The Angels.Edward Dion Fariñas watches the Academy Awards every year, but the Filipino-American didn’t expect to get such a visceral reaction when he heard the awards announcement from Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh.
“I got a squeal that I didn’t expect,” said Fariñas, who watched the gala Sunday from his home in Austin, Texas, accompanied by “Everything Everywhere All at Once”-themed pastries. ”) from a local Asian American-owned bakery.
“I was surprised by how much I got involved. It’s not even about acting. It really allows us to feel like we can achieve things that are not normally within our reach,” she said.
Quan’s win for best supporting actor, and his comeback story as a child star of the 1980s, along with Yeoh’s historic win as the first Asian woman to win a best actress Oscar, made viewers of Asian descent will shed tears of happiness and smile. The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-stars bring the total number of Asians who have won acting Oscars to just six in the awards’ 95-year history.
For many Asian-Americans, the film’s seven Oscars, including best picture, feel like a watershed moment when Hollywood is moving away from seeing them in stereotypical ways. It represents an opportunity for optimism after three years of intolerance against Asians caused by the pandemic.
The film is written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as The Daniels), who won the Oscars for best direction and best original screenplay, centers on Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), the owner of a laundromat who prepares for a tax audit. At the same time, she has to deal with an unhappy husband (Quan), a judgmental father (James Hong) and an openly lesbian daughter (Stephanie Hsu).
When Yeoh said, upon receiving the Oscar, that the award was for children who looked like her, the message went “straight to the heart,” said Jasmine Cho, who is a Korean-American.
“Now I’m looking at what I’ll be like when I’m in my 60s,” said the 39-year-old. “I want to be like Michelle. She is my forever role model as a badass woman.”
Cho, from Pittsburgh, is known for her cookie portraits of Asian-Americans and Asians, known and unknown, and has garnered social media attention for her tributes to Yeoh and Quan. She hopes to give them cookies one day because she has been so inspired by their performances and how they have behaved.
“I feel like they’ve completely made history already by being the most awarded movie and all the other awards they’ve been getting,” Cho said.
Yer Vang, an Asian Hmong American living in Minneapolis, was moved to tears by Quan and Yeoh’s speeches of thanks. She remembers leaving the theater wishing something like this would happen. Watching it happen was “phenomenal”.
Quan’s comments, about coming to the United States as a Vietnamese refugee and living in a refugee camp, particularly resonated because that’s what his parents went through.
“It’s crazy because … that’s my mother’s story,” Vang said.
All of the film’s Oscars (it also won best supporting actress for Jamie Lee Curtis and editing) mean a lot to Asian-Americans, she said. “It tells the community that we’ve done enough…and deserve to be celebrated, whether it’s on the highest stages or just at home.”
Norman Chen, CEO of The Asian American Foundation, yelled and raised his fist for every Oscar the film won. Among the foundation’s initiatives are fellowship programs with the Sundance Institute. Chen said the impact of these awards is massive.
“It’s going to elevate the narrative … to create more future actors, directors, writers,” said the executive of Asian descent.
“The recognition is finally there. Throughout society, people will appreciate more, including in education, with more interest in Asian and Asian American history. It will change the mindset that Asian Americans are foreigners.”
Yeoh’s achievement was particularly poignant given the history of discrimination against Asians in Hollywood. Merle Oberon, a best actress nominee in 1935 for “The Dark Angel,” hid her South Asian ancestry and posed as white, according to birth records discovered after the death of her In 1937, Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong suffered the biggest disappointment of her life when she was turned down to play the lead role of a Chinese farmer in “The Good Earth.” Luise Rainer, who was white, was cast in her place and won the Best Actress Oscar.
Previous Asian Oscar winners have included Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki for “Sayonara,” British actor of Indian descent Ben Kingsley for “Ghandi,” Cambodian actor Haing S. Ngor for “The Killing Fields.” ”) and South Korean actress Yuh-Jung Youn for “Parasite”. Only Kingsley won for a leading role.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” could send the message that the days of perceiving Asians as “meek, not strong, followers, not leaders” are long gone, Chen said.
“This totally changes that way of thinking in the community, even for our families. I can bet you that a lot of Asian American families will be more supportive if their kids want to be actors or directors,” Chen said. “It’s exciting to be seen and appreciated for who we are and where we are.”
