With seven wins out of its 11 nominations, ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’, directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert and starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis, has made history at the 95th Oscars. But the film is significant for one other reason. Yeoh, Hsu and Quan were all in the running for acting prizes, of which Yeoh won the Best Actress award and Quan the Best Supporting Actor award respectively.
In her acceptance speech, the 60-year-old Yeoh, who became the first Asian to have won the Best Actress award, said, “For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities.” With Hong Chau from the Darren Aronofsky-directed thriller, ‘The Whale’, who was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category, the number of actors of Asian origin contending for the Oscars this year was four, one of the highest representations of the community in the Academy’s nearly century-old history.
Earlier, in 2004, three actors of Asian origin had made it to the nominations. This included Indian-origin British actor Ben Kingsley and Iranian actor Shohreh Aghdashloo for the psychological thriller, ‘House of Sand and Fog’, and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe for the period action drama, ‘The Last Samurai’.
In an interview with The New York Times following her Oscar nomination, Yeoh, who also won her first Golden Globe award in January, said, “Of course, I’m over the moon, but I feel a little sad because I know we know there have been amazing actresses from Asia that come before me, and I stand on their shoulders…I hope this will shatter that frigging glass ceiling to no end, that this will continue, and we will see more of our faces up there.”
Yeoh, who is of Malaysian-Chinese descent, is only the second Asian woman to be nominated for the Oscars. In 1936, the Indian-origin actor Merle Oberon was the first Asian woman to be nominated for Best Actress award for her role in ‘The Dark Angel’.
Asian winners and nominees in other categories
While Kwan and Scheinert won the Best Director award for ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’, India clinched two wins out of its three nominations this year. ‘Naatu Naatu’ from SS Rajamouli’s film ‘RRR’ has won the Oscar for Best Original Song. ‘The Elephant Whisperers’, directed by Kartiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga, won Best Documentary (Short Subject).
Other Asian nominees included Nobel Prize-winning Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro for Best Adapted Screenplay for his adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ (To Live) for the Oliver Hermanus-directed ‘Living’; Domee Shi, one-half of the director-duo of ‘Turning Red’, in the Best Animated Feature category.
Have the Oscars really become diverse?
Apart from Yeoh, Cuban-Spanish actor Ana de Armas was in the running for the Best Actress award for her role in ‘Blonde’ while Angela Bassett was in contention for Best Supporting Actress for her work in ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. There were, however, no actors of colour among the Best Actor nominees and no women directors in the running for the Best Director category. Apart from Quan, the only other non-White nominee for Best Supporting Actor was Brian Tyree Henry for his role in ‘Causeway’.
The omission of Black actor Viola Davis for her performance in ‘The Woman King’ and women directors such as Chinonye Chukwu, whose biopic on educationist and activist Mamie Till-Bradley, ‘Till’, was one of the standout movies last year, has met with criticism from several quarters.
Past criticisms over inclusivity
Since its inception, the Oscars have never been particularly noted for inclusivity. In 2015, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced an all-White nomination for its 20 acting awards, it would be a turning point in one of the world’s most feted and equally unequivocally “White” film awards.
A social-media campaign spearheaded by American activist April Reign, #OscarsSoWhite, put the spotlight on the Academy, whose composition since its formation has been mostly male and largely White members. The next year, when the nominations reflected a similar lack of diversity, the campaign gained further momentum.
In the years since, the Academy has worked towards diversification, setting up inclusivity parameters as well as a broader initiative that is slated to come fully into effect by 2024. In 2020, the Academy announced that its members had become more diverse, with 45 per cent women and 36 per cent underrepresented ethnic and racial communities in its ranks, which would have a bearing on voting and nomination patterns.
Now, a study recently released by the University of South Carolina’s Annenberg’s think tank, Inclusion Initiative, has noted that while the pace of change is slow, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign has managed to make some noticeable inroads. The study found that between 2016 and 2023 and 2008 and 2015 — eight years before and after the viral hashtag — the number of nominees from minority and ethnic groups has increased to 17 per cent from 8 per cent.
Likewise, the number of women nominees has increased from 21 per cent to 27 per cent in the same time period. Despite this, since its inception, only 6 per cent of the nominees at the Oscars have been under-represented ethnic groups, including people of colour, 17 per cent of nominees have been women and less than 2 per cent have been women of colour, the study noted.
Members of the cast and crew of the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once," pose in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) 
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