Emilia Pérez

In handling social ethics, especially if the topic is controversial, film-makers must decide, whether consciously or not, whether to advocate or elucidate. Whereas the former is in pursuit of an ideology, the latter is oriented to teasing out via dramatic tensions the nuances in a typical normative matter that move an audience beyond easy or convenient answers to wrestle with the human condition itself as complex. This is not to say that advocation should never have a role in film-making; The film, Schindler’s List (1993), for example, provides a glimpse into the extremely unethical conduct of the Nazi Party in ruling Germany. I submit that the vast majority of ethical issues are not so easily decided one way or the other as those that arose from Hitler’s choices regarding communists, Slavs in Eastern Europe, intellectuals, Jews, homosexuals and the disabled. In relative terms, the ethical controversy surrounding transsexuals is less severe and clear-cut. The value of elucidating is thus greater, as are the downsides of prescribing ideologically. One such drawback to indoctrinating on a controversial issue is that the ideological fervor in making the film for such a purpose can blind a film-maker to the cogency of the arguments made in favor of advocated stance on the issue. The film, Emilia Pérez (2024), illustrates this vulnerability, which I submit is inherent to ideology itself.

The film centers on the decision of a Mexican drug-kingpin to get surgery to “become a woman.” I am using quotes here because the statement itself strikes at the controversy itself. Can a biological man become a woman? If so, is it sufficient that the man’s penis be removed, or must a vagina be made?  Or does the making of a vagina out of the skin of a penis constitute a vagina? This seems not to be the case, and, furthermore, ovaries are typically not implanted. Yet the removal of the penis and testicles can be interpreted as the loss of manhood in the literal sense. Is the patient in gender-limbo? In contrast, there was no ethical limbo for the Nazis who murdered millions of people in Europe. It is no accident that Spielberg made Schindler’s List in black and white. Emilia Pérez is in color, and thus flush with the nuances of the world that most of us inhabit in our daily lives.

Lest it be contended that gender is separate from the biology, such that a man can be a woman without even penis-removal, then the contention itself can be reconceptualized and presented as a nuanced question rather than as a fact of reason that has already been established as in a fait accompli to be merely (but importantly!) ingested and promptly digested by audiences. When Emilia, after her operation, insists that she is just as much a woman as any other woman, another character could turn this statement into a question by asking, “But you don’t have ovaries, do you? Or eggs?” Similarly, when Emilia reverts to a man’s voice in expressing outrage upon discovering that her ex-wife has taken the children, the statement of being just as much of a woman as any other woman could be revisited in dialogue.

Moreover, film-makers need not shy away from making relevant philosophical issues transparent and even exploring possible lines of reasoning. For example, the assumption that in an alleged dispute between the body and the mind, the mind not only trumps the body, but is immune from the conflict of interest that is inherent in having one party of a dispute being the arbitrator is frequently passed over in sex-change decisions. Emilia Pérez lapses in not challenging this assumption. She assumes that her mind is right and her body is wrong, but she is using one of the two to make the decision, and thus pass judgment on itself.

Emilia’s decision to undergo a surgical operation is already decided when she meets with Rita, the lawyer who agrees to handle the logistics of Emilia’s operation (and subsequent hiding in plain sight as a woman) for a lucrative fee. Wasserman, the Israeli physician who performs the operation, tells Emilia beforehand that the soul of a person remains the same even if the body changes. Emilia disagrees: the body can change the soul, which in turn can change the world. Unfortunately, the film does not go further in unpacking either of these affirmations. That the human soul is notoriously difficult to conceptualize, much less define as to an essence and attributes may be why two statements are allowed to stand on their own—but are they really? The attitude of the film is clearly in favor of Emilia’s ideological belief even though it is hardly an established fact that by removing an organ or two, the soul itself changes appreciably. Emilia is on firmer ground in claiming that the world can change if enough souls change, but even here, the relevant change is arguably more from self-love issuing out in selfish self-interest to an enlightened self-interest manifesting benevolence, than in terms of gender. Does a soul even have a gender? The Christian Apostle Paul asserts in his epistle to the Galatians (3:28): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” In terms of souls, gender can be transcended. Perhaps both the physician and Emilia should stay clear of religious language altogether; psychology may be more relevant anyway. If the body changes, what would be the impact on the person’s psychology? Self-love in the psychological sense is different than self-love as a sin.

