01/03/2025
"Cómo perder un Oscar en 10 días"...así se le hace, por si quieren saber!
The star of the year’s most nominated film, “Emilia Pérez,” torpedoed her chance to win an Oscar—in audacious fashion, Shirley Li writes.
Karla Sofía Gascón had been reaping the rewards as the lead in “Emilia Pérez,” about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and seeks to build a more virtuous life. She made history becoming the first openly trans performer to earn an Oscar nomination, and movingly addressed the audience at the Golden Globes. Then a journalist discovered an array of Gascón’s tweets dating back to 2016 that contained racist language and crude jokes about a range of marginalized communities.
In response, Gascón “posted defensive updates on Instagram, sent a long-winded statement without the assistance of a public-relations team to The Hollywood Reporter, and personally scheduled a lengthy, tearful interview on CNN en Español,” Li writes.
“The actor’s trajectory represents one of the most dramatic implosions of an awards run in Oscars history,” Li continues. “Rarely has a nominee’s curated image—that of a righteous up-and-comer, applauded by an industry eager to demonstrate its tolerance—so thoroughly differed from the one conjured by her personal online accounts. Her case is a fascinating look at how industry status can collide with the social-media era: In spite of the awards season’s purported aims to celebrate cinema, a performer’s off-screen narrative can matter just as much as their work.”
Gascón’s diminished chances of an Oscar arguably resulted not so much from the resurfacing of her bigoted tweets, but mainly from the way she diverged from established public-relations guidelines, Li argues. Oscar campaigns tend to be carefully controlled endeavors, and Netflix, the U.S. distributor for “Emilia Pérez”, has one of the most experienced awards-strategy teams in Hollywood.
Early in the film’s journey toward Oscar glory, she appeared to exemplify its message—one that epitomizes the human capacity for good, and for overcoming flaws with grace. But Gascón has come to embody a narrative of “a shocking, largely self-inflicted public collapse,” Li continues. https://theatln.tc/JBQ3JGyg