Emilia Perez and Spanish as a Second First Language

In defense of 'No Sabo' kids

Selena Gomez in Emilia Perez. From The Hollywood Reporter.

Despite winning Best Picture at the Golden Globes and receiving glittering praise from Hollywood, French Director Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez (2024) is bloated, uncommitted to its garish theatricality, and self-indulgent while lacking self-awareness . It’s also really boring.

The film embodies a new standard in film and television, an adoption of “vibes over plot,” whereby the aesthetics, the mise en scene, cinematography, and color gradient, misdirect a foundational principle of storytelling: a good story.

Emilia Perez is an operetta that follows Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), a Mexican cartel boss looking to transition. The narco hires criminal defense attorney Rita Castro (Zoe Saldaña) to discreetly coordinate the sex change. Castro finds a surgeon and fakes Del Monte’s death so that the narco can emerge as Emilia Perez.

While this film is aesthetically beautiful, the decision to tell this story as an operetta/musical is executed without conviction. None of the songs are memorable, none of the actors can sing, and where I can imagine a potential film that combines the violent world of narcos with the whimsy of musicals, this film fails to execute. The Internet has even poked fun at “Vaginoplasty,” a song that unabashedly sings “PENIS TO VAGINA” and puts the audience into a state of disbelief, an “are you hearing what I’m hearing?” moment. The only musical elements that are done with nuance are the soft-spoken “I want” lullabies of Del Monte, which offer vulnerability and counter the traditionally masculine and machismo archetype of narcos.

The compelling elements, the film’s premise of a narco wanting to transition, quickly depart into a completely different film, a regressive absolution of sin on account of Perez’s past crimes as a narco trafficker. The separation of personas through the Del Monte Act I and Emilia Perez Act II, has been criticized by trans critics as harmful representation.

The film has also come under fire from the Mexican community because Audiard ignored the cultural setting of his source material: Mexico. He filmed on a sound stage in France, cast one Mexican actor in the film, and did no prior research about Mexico before shooting. The film then arises out of the French imagination of Mexico — Mexicans are beholden to crime, violence, and self-interest. Audiard’s efforts to represent the Mexican identity are eclipsed by his poor understanding of the culture. In an effort to comment on how Mexican immigrants are treated, or perhaps to reaffirm Mexicans of their sovereignty, he does doing the opposite.

Cast of Emilia Perez. From Variety Magazine.

While I do not think that cultural art should only be made from the perspective of community members, I do believe that if an artist chooses to make art from a perspective that is not their own, it is their responsibility to research as much as they can on the community. The effects of cultural disconnect are disastrous — as witnessed by Emilia Perez.

Audiard has since apologized, stating that “If there are things that seem shocking in Emilia Pérez then I am sorry … Cinema doesn’t provide answers, it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”

Emilia Perez does ask the wrong questions within the film, but what it does ask successfully, exists outside of the film in identity politics. What I find fascinating about this movie is the paratextual aspects — the controversy surrounding Hispanophone world and Mexican-Americans.

Selena Gomez plays the role of Jessi Del Monte, wife to Emilia Perez. Originally written for a Mexican actor, Audiard catered the role to reflect Gomez’s personal heritage as a Mexican-American (which he was also criticized for since a film about Mexico had only one native Mexican, Epifanía (Adriana Paz)).

In preparation for the role, Gomez reportedly spent 6 months taking Spanish lessons. Despite her effort to gain linguistic mastery, she was heavily criticized for her Spanish speaking in the film. Native Mexican Spanish speakers critiqued her accent and her intonation, calling her an outsider to her own culture and essentially saying that her lack of fluency negates any claims she has towards her culture.

For example, Eugenio Derbez, a famous Mexican actor known for La Familia P. Luche (2002-2012) and Instructions Not Included (2013), called her performance “indefensible,” but that he liked the film in lieu of Selena Gomez and her Spanish. Selena apologized to Derbez on TikTok, and in response to the hate he received from Selena’s fans, Derbez retracted his statement and decried latino solidarity.