What about the world part of the tripartite linkage? Does removing a few organs relevant to gender render the world a better place, assuming enough people whose psychological state would be improved thereby undergo operations? More people who are comfortable literally in their own skin could indeed be expected, other things equal, to result in a happier world. Perhaps nothing is more destructive of a society than is the self-hate of some people at the expense of the many. In the film, Emilia turns from drug-dealing to founding a non-profit charitable organization geared to helping families of murder victims find some peace from the recovery of the bodies. Her newly-found self-acceptance clearly results in a better world; other people benefit from her new-found psychological relief in her externals finally reflecting her inner-self, which is a psychological rather than a theological concept. As for her soul, and what it might experience after her mortal body—whether male or female or neither—has died, God’s eyes might be more on the residue remaining Emilia’s soul from the killing of people for drug-profits than on any residue remaining from gender, whether psychological or biological.  

Approaching a controversial, and thus perhaps a not-easily-resolvable ethical issue as a question rather than as in the form of a premeditated ideological answer saves an audience from feeling that it is being viewed only as a means of furthering an ideology (whereas Kant’s ethic insists that we be treated as ends in ourselves rather than just as means) and a screenwriter from overlooking logical lapses occasioned from a fervent ideological agenda. Emilia’s insistence that changing a body changes a soul, which in turn changes the world may be a good line, but it seems more infused with ideological bent than having been thought out. It is better, I submit, not only to elaborate as the narrative unfolds on both of the contending claims, but also to open the viewers up to other, larger questions, such as raised here. Just as film can present the nuances in a tone of voice in a line excellently delivered by an actor, so too film can enunciate and enumerate on the nuances that typically forestall easy solutions to ethical problems. 

Moreover, both in enunciating abstract philosophical and theological points and exploring them, including pointing out where they clash, the medium of film has unrealized potential, as evinced in this analysis of Emilia Pérez. Against this potential, using film to advocate ideologically pales utterly. The hidden gravitational pull of ideology can render a producer, director, and screenwriter unwittingly susceptable to hasty and faulty reasoning in coming up with statements for dialogue that are nonetheless likely to be delivered by actors in a defiant tone of infallibility. I am just as much a woman as every other woman! If you say so, Emilia. A film can and should subject such ideological declarations to scrutiny as questions.

The Age of Adaline: Death as No Longer Inevitable

In The Age of Adaline (2015), the age-old “fountain of youth” leitmotif springs forth yet again. In this incarnation, Adaline is forced to come to grips with the fact that everyone around her, including her daughter, is aging even as Adaline herself does not. A strong electromagnetic has altered her genes such that her cells do not divide at slower rates as they age. As she becomes aware of the repercussions, we in turn can marvel at what may be just decades away scientifically concerning the expected human life-span. In short, when the film came out, scientists were already openly discussing whether death itself may no longer be inevitable for human beings.

In an article in Biomaterials published in August 2015, scientists from the Ott lab at Harvard University provide the world with the science behind their successful effort to grow a rat’s limb from cells and attach it to a living rat.[1] Harald Ott describes the significance of the scientific feat for human beings. “Limbs contain muscles, bone, cartilage, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and nerves – each of which has to be rebuilt and requires a specific supporting structure called the matrix. We have shown that we can maintain the matrix of all of these tissues in their natural relationships to each other, that we can culture the entire construct over prolonged periods of time, and that we can repopulate the vascular system and musculature. . . . Additional next steps will be replicating our success in muscle regeneration with human cells and expanding that to other tissue types, such as bone, cartilage and connective tissue.”[2] In other words, a person’s diseased or simply aged organs may one day be replaceable with organs grown with the individual’s own cells.

