their past resurface. The fact that our entire
culture now seems determined to turn on you on a dime the moment you say
something they personally consider hate speech, really says more about them
then the people who make these statements.
Like I said, this
could have been a teachable moment. Someone should have said that for all of
the real problems transgender community face in the world and deserve protection,
they are human beings like the rest of us. Shouldn’t they be allowed to make
the same bigoted statements about other minorities the way that Rowling is
allowed to make about them? Why do we have to hold everybody in the world to
the same impossible standard of speaking equally about every member of an
oppressed coalition?
Nothing has
changed about Emilia Perez based on Gascon’s earlier tweets, any more
than anything has changed about Chapelle’s Show or the Harry Potter
novels. The ability to separate the artist from the art should be paramount in society
as a viewer. If Emilia Perez was a great movie before her tweets surfaced
it still should be today.
But as appears to
be the trend we always seem to find it easier to punish rather than learn. I suspect,
though I don’t know the future, that Gascon may end up being forced out of
Hollywood not long after this. They will use the metric of her old remarks
against her saying she is ‘controversial’. It’s
easier to say this rather than express their own cowardice of going against the
court of public opinion as well of despite their being a beacon for liberal
causes, they are a business built on images more than actual people. Hollywood
loved the idea of Gascon. When they met the reality and found out she wasn’t
the perfect model they had set her up to me, they seem fine turning on her.
I have not seen Emilia
Perez yet (nor indeed any of the major nominees for Best Picture) so much
of this is academic for me. But as a larger statement for the kind of place
Hollywood has become, as well as how our social media to sit in judgment for
people and demand more than a pound of flesh for perceived offenses, this
troubles me in the same way that the conservative movement has decided to turn
against marginalized communities like transgenders for political gain rather
than consider them as individuals.
What this does
seem like is another large argument against our rights to have opinions if they
go against what is considered one groups norm.
And it argues further that, in some circles, even celebrities who break
barriers for so many people can be burned in effigy when they express opinions
that go against the rules of a different set of those people. It argues against
that no matter how inclusive an institution claims to be, You can’t have
partial free speech; it has to be all or nothing. The so-called controversy
surrounding Gascon is yet another example as to how much of our society can’t
grasp that basic truth – and it shows their own bigotry instead.
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