The 95th Academy Awards nominations are in, and fans are not surprised to see some of the highest grossing and critically acclaimed films receiving their due.Maverick: Top Gun,Elvis,All Quiet on the Western Front, andEverything Everywhere All at Onceare just some of the films vying for the title of Best Picture. The latter film drew praise not only for its captivating visuals and story, but for the masterly performances of its leading cast—Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu.
Everything Everywhere All at Onceis an absurdist drama with measured humor that tells the story of a Chinese-American immigrant, Evelyn (Yeoh), who struggles to manage the IRS audit of the family laundromat amidst a strained marriage to her husband Waymond (Quan), and challenged relationship with her queer daughter, Joy (Hsu). Evelyn’s mundane struggles are promptly overshadowed by an interdimensional struggle. Among the many worlds of the multiverse, one universe is known as the Alphaverse. While each universe has its own version of the family, their Alpha-versions are the most important. Evelyn’s late counterpart to the Alphaverse developed a means of “verse-jumping”, wherein people can access the skills and memories of their alternate selves. This enables Evelyn to tap into a range of abilities as she fights to save the multiverse from Jobu Tupaki, the scorned and nihilistic Alphaverse version of her daughter, Joy. The journey is one that leads to epiphanies, reflections, and healed relationships as the film explores daunting philosophies and existentialism with whimsy that captures the joy of life’s absurdities.
Such a unique film is no easy undertaking for an actor, who must walk the line between humor and drama to do justice to both of these deliveries. It isno wonder that Michelle Yeoh has been nominatedfor Best Actress at the Academy Awards on account of her playful but heartfelt and fierce performance as Evelyn Quan. While an actress of Yeoh’s caliber earning the most prestigious award in Hollywood should be fully unsurprising, and yet, Yeoh’s nomination was a groundbreaking moment in film history. Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian-identifying individual to be nominated for Best Actress.
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History of Asian Americans Cinema
In the early era of cinema, when silent films were at the edge of innovation, Asian-American filmmakers and actors could create self-produced projects in which to feature their own community. Prominent figures in these films includedAnna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa. As filmmaking technology expanded and the Golden Age of Hollywood dawned, Asian actors began to be replaced by Caucasian actors in what has become known as yellowface, the act of using makeup and costumes to disguise a non-Asian actor as Asian. While Asian and Asian-American characters were often to be found in films, these representations were often offensive and reduced Asian people to hyperbolized caricatures rooted in stereotypes.
These portrayals were blatant, appearing in popular films that are revered to this day. A famous example isBreakfast at Tiffany’s, wherein white actor Mickey Rooney plays an Asian man named Mr. Yunioshi. The actor wore big buck teeth and was slathered in dark makeup, creating one of the most controversial examples of yellowface in film. The harmful mentality and actions of people from the past are often excused by those who argue that this was just a different time. We hear this rhetoric to explain— and even make more palatable— a great number of historical wrongdoings, but the argument is almost always an erroneously revisionist take.Breakfast at Tiffany’sand Mickey Rooney faced some degree of criticism at the time of the film’s release, just as it is subject to such scrutiny today. In 1961, the year of the film’s release, James Powers ofThe Hollywood Reporterwrote:
“Mickey Rooney gives his customary all to the part of a Japanese photographer, but the role is a caricature and will be offensive to many.”
Yellowface may seem to be a thing of the past, but to this day Hollywood is guilty of excluding Asian and Asian-American people from their own stories. Most notably, Scarlett Johansson faced wide criticism after starring inGhost in the Shellas Motoko Kusanagi, the cyber-reincarnation of a young Japanese girl.
Merle Oberon
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, there was a prominent actress as mysterious as she was beautiful and talented.Merle Oberon, star of numerous renowned films, claimed that she was born in Tasmania, Australia—but she could not prove this because her birth records were destroyed in a fire. That appeared to be that, until the decades unraveled a hidden heritage as well as a painful family history. In truth, Merle Oberon was born in Bombay, British India. She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O’Brien Thompson and Charlotte Selby, a British railway engineer and Sri Lankan woman of Māori descent, respectively. Even this is not the ultimate truth of Oberon’s parentage, as it was eventually revealed that her biological mother was, in fact, Selby’s daughter Constance. Mother and child were raised side-by-side as half-siblings, therefore absconding the dark truth of Constance’s sexual assault by an Anglo-Irish foreman. This was not all revealed until recent decades with the release of the documentaryThe Trouble with Merleand the novel and film of the same name,White Lies.
Oberon built a successful career as a film actress while hiding her Asian heritage. Her career began with the role of Anne Boleyn in the 1933 filmThe Private Life of Henry VIII, subsequently leading to roles inThe Scarlet PimpernelandThe Dark Angel, the latter of which earned her the award of Best Actress at the 8th Academy Awards. No one knew that she was of mixed parentage until after her death.
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The Importance of Michelle Yeoh’s Nomination
Everything Everywhere All at Once(EEAAO) took the internet by storm. The film has raked in a number of prestigious award nominations and wins, including 6 Golden Globes nominations and 14 Critics' Choice Award nominations. At the 95th Academy Awards,EEAAOwill be the film with the most total nominations, with eleven including Michelle Yeoh’s Best Actress nomination. Though Yeoh is not the first actress of Asian heritage to be nominated for this award, she is the first Asian-identifying. When Merle Oberon was nominated for the award, which she went on to win, her heritage was fully obscured by careful omissions and fabrications. Before rising to fame, Oberon faced discrimination for her mixed parentage. At school in India, she was bullied for being mixed, and likewise her first love ended their relationship when he realized the truth of her heritage. Oberon was then keenly aware of the disadvantages of being perceived as mixed-race, prompting the starlet to assume a new identity upon moving to Europe. In hiding who she really was, Oberon was able to avoid the discrimination that would have almost certainly held her back in her career—had she even been given a chance to actually start a career. For Michelle Yeoh to secure an Oscar nomination, a Malaysian-American immigrant of Malaysian-Chinese and Cantonese descent, is a huge milestone in film history.
Hollywood is in the midst of a rebirth as the landscape of the industry changes not only in terms of commercial potential and strategy, but politically. Inclusion and diversity are increasingly important in Hollywood, and the change is starkly evident in the past decade alone. This diversity has expanded beyond simply incorporating non-white or foreign-born characters into stories centered around white American protagonists, with more mainstream projects focusing on the stories of underrepresented groups. A notable moment in this shift was the Best Picture award given toParasiteat the 2020 Oscars, making this film the first foreign language film to win this accolade.
As we await the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, the work to create more inclusive stories continues. Michelle Yeoh has alsoacknowledged that the work is far from over:
“It’s taken a long time. But I think this is more than me. At the present moment, constantly, all the time, having Asians walking up to me saying, ‘you may do it, you’re doing it for us.’ It’s like, ‘I understand. I totally understand.’ All this time, they’ve not been recognized, they’ve not been heard…I’ve been in the movie business now for 40 years. When you have validation from your peers, all that is like the cherry on the cake. But the reason why you do films and you present your babies out to the world is because you want the story to be told, you want the people to understand, whether it’s your culture, whether it’s certain very poignant stories, or important tales, to be told. I think this is beyond just me. It represents so many who have hoped to be seen in this way, to have a seat at the table, to say, ‘I am of value too, I need to be seen too.'”