The Ott lab’s mission statement lays out the rationale. “End organ failure is the leading health care challenge in the Western World. Nearly 6 million Americans suffer from heart failure with about 550,000 new cases diagnosed annually; 25 million Americans suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with an estimated 12 million new yearly diagnoses; 530,000 Americans suffer from end stage renal disease. Organ transplantation is the only potentially curative therapy available. However, its outcomes are limited by donor organ shortage and the side effects of harsh immunosuppressive treatments. Organ engineering is a theoretical alternative to transplantation. Whole organs could be derived from patient’s cells and transplanted similar to donor organs.”[3] If the brain is such an organ and could be grown from a person’s cells, then would such a transplant essentially end one person, or at least consciousness, and begin another? Ethically speaking, who would have access to his or her own personal “replacement organs”? Only the rich, while death is still inevitable for the poor and middle class?

To be sure, a bunch of organs does not a body make; considerably more is involved. So we must look to the research on cellular aging itself before we can anticipate death as not necessarily inevitable. Just to clarify, this is not the same as immortality. In the film, for example, were Adaline to get hit by a truck, she would not continue at the same age; she would be dead.

In 1913, researchers discovered a cause of aging in mammals that may be reversible.[4] “The aging process we discovered is like a married couple—when they are young, they communicate well, but over time, living in close quarters for many years, communication breaks down,” said Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics David Sinclair, senior author on the study. “And just like with a couple, restoring communication solved the problem.”[5] In scientific terms—now that I’ve warmed you up—“The essence of this finding is a series of molecular events that enable communication inside cells between the nucleus and mitochondria. As communication breaks down, aging accelerates. By administering a molecule naturally produced by the human body, scientists restored the communication network in older mice. Subsequent tissue samples showed key biological hallmarks that were comparable to those of much younger animals.”[6] That is, not only can the aging process be slowed down; it can actually be reversed!

The implications of the research both in growing organs and reversing the aging process at a cellular level are nothing short of breathtaking, not to mention paradigm-altering. At the time of the film’s release, some scientists were openly suggesting that death might no longer be inevitable as early as 2050. That is to say, children, young adults, and even people having reached middle-age watching The Age of Adaline in early 2015 might not experience aging themselves, even as they would naturally have memories of grandparents or parents having aged and died.[7] In the film, Adaline must come to grips with her daughter being an old woman; the implication is that Adaline would eventually have to confront the loss of her daughter, and, indeed, anyone else held dear. I believe this is why Adaline keeps herself from getting into a romantic relationship; even more than wanting to avoid the fear of trusting another person with her secret (for fear of being picked apart by government scientists) and being in the awkward situation of being young while one husband after another reaches retirement age, the deaths of one dog after another—a photo of each one being solemnly kept in an album—have taught her that death as not inevitable has a very sad downside.

Even if death is rendered not inevitable (even as taxes remain so) for every person alive, say in 2100, people would experience other living beings aging and dying. Moreover, longevity itself would doubtless have its own downsides. For those to whom life is a terrible struggle, a lifespan of even just two hundred years—the time between 1776 and Jimmy Carter as the U.S. President in the late 1970s—could be felt to be a curse. The whole notion of a life sentence would have to be re-thought, otherwise it would be intolerably cruel. So too would age discrimination need to be reconsidered. Would it even make sense?

Furthermore, would everyone in the world be at the same age? If so, would humanity consist of children and adult-children—Munchkins, as it were, only with a youthful look? Such a sight would doubtless be extremely distressing to any aliens visiting from elsewhere in the galaxy. Perhaps people could decide to stay at any given age—presumably after having reached adulthood.

Moreover, the right to reproduce in an already overpopulated world might become contentious at least as pertaining to those persons who have “opted into” death as not inevitable, though even they could of course die from an accident or natural disaster. Ethicists would likely find work. The Age of Adaline only skims the surface of the implications from what may lie in store for humanity—that is, if our species can survive the climate-change that was already underway at the time of the film’s release. My point here is that we really have no idea what some of the implications would be; the medical advances touched on above, as well as the work on diseases such cancer, may outstrip the capacity, or at least the usual habits, of the human mind to adapt. At the very least, some paradigms with deep ruts may need to be buried and new seeds sowed.