It’s disappointing that Derbez cannot share an opinion about the representation of Spanish in of the most popular films of the year, because her performance is indefensible; she sounds like a high school freshman enrolled in Spanish I.

And yet, I feel urged to defend Gomez — not her performance, but how she became a Mexican-American who is not fluent in Spanish. Gomez’s Spanish and the Mexican response to her casting is emblematic of a greater issue underlying Hispanophone immigration and globalization: the loss of language.

Since 1848, Mexicans have been immigrating to the U.S to evade lab grabs, sociopolitical distress, and in pursuit of financial opportunity. Generations have passed since the first immigrants have came to the United States —formerly Mexico. Today, Mexicans account for 23% of immigrants in the United States and around 60% of Mexicans live in California or Texas. As such, today there exists a mix of immigrant status. There are immigrants, 1st generation, 2nd generation, and so on. In 2021, U.S. born-Mexicans numbered around 26 million, whereas Mexican-born Mexicans numbered 11 million. The majority of Mexicans living in the United States were born in the U.S., or have been living in the United States for generations. As such, Mexicans living outside of their mother country have developed new relationships to ethnicity living so far away from their land.

Take for instance The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, which radicalized the Mexican-American identity and fought for social justice. There grew an emerging distinction between Mexican-American, Chicano, and Mexican. Mexican-American began to be used to refer to “immediate diaspora,” as in 1st or 2nd generation Mexicans. Chicano was a term to describe removed diaspora and reclamation of ethnic ties, and Mexican to refer to nationality and place of origin. Decades of immigration had birthed a new subculture in relation to Mexican identity.

Chicano Moratorium, Boyle Heights, 1970. Photo by George Rodriguez.

There is celebration in reclamation, but with the formation of subcultures comes naturally, a removal from source. There cannot be new space unless old space is cleared.

One of those areas of loss is language.

For decades, Mexicans and other immigrants have suffered racist remarks, “Speak English! This is America,” and have been stigmatized for not being effortlessly fluent in English. As such, it is a commonly told story of immigrant parents not speaking Spanish to their children so their children learn English perfectly, and hopefully evade the same ridicule they suffered.

However, efforts toward assimilation betray linguistic inheritance.

If language has been taught to newer generations, it no longer exists as Mexican Spanish, but United States Spanish. Being in America shapes any language through the adoption of English slang, phrases, and colloquialisms. If you are in America long enough, no language exists in its purest form. Even the Real Academia, the official, but waning jury on Spanish language is getting flustered on the growing integration of English words into the language due to globalization and technology. But languages change and grow. It is expected that through modernity and environment, a language shifts to reflect the needs of its people. For Spanish speakers in the United States, this may mean an English undertaking in Spanish. While I respect the criticism from native Mexicans’ desire to maintain linguistic integrity in the United States, with diaspora comes the birth of new culture. United States Spanish is still a form of Spanish.

Besides the Real Academia and Hispanophone countries, I also point to the attitudes which prevent Mexican-Americans or Latinos from feeling empowered to learn and command their language — from inside and outside of the United States. I want to recognize how, in my experience, first generation Mexicans think about Spanish.

Gomez represents a growing population of Mexican-American “No Sabo” kids who lack fluency in Spanish, their colonized tongue, and are shamed for it. Like Gomez, there exist many 2nd+ generations of Mexican-Americans who struggle to learn Spanish. I am one.

I am Mexican and Panamanian, and am a 1 and a half generation immigrant. My mother is a first-generation Mexican and my father is an immigrant from Panama. I grew up speaking Kitchen Spanish with them, but didn’t venture into the academic and conversational until taking Bilingual Spanish classes in high school and college. While my Spanish classes were very formative and affirming for my language skills, I couldn’t shake the cultural undertones within the classes. While in class, there was a running joke about “no sabo kids” and Latinos who did not know or were bad a speaking Spanish.

Because what kind of Latino are you if you can’t speak Spanish?

White washed.

(I would like to note here that there are multiple langauges spoken in Latin America: Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic. Latin America is diverse and not a monolith. For the sake of this essay, however, I focus on Spanish-speaking Latin America.)

