Emilia Pérez and Johanne Sacreblue: old, good activist marketing is alive!

By now, if you are at least somewhat interested in movies, you probably have heard about this particular film with a whole country up in arms. A movie that depicts serious, horrific aspects of this country in the format of a drama musical.

What? Are you thinking about Emilia Pérez? I wasn’t referencing that film, but Johanne Sacreblue, its Mexican parody counterpart that has become a Social Media frenzy.

Let’s do a short recap: Netflix produced, French film Emilia Pérez (by the way, it is pronounced “Emilia Pérez” not “Emilia Perés” [sic]) was released last November to critical acclaim. The movie tells the story of a Mexican narco capo who kidnaps a lawyer to get her help in changing her gender. Since its release, the movie has received mounting angry backlash, mostly from Mexicans and other Latin American nationals.

The main aspects of criticism are that the movie wasn’t filmed in Mexico while it was set there; the director doesn’t speak a single word of Spanish and proudly stated that he hadn’t deemed it necessary to study Mexico before embarking on directing his movie; and the main protagonists of the film are not Mexican (Selena Gómez and Zoe Salda?a are Americans, and Karla Sofía Gascón is Spaniard) either and mostly don’t speak good enough Spanish. All this not to mention a particular cringy scene in which Selena Gómez tells how aroused she is for another character that has been making the rounds for its ridiculousness: she says, “Hasta me duele la pinche vulva nada más de acordarme de tí.” [It even hurts my f* vulva just from remembering you] And while I am not Mexican, as a native Spanish speaker, I can affirm that I have never, ever heard someone outside a biology class or a very old Seinfeld joke talk about that particular part of the feminine anatomy, much less in the context the movie puts it.

All this, not to mention the lightness in which it treats very traumatic contemporary events in Mexico like narco violence, civilian killings, and disappearing. As a 加拿大多伦多大学 Ph.D. graduate specializing in Mexican narco-narratives, I know I lack the lived experience to write fiction on such a complex topic. If I tried it anyway, I most probably would end up embarrassing myself and, in the worst-case scenario, offending Mexicans just as much as Emilia Pérez has done.

With all the rage Mexicans are feeling these days about the film—a flame that has just been revived by the fact that the movie is now one of the most Oscar-nominated in history— a Mexican trans content creator has found a way to express her disgust, create a new form of art, and become viral in another example of well played real-time marketing.

Created by Camila D. Aurora, Johanne Sacreblue is a 28-minute parody of Emilia Pérez that depicts all of France’s and French people’s most nasty stereotypes in the format of a well-choreographed musical, spoken in broken French just as the original film is spoken in broken Spanish. The short film was first teased on a 3-minute TikTok three days ago (on January 24, 2025) and has already amassed over 2 million views. On YouTube, where the entire short film can be seen, it has almost a million views, and the creator has gained almost twenty thousand followers since then. The short film and the story about how it came to be have now been promoted in traditional media, along with innumerable social media postings.

It is clear that Camila D. Aurora saw an opportunity in the anger that Emilia Pérez has been generating among her co-nationals and took it upon herself to put in the effort, thoughts, and crew to make an original work of art that, at the same time is a strong denunciation of Emilia Pérez’ most infuriating aspects.

In a time that seems overwhelmed by a lack of originality and sloppy, boring content, Camila D. Aurora demonstrated that critical thinking and audacity still have a place on the Internet and our media ecosystem. With Johanne Sacreblue, all its nastiness aside, she demonstrated that the Internet of the old days, filled with guerrilla marketing tactics, originality, and spontaneity, that we used to know is not entirely dead and that there is still a place for brave, thought-provoking marketing. Because don’t get it wrong: Johanne Sacreblue is as strong a marketing counter-campaign to Emilia Pérez as there has been. ?