Is Michelle Yeoh the First Asian Best Actress Oscar Winner? Only If You Don’t Count India-born Vivien Leigh and Julie Christie
- Want to pay tribute to Asians in Hollywood? Don’t just give them a few gilded statuettes. Do what you can to make sure that the doors they forced open are never shut again.
What did we get in the 2023 Oscar ceremony?
* Some quite funny quips from Jimmy Kimmel, and also references to Matt Damon.
* An actual donkey on the stage, plus a “Cocaine Bear” making an even bigger ass out of itself by accosting Malala Yousafzai.
* A trailer for Disney’s upcoming live-action “The Little Mermaid,” presented as part of the ceremony for some reason.
* Lots and lots of Asian representation.
Let’s unpack that last one. The short film exec-produced by Yousafzai, “Stranger at the Gate,” did not pick up a statuette; neither did Shaunak Sen’s India-set documentary feature “All That Breathes.” But Kartiki Gonsalves’ Tamil-language documentary short “The Elephant Whisperers” and the song “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” are both newly minted Oscar winners (and the latter was heralded by a truly show-stopping dance number).
The big story, of course, is “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in which the family life of a woman who immigrated to the U.S. from Asia is refracted through a multiversal sci-fi/fantasy lens. It was the brainchild of the Daniels, a duo that includes Chinese American filmmaker Daniel Kwan. The U.S.-born Kwan shared Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay with his (non-Asian) creative partner Daniel Scheinert. Three cast members were also recognized, two of them Asian: Malaysia-born Michelle Yeoh, a superstar of Hong Kong cinema, took home Best Actress, and Vietnamese American former child star Ke Huy Quan (“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “The Goonies”) earned Best Supporting Actor honors.
Like everyone watching Yeoh and Quan’s joyful acceptance speeches, I felt happy for them (though you’ll excuse me if I didn’t succumb to nostalgia watching Quan embrace his “Temple of Doom” co-star Harrison Ford; it’s not the cast’s fault, but that movie’s obscenely offensive depiction of India belongs in history’s dustbin).
But as a film historian, there are two frequently-repeated claims about their accomplishments worth drilling down on.
But perhaps the most pertinent data point is that German-born Luise Rainer won her second Best Actress Oscar for playing (in yellow face) a Chinese woman in “The Good Earth” (1937). Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s most prominent Chinese American star at the time, campaigned for the role for years but was never given serious consideration.
* Is Michelle Yeoh the first Asian woman to win Best Actress? Yes (give or take some technicalities in how one classifies the Middle East), but she’s not the first Asian Best Actress nominee. Bombay-born Merle Oberon, nowadays best remembered as Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” (1939) but nominated for “The Dark Angel” (1935), claimed to be from Tasmania — i.e., “exotic” yet safely White, by the standards of the day — but in reality, her mother was Sri Lankan.
Lest we forget the legacies of colonialism, Best Actress winners Vivien Leigh (“Gone with the Wind,” “A Streetcar Named Desire”) and Julie Christie (“Darling”) were born in British India. (Two other Best Actresses, sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were born in Japan.) But perhaps the most pertinent data point is that German-born Luise Rainer won her second Best Actress Oscar for playing (in yellow face) a Chinese woman in “The Good Earth” (1937). Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s most prominent Chinese American star at the time, campaigned for the role for years but was never given serious consideration.
* This brings us to Ke Huy Quan, born in 1971 to a Vietnamese family that entered the U.S. as refugees in 1979. Despite his success as a child star — “Temple of Doom” was the third highest-grossing U.S. film of 1984, “Goonies” the ninth-highest of 1985 — IMDb lists only two acting roles for him between 1992 and 2021, and both are in Asian productions. Hollywood basically had no use for him as an actor for 30 years.
So is this a comeback story, as so many news articles proclaim? Quan would no doubt say so … in public. He has every reason to appear good-natured and gracious right now. But who could blame him if that graciousness cloaks a bit of justified resentment? For three decades, a man with the potential to give a multifaceted Oscar-caliber performance could not find a single person in a position of power who saw him as more than a stereotype.
Underneath all these trivia, then, is a bitter truth: Every POC who reaches the podium only got there after an uphill climb against a system stacked against them. (Never forget that in Hollywood’s greatest mystery film, 1974’s “Chinatown,” the vital clue is that an Asian man — played by none other than “Everything Everywhere All at Once” patriarch James Hong — mispronounces an “r” sound as an “l” sound; a generation later, Sofia Coppola won a Best Screenplay Oscar for 2003’s “Lost in Translation,” which has multiple scenes where the “humor” derives entirely from Japanese people transposing “l” and “r.”)
So while we celebrate Yeoh and Quan, let’s not forget to mourn a century of lost opportunities, a century in which dignified and wealthy (albeit still stereotyped) silent-era stars like Wong and Sessue Hayakawa gave way to whatever Mickey Rooney was doing in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” where undeniably magnetic performers like Sabu, Philip Ahn, Keye Luke, Nancy Kwan, Benson Fong, James Shigeta, George Takei, and even Oscar nominees Miyoshi Umeki, Mako, and Pat Morita were unable to break the oppressive chains of Hollywood narrow-mindedness.
And those are just the ones who made it into the credits. What about all the ones who never pursued their dreams because no one in the industry looked like them, or the ones whose talents went unrecognized because decision-makers couldn’t envision them as anything other than fringe players in White stories, or the ones blacklisted for speaking out against discrimination?
Want to pay tribute to Asians in Hollywood? Don’t just give them a few gilded statuettes. Do what you can to make sure that the doors they forced open are never shut again.
Yogesh Raut is a freelance blogger, podcaster, and writer who currently lives in Vancouver, WA. Born in New York City, he grew up in Springfield, IL, and is a graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Stanford University, New York University, the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and the Washington State University Carson College of Business. He holds master’s degrees in psychology, cinema-television studies, and business administration. You can read his blog at https://harpo84.blogspot.com and hear his podcast at https://recreationalthinking.podomatic.com.