Emilia Pérez gender-affirming surgery song goes viral for all the wrong reasons
Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez. (Shanna Besson/Pathé Films)
A musical number from Selena Gomez’s Spanish-language thriller Emilia Pérez is blowing up on social media for its startlingly simplistic explanation of gender-affirming surgery.
The film, which dropped on Netflix recently, follows trans Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón as Pérez, the head of a Mexican cartel who wants to undergo gender-affirming surgery.
She believes she has to fake her own death to escape her past. She enlists high-powered lawyer Rita Mora Castro (Star Trek’s Zoe Saldaña) to help her disappear, leaving behind wife Jessi (Gomez) and two children.
After Rita convinces a doctor that Emilia is serious about getting surgery, the pair wander about an underground hospital and perform a song entitled – wait for it – “La Vaginoplastia”.
That translates as “vaginoplasty”, a surgical procedure which results in the creation of a vagina.
“Hello, very nice to meet you, I’d like to know about sex-change operation,” Saldaña sings, with the doctor responding: “Man to woman or woman to man?”
When he’s told “man to woman,” the doctor comes out with: “From penis to vagina.”
THIS IS NOT A REAL MOVIE F DSHJDSFHDSFHHJDSF pic.twitter.com/Jjbq7cxTn9
— chloe 🦋 (@ChloeNumberIII) November 13, 2024
The song continues as a sort of gender-affirming surgery checklist, with the doctor asking whether Emilia will be requiring mammoplasty, vaginoplasty, rhinoplasty and laryngoplasty.
Viewers have reacted with disbelief on social media, particularly considering the film is believed to be in contention for Oscar nominations.
Referring to director Jacques Audiard, one person wrote: “Once in a while, a French dude will make a movie about queer people that people at Cannes will call ‘a life-changing work’ or whatever. Then it’s released to general audiences and we all find out it’s some South Park s**t.”
Re-sharing the “La Vaginoplastia” scene, a second user said: “Words cannot describe how utterly awful Emilia Perez is, so let this clip do the work.”
Once in a while a french dude will make a movie about queer people that people at Cannes will call “a life-changing work” or whatever and then it’s released to general audiences and we all find out it’s some South Park shit https://t.co/Ry3s92iWOD
— Keifer (@DannyVegito) November 13, 2024
Reviews have been divided, particularly in terms of whether it advances or hinders trans representation.
On the plus side, in May, Gascón became the first trans woman to be named best actress at the Cannes Film Festival, and most critics praised her for carrying the film.
However, Audiard’s work has also been dubbed “cis nonsense” and a “reductive take on the trans experience,” while here at PinkNews, we said the film “loses all nuance when it comes to trans identity”.
The movie film contains several tired trans tropes, and viewers were seemingly driven towards believing Emilia was a man underneath her surgery.
Emilia is deadnamed and misgendered at numerous points, while she describes herself as “half he, half she”. Tropes, including trans women being violent, their lives being tragic and being abandoning by their families, make up the bulk of the film, too.
In arguably the most troubling scene, Emilia reacts with violence towards Jessi, seemingly adopting a similar low-register voice to the one she used pre-surgery.
Emilia Pérez is streaming on Netflix now.
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
How did this story make you feel?
