When the Oscars are handed out every year, America’s soft power absolutely electrifies around the world. People all over the world rejoice when a film or actor associated with their collective identity wins an award. Indians are jubilant that RRR won the Best Original Film Song Oscar for its dance sensation Nattu Nattu. But their joy pales in comparison to the honors bestowed on Asian Americans by Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which received 11 nominations and won seven Oscars – Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, One for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Editing.
This is the first time that the same film has won Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. It is also the first time an Asian-American man has won the award for a leading role, and the second time a woman of color has won Best Actor at the Oscars in its 95-year history.
Asian Americans make up 6.2% of the US population and are one of the highest achieving communities. Yet their representation in popular culture has been both stereotypical and exotic, far outside the mainstream. Michelle Yeoh recently recalled that she was asked if she could speak English. Screenwriter and co-director Daniel Kwan as well as producer Jonathan Wang are Asian-American.
Seven Oscars for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once goes some way towards correcting this imbalance. (Meanwhile, in China, the official Xinhua news agency has taken pains to clarify that Michelle Yeoh is a Chinese-Malaysian actress.)
The film’s main theme – the conflict that attends relationships between parents and children, particularly between mother and daughter – is universal, but it is explored in a uniquely Asian-American setting. It tells the story of a middle-aged woman who runs a laundromat, struggles with tax returns, and has a troubled marriage and a daughter with views on life that deviate significantly from tradition.
Naturally, several members of the cast are Asian-American, including Chinese-American and Vietnamese American. Yeoh, who plays the lead character, won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Asian-American portrayals in mainstream American films, usually filled with foreign sexualization of women.
The film has been described as a sci-fi film as its lead characters are transported to multiple universes. This is a superficial reading of both film and science fiction. The multiverse in the film is not the spatially separated locations that science allows mankind to traverse. The film explores the possible consequences of each of the myriad choices that a person faces at any critical moment in his or her life, each choice creating a universe that is different from the one created by those not taken. .
It explores these realms in a unique way with kung-fu fighting, magical transport between universes, bureaucratic labyrinths, and references to iconic films of the past such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ratatouille. It’s magical realism that takes flight as the film explores the many artistic possibilities the medium offers. It delights in the pace of a Formula One race and, at the same time, is one of the most tender films of recent times.
The seven Oscars it won has the potential to add to the ongoing culture wars in American politics. On one level, the awards enhance America’s appeal around the world as a diverse culture strengthened by each piece of diversity, an example of human solidarity through cultural differences. At the same time, it underscores that the rise of a homogeneous, white Anglo-Saxon culture as the quintessentially American example is a thing of the past. This may frustrate those who yearn to ‘make America great again’.
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