How Did ‘Emilia Pérez’ Star Go from Trans Hero to Hollywood Heretic?
Karla Sofía Gascón has the right identity, but the wrong views
It seems like ten minutes ago Karla Sofía Gascón stood as one of the global film community’s most beloved figures.
Gascón plays the lead role in Emilia Pérez, and recently became the first openly trans woman to be nominated for a best actress Academy Award. The Netflix project scored 13 nominations, more than any other film this year. The industry was itching to gush about Gascón and Emilia Pérez at the Academy Awards. After all, Hollywood prides itself on promoting diversity, which, to its denizens, means increasing representation of people from underrepresented groups.
But now Gascón has suddenly transformed into a pariah.
The actor came up empty at last week’s Critics Choice and DGA awards, and didn’t even show up to the events. Now colleagues, such as co-star Zoe Saldaña, struggle to distance themselves from Gascón. Netflix has even removed Gascón’s image from Oscar campaign ads. The controversy will make for a most awkward Academy Awards ceremony on March 2nd.
What’s going on?
Hollywood loves to promote the careers of trans artists. Gascón is a trans artist, so why would the industry excommunicate Gascón? Is the artist no longer trans?
Of course, Gascón didn’t de-transition, at least not that way.
Identity or Politics?
Imagine if the Academy released a statement that read:
We don’t care about advancing the careers of trans people, racial minorities, disabled people or people from any other so-called “underrepresented” group. What we really care about is politics. We will praise and promote those who agree with us politically, and ignore and undermine those who disagree with us politically.
Imagine the uproar, but aren’t actions supposed to speak louder than words?
By its actions, Hollywood shot callers have shown that they abide by my hypothetical statement.
The Gascón controversy represents the latest example of a secret that hides in plain sight: Hollywood’s obsession with identity politics is really an obsession with politics.
Identity merely supplies some politically expedient misdirection: It sounds nobler to advance underrepresented minorities rather than an overrepresented worldview.
The worldview is comprised of a peculiar and always-evolving collection of progressive positions on topics ranging from gender to climate change. Only about eight percent of America endorses it, yet it’s a worldview that Hollywood constantly affirms in everything from 30-second commercials to 90-minute feature films and three-hour awards shows.
Hollywood’s Eight Percenters insist that artists in good standing must support a worldview that roughly 92% of Americans reject. And Eight Percenters typically assume that members of minority groups affirm the industry’s peculiar brand of leftism. Again and again, the pretend world they’ve concocted gets exposed as a mirage. Yet again and again, they express shock when an “underrepresented” voice voices the wrong views.
That’s what happened here.
Everyone in Hollywood assumed Gascón to be an Eight Percenter in good standing, but then some problematic old tweets resurfaced and the hero transformed into a heretic.
Gascon has the right identity, but the wrong views.
RELATED
You Have the Right to Remain Silent
So what kinds of terrible thought crimes were uncovered?
In 2020 and 2021, Gascón tweeted about a variety of hot-button topics including George Floyd:
I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd, a drug addict swindler, but his death has served to once again demonstrate that there are people who still consider black people to be monkeys Without rights and consider policemen to be assassins. They’re all wrong.
What should we make of the tweet? Let’s analyze it for potential thought crimes.
Gascón writes, “I really think that very few people ever cared about George Floyd.” That’s probably true, especially pre-2020, and isn’t particularly controversial. Gascón refers to Floyd as a “drug addict swindler.” It’s strong language, but the description isn’t racist (one of the most common justifications for cancelling). And Gascón wraps up the tweet by rejecting the crude assessments extremists make about black people and police.
That’s one of the most commonly cited of Gascón’s supposedly problematic tweets, but it doesn’t even seem to meet the standard for thought crime employed by so many hypervigilant thought policers. However, some of Gascón’s tweets about Islam do tread into territory that has cancelled others. In one, Gascón writes that “Islam fails to comply with international rights,” and “must be banned as long as it does not comply with DDHH” (an abbreviation for human rights in Spanish law).
That tweet would set off many online mobbers, but Gascon’s call for the ban stems, not from a doctrinal beef with Islam, but from concerns about human rights. It’s a concept Eight Percenters supposedly revere, the one that launched the #MeToo movement.
And Gascón isn’t singling out Islam. It seems like the actor’s proposed ban would extend to other religions. Consider this tweet: “I am so sick of so much of this shit, of islam, of christianity, of catholicism and of all the fucking beliefs of morons that violate human rights.”
But does anyone think ripping Christianity would get Gascón shunned by Hollywood?
Gascón’s most dangerous comments might have been those voiced in a 2021 tweet that targeted the Oscars ceremony itself:
More and more the #Oscars are looking like a ceremony for independent and protest films, I didn’t know if I was watching an Afro-Korean festival, a Black Lives Matter demonstration or the 8M [a Spanish way of referring to International Women's Day]. Apart from that, an ugly, ugly gala.
And here Eight Percenters come close to speaking plainly about intellectual conformity in the entertainment industry.
Says the BBC:
The irony is that, because Gascón is trans, and the film offers a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a trans protagonist, part of the film's appeal to voters was that it seemed so progressive. But there is nothing progressive about the anti-diversity content of her posts.
Bad actor, no Oscar gold for you!
The BBC’s irony detectors must be calibrated to a very narrow range. Reporter Nicholas Barber scolds Gascón for the actor’s “anti-diversity” tweet, but overlooks the anti-diversity worldview of his fellow Eight Percenters.
It’s a worldview that celebrates certain kinds of diversity, but only if they advance intellectual conformity. It’s not a worldview that promotes underrepresented identities, it’s a worldview that affirms the same, old overrepresented dogmas.
Maybe the Gascón controversy will finally reveal Hollywood for what it’s been for so long—a community that is most concerned, not with art or identity, but with politics.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post.
His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here on Substack or on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Ted and his wife and producing partner Courtney Moorehead Balaker are now making a narrative feature film based on Rob Henderson’s bestselling book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
The rules are simple. Do and say as the progressive leadership tells you. And then call it democracy and tolerance.
Love it when someone—here, Ted—puts the pieces together to prove 100% what we are always suggesting to skeptical listeners—namely, that lefties are as described here by The Radical Individualist.