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Who was Stuart Hall?
Who was Stuart Hall?
Stewart Hall was a British-Jamaican writer and academic, focused on critical cultural studies. He was born in Jamaica in 1932, and moved to Great Britain to focus on his studies. Most of his work focuses on hegemonic studies, within a framework of knowledge and power(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist) (Sparks 2025).
(image found on Stuart Hall's Hippies Website)
What does this writer have to do with Emilia Pérez?
What does this writer have to do with Emilia Pérez?
In 1992, Hall wrote a very influential work, "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power”. This work tackles ideas about how the world is categorized into groups either being aligned with the Western, more modern, European countries, or they are categorized into the Rest (Hall 201). The most important part of this text, however, for the purposes of this blog are the techniques that he has pointed out that help maintain this West vs. Rest divide.
Hall's Techniques
Hall's Techniques
In Hall's influential text, he mentions many techniques that help form representations of societies around the world and how they are talked about, but for the sake of this blog, we will be only going over a few: discourse, systems of representation, and regimes of truth.
Discourse
Discourse
In the context of "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power", discourse is "a particular way of representing 'the West', 'the Rest', and the relations between them" (Hall 201).
Systems of Representation
Systems of Representation
In Stuart Hall's text, he describes a system of representation that describes how different groups are seen in the world through an "archive" (Hall 206). This archive pulls from different sources including classical knowledge, which includes works from Aristotle, Religious and Biblical Sources, Myths, and Traveler's Tales (Hall 207). These systems were in place to show what the general population saw as knowledge and what they could then base their analysis of other groups on. Hall also mentions how in past eras of the world, "fact and fantasy constituted 'knowledge' (Hall 208).
Discourse
Discourse
Hall's discourse framework helps us analyze the faults of Emilia Pérez because it helps us realize that the film is representing almost every group of people in the film under a negative light. Audiard tries to have many different people in this film including LGBTQ people, Mexican cartel bosses, as well as innocent bystanders of crime, but he fails to represent them in a way that is accurate to how these people act in our real lives. He tries to portray a story that shines light on the opioid epidemic that is currently happening in Mexico, but this part of the story takes a backseat so that Emilia and Jessi's storylines can have more time. By framing an ex cartel leader as someone the audience wants to sympathize, the real life effects of Mexican cartels are missing, even though this film tries to tackle the issue during the runtime. Audiard thereby creates a discursive formation that is harmful to a Mexican audience because it can make those who are Mexican and have lost people to opioid/drug addictions feel like their voices don't matter or that they should stay silent.
Untitled video - Made with Clipchamp.mp4This clip shows their attempt to talk about the issues that the cartel is causing for the local Mexican peoples, but other than a few scenes that add up to around 15 minutes of screentime, these voices are not the focus of the film. If Audiard wanted to tackle the impacts of the Mexican cartel on one specific person, he did not do that well of a job, as he can't show the life of a cartel boss without showing the effects they may cause. (Audiard, 1:07:00-1:08:00)
Emilia Pérez is creating a discursive formation that represents those who are affected by opioid addiction as bad people, or those who would deserve to become addicted to these drugs. In the clip above, the families that are singing in this scene all seem to be those who are of poorer working class families who have lost someone to addiction(Audiard, 1:07:00-1:08:00). However, in real life, addiction can effect all types of individuals, and many who overdose on these drugs weren't even addicts, they often are just people who tried the drug once.
Systems of Representation
Systems of Representation
In Emilia Pérez, the main way through which our characters gain information is through television stations and testimonials. In many cases, our characters learn about the atrocities that the Mexican cartel has committed through the news, as well as through the people who have been affected by the actions of the cartel. These testimonials often provide the most credible information as our characters are able to visit the places the families describe and see for themselves what the cartel has done (Audiard 1:05:07-1:07:00). However, this film aligns with a real life system of representation through its news channels. Many of the times we see the news is when the news is supporting the actions of Emilia Pérez. As she is an ex criminal, it is hard to understand how the characters in this film are unable to see through the cracks in the story that she is telling through television as they are blissfully unaware that she is acting as a philanthropist to run away from her past life, not to make the world greater(Audiard 1:07:00-1:08:00). This idea is similar to how many real life news channels take the side of the people who make them the most money, or make the best story. A real life example of this was covered in a documentary called Un poquito de tanto verdad, directed by Jill Friedberg in 2007. This documentary speaks about the 2006 strike that teachers went on in Oaxaca, Mexico to strive for better education for their students, including more access to breakfast, books, and financial aid (Friedberg, 2007, 2:20-2:30). In the clip below, Friedberg shows the audience a clip of one of the newscasts in Mexico broadcasting wrongful information about the strike, making it seem to be more dangerous and unsuccessful than it actually was (Friedberg 24:00-24:40). With the Mexican news in Emilia Pérez showing a similar situation to the real life strike, we can see how the regime of truth is being upheld in both cases. The TV channels have control over what they are broadcasting, and they decide to either make the people of Mexico seem like the bad guys, or place those in power on pedestals.
Guelaguetza Festival in Oaxaca, Mexico
Untitled video - Made with Clipchamp (2).mp4Clip from Un Poquito de tanto verdad
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