Critics of Selena Gomez's Spanish in 'Emilia Pérez' shutter dialogue and growth | Opinion
To truly listen to Selena Gomez is to enter into a relationship not only with her, but also with the emerging Hispanic and Latino community of the US.
In the musical "Emilia Pérez" (the big winner in the Jan. 5 Golden Globes Awards), a North American attorney (played by the American actor Zoe Saldaña) asks a Mexican drug lord (played by the Spanish actor Karla Sofía Gascón) what can she do for him?
The drug lord warns her, in Spanish, that "to listen is to accept." The attorney repeats the phrase in a later conversation with an Israeli surgeon, played by the Ukrainian-born actor Mark Ivanir.
The multicultural "Emilia Pérez" crosses national and linguistic boundaries. The screenplay is in Spanish and much of the action takes place in Mexico City, but the movie is a French production. It was filmed outside Paris, its director and writer is French (Jacques Audiard), and it’s based on a French novel by Boris Razon ("Écoute").
The debut was at the Cannes Film Festival last May, when Saldaña, Gascón, Gomez and Mexican actor Adriana Paz together received the best actress award.
Attacks on Selena Gomez's Spanish became 'indefensible'
Notwithstanding its success, the movie was recently the object of controversy.
Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez criticized Gomez’s Spanish, calling it "indefensible." His comment was roundly criticized in the United States, where the speech and Spanish of Latinos and Hispanics is a sensitive issue. The criticism was so widespread that Derbez had to retract himself, and even had to say that his own comments were "indefensible."
It’s worth putting Derbez’s comment in the context of the movie’s tagline: "To listen is to accept."
It’s a reminder that no language is pure or purely authentic. Listening to someone is also to establish a profound relationship with them. It’s to trust them, to believe in them. Understanding depends on that least common denominator: on having faith in the speech of the other.
When Puerto Ricans want someone to come closer in every sense of the word we say "óyeme, échate pacá," or "listen, closer."
I learned that correcting my students was akin to silencing them
In my Spanish classes at Vandy, every Latino, Hispanic and American student has their own spoken language or speech. Early on in my career, I learned that teaching Spanish was not about correcting this way of speaking, because every time I tried, I ended up silencing my students. I killed any possibility of dialogue or conversation.
Instead, I learned to have a relationship with them by listening, by accepting their speech. In this way, our relationship became part and parcel of the development and growth of our class, but also of the Spanish language, more generally.
To truly listen to Selena Gomez – who doesn’t put an accent on her last name, as required by the grammars of the Royal Spanish Academy – is to enter into a relationship not only with her, but also with the emerging Hispanic and Latino community of the United States.
To say that her speech is "indefensible" is to kill the possibility of dialogue and growth.
Our speech is the breathing sign of a living language. To "listen" is, indeed, to accept, in the deepest sense of the word.
Benigno Trigo is a guest columnist for the The Tennessean, where this column originally appeared.