The ridicule of having suffered assimilation was met at every turn from within the Hispanophone community. Instead of working to empower Latinos, there is greater distinction between who is a “real” and “fake” Latino. There is a superiority complex for Latinos who can and can’t speak Spanish. There is honor in being 1st generation, and shame in being 2nd or 3rd generation, because the longer you are in America, the more diluted Mexican culture becomes, and the weaker one’s Spanish becomes.

While 1st generation cultural ties may be stronger to the motherland, what I find to be faulty thinking however, is that 1st generation Mexicans are in America just like the 2nd and 3rd gens. And if they have children and aren't proactive about teaching their children Spanish, then their children will become the peers they shamed in their youth.

So, although the internet and Spanish speakers ridiculed Gomez, I cannot help but have sympathy for her. Like her, I am a second generation Mexican, am only half Mexican, and am trying to rekindle my connection to Mexico through language and diasporic ties. I sympathize with her because I also know the feeling of struggling to learn Spanish, giving everything to learning, and doing your best for an undesired outcome.

But unlike Gomez, my relationship to Spanish is also carved through race. Learning Spanish was for me, a way to connect with my ancestors, but also a means for validation. It was a way of proving my Latin American heritage; an act of separation and distinction from my other Afro-Latinos in the United States. In America, Black is Black is Black. Afro-Latinos are racialized in the United States; it does not matter where you come from because Blackness is all-consuming. I supposed that gaining fluency would soften my Blackness. I treated my study of Spanish as a way to elevate myself, and prove I wasn’t lying about being Afro-Latina or forsaking my Latin culture for a racialized America. I feel at home in my identity now and have wrestled with my internalized racism, but I didn’t always.

In addition to being Afro-Latina, I also live in Los Angeles where there are many Spanish speakers, but even they speak some English so it is hard to practice casual conversations.

The globalized world is multilingual, Americans are not. There is no communicative responsibility placed on Americans to learn another language. So when I travel back to Panama and Mexico, I find practicing difficult. Even in my mother countries when I speak Spanish to store keepers or locals, they reply in English. They are tipped off by my Californian accent and knowing, or assuming, that I want to practice with them.

Why would they practice with me when they have already gained mastery over English and Spanish? Meaning, why waste time trying to help a privileged American learn another language out of desire when the rest of the world has to learn English out of force, necessity, and colonization. I understand this, and frankly, I do not blame their impatience.

You cannot be from everywhere. There is a place where you are from, a place where you became a person, a place where you grew up. But, I think future Latin American immigrants to the United States need to afford more grace to Latinos who have assimilated to America, and are trying actively to be cultural bearers of the language.

Kam Jurado, a Mexican Youtuber, argues that Latinos in America, as a result of globalization know nothing about the socio-political experiences of being Latin American because they grew up in the United States. He says that Mexican-Americans like Selena Gomez, are not latina.

I agree with Jurado. But I think while Mexican-Americans do not have a complete image of Mexico, native Mexicans do not have a complete image of what it is like to grow up Mexican in the United States. Latinos in the United States straddle honoring one’s culture through the terms of Americanness. There is a double consciousness that tires the spirit after having to exist in white protestant, patriarchal America. Not everyone is afforded the same cultural luxuries.

More grace needs to be given to Latinos who are (re)learning Spanish for the first time. They are reconnecting cultural roots and shame only deters that process.

It took me a long time to overcome the shame others imposed upon me and the shame I fed myself. I was frustrated with my misunderstanding and lack of knowledge. If only I had been fully fluent as a child and retained the language throughout life, I wouldn’t be here learning it over again. My idea of where I should be with Spanish prevented me from accepting where I was at.

But at least like me, like Gomez, there are people who crave fluency. And we reach a point of acceptance and responsibility over our language skills. There are Latinos who do not speak Spanish but who want to speak Spanish, and I think it’s noble to redefine one’s relationship to culture as an adult.

Yes, Selena Gomez’s Spanish in Emilia Perez is bad. But at least she’s trying.