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[1] Bernhard Jank et al, “Engineered Composite Tissue as a Bioartificial Limb Graft, Biomaterials (August 2015), 61:246-56. The abstract reads as follows: “The loss of an extremity is a disastrous injury with tremendous impact on a patient's life. Current mechanical prostheses are technically highly sophisticated, but only partially replace physiologic function and aesthetic appearance. As a biologic alternative, approximately 70 patients have undergone allogeneic hand transplantation to date worldwide. While outcomes are favorable, risks and side effects of transplantation and long-term immunosuppression pose a significant ethical dilemma. An autologous, bio-artificial graft based on native extracellular matrix and patient derived cells could be produced on demand and would not require immunosuppression after transplantation. To create such a graft, we decellularized rat and primate forearms by detergent perfusion and yielded acellular scaffolds with preserved composite architecture. We then repopulated muscle and vasculature with cells of appropriate phenotypes, and matured the composite tissue in a perfusion bioreactor under electrical stimulation in vitro. After confirmation of composite tissue formation, we transplanted the resulting bio-composite grafts to confirm perfusion in vivo.”

[2] Nitya Rajan, “Scientists Grow an Entire Limb in the Lab Using a Dead Rat,” The Huffington Post, June 4, 2015.

[3] “Our Mission,” The Ott Lab for Organ Engineering and Regeneration, Harvard University (accessed June 5, 2015).

[4] Ana Gomes et al, “Declining NAD+ Induces a Pseudohypoxic State Disrupting Nuclear-Mitochondrial Communication during Aging,” Cell (19 December 2013) Vol. 155, No. 7, pp. 1624-638. The abstract reads as follows: “Ever since eukaryotes subsumed the bacterial ancestor of mitochondria, the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes have had to closely coordinate their activities, as each encode different subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging, but its causes are debated. We show that, during aging, there is a specific loss of mitochondrial, but not nuclear, encoded OXPHOS subunits. We trace the cause to an alternate PGC-1α/β-independent pathway of nuclear-mitochondrial communication that is induced by a decline in nuclear NAD+ and the accumulation of HIF-1α under normoxic conditions, with parallels to Warburg reprogramming. Deleting SIRT1 accelerates this process, whereas raising NAD+ levels in old mice restores mitochondrial function to that of a young mouse in a SIRT1-dependent manner. Thus, a pseudohypoxic state that disrupts PGC-1α/β-independent nuclear-mitochondrial communication contributes to the decline in mitochondrial function with age, a process that is apparently reversible.”

[5] David Cameron, “A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging,” Harvard Medical School, December 19, 2013.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The matter of brain transplants puts this assumption at risk, for a brain grown out of some cells would not have the memories. Stretching the envelop even more, what if science eventually enables the memories and even consciousness of the “old” brain to be part of the brain being grown? It seems more likely that the experiential continuity of the person would continue.

The Imitation Game: Machines Imitating Man?

What does it mean to understand something? Put another way, what counts as understanding? The film, The Imitation Game (2014), touches on the question of whether machines (i.e., computers) can think, but the film falls needlessly short in pursuing the question. My aim here is to show how film can be more substantive along philosophical lines without sacrificing on entertainment value.

In one scene, detective Robert Nock, bent on getting at what Alan Turing really did during his stint in the British military, interrogates the professor. The exchange essentially springs philosophy of mind on the viewers. Already having watched the construction of a machine (i.e., computer) designed to “think” faster than the group of decoders of the German coder, Enigma, the viewers have some context for the dialogue on whether machines can think.

“Can machines think?” Nock asks. “Could machines ever think as human beings do?”

“Most people say not,” Turing replies. “Well, the problem is you’re asking a stupid question.”

“I am?”

“Of course machines can’t think as humans do,” the professor explains. “A machine is different from a person; hence they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something thinks differently from you, does this mean it’s not thinking? We allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of different tastes, different preferences, if not to say that our brains work differently—that we think differently—and if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say the same thing for brains full of . . . wire and steel?”

Unfortunately, the machine vs. human thinking topic ends there, truncating the film's foray into philosophy of mind. The screenwriters could have had Hugh Alexander, a two-time chess champion of the state of Britain and member of Turing’s decoding group, lsay to the professor later in the film something like, “You say that humans think differently, but you use as examples liking something and being sad about something else. You even throw in an allergy. None of these is thinking. Liking is a preference, being sad is a mood, and a person cannot think himself into being allergic to cats. These examples are not of thinking, and yet you use them as such. Clearly you aren’t thinking very clearly—professor.” 

Stepping back to the “metafilm” level, the screenwriters could very easily have developed the initial dialogue between Turing and Noch in a way that would have enriched the viewer’s thinking about the topic while still being entertained. Behind Alexander’s populist-themed, “Take that! professor” lies an advancement or development of the philosophical dimension of the film.

In fact, the development could have been continued. Not content to let Alexander, a rival in the story, to have the upper hand for long, Turing could have replied with, “I was just using those examples to demonstrate that we humans are different. In terms of thinking more specifically, do we simply manipulate words, which are only symbols really, according to rules, such as that certain verbs can go after the symbol cat?  Is understanding just arranging symbols according to rules that we have agreed on? If so, then machines that do the same thing can understand, and thus think.”

Alexander could reply with something like, “Well, when I understand something like justice, I am not just doing mental games with words and rules for how those rules can be arranged. I just know that something is just, so I don’t think that machines can understand, and therefore think.”

“So maybe the question is whether machines can think without understanding?”

This continued dialogue would essentially play out the beginning established during the interrogation at police headquarters. The viewers would have a sense of intellectual denouement while being stimulated cognitively in the process. Supporting the more explicit line, context could be provided—that is to say, the topic could be hinted at recessively while other points are front and center.

For example, when commander Denniston interviews Turing to be a decoder, Denniston is shocked to learn that Turing does not know German. Turing insists that decoding is essentially solving puzzles, which depends on being good at such games rather than knowing the language. Turing could have elaborated, such that the viewers would get more preparation for the more explicit treatment of the topic in the later interrogation discussion.

Faced with Denniston’s steadfast belief that a decoder must know German, Turing could have added the following. “Even though I don’t understand German, I can still work with the words, which are really symbols, according to certain rules. There are certain rules governing how Gutten Tag can be used, for instance. You can’t use the symbols as an opener at night—that would go against the rules agreed on for the two words. In fact, I don’t know any Chinese at all, but if given a list of characters and a set of rules on how those characters can be used, I could write sentences in Chinese that would be understandable to anyone who has learned Chinese. Does this mean that I understand Chinese?”

“No, surely not. You would be functioning like a machine,” Denniston might reply, “and people are not machines”

“I’m not so sure, at least as far as the military is concerned. But I’m not a machine; I understand decoding, rather than just going through the motions. This is what you would be hiring me for.”

The primary point of the dialogue would be whether Denniston hires Turing. The philosophical question of whether the manipulation of symbols according to rules constitutes understanding (or meaning) would be secondary, as is fitting for laying the groundwork. In this way—working with a dimension of a film (e.g., the philosophical) at various subtilties—screenwriting can be likened to writing a score for a symphony orchestra. In some places, a certain melody in the string section is foremost, while that melody is in the background in a few other places. The various depthnesses lodges the string-melody in the listeners’ respective minds more firmly. 

In terms of The Imitation Game, the viewers would be more engaged with the film even as they are entertained. Perhaps we would be more likely to think about the film afterward. Perhaps some viewers might read more on thinking and understanding, and even on artificial intelligence (AI). My point is that the film would have had more depth without sacrificing on the entertainment value.