‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’: Moment or movement of representation?

When Halle Berry became the very first woman of color to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role 21 years ago for her role in “Monster’s Ball” (2001), she dedicated her award to “every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.” 

Her words would go on to be bittersweetly ironic. Although a door was opened, it closed soon after. Only six Black women were nominated for Best Actress after Berry’s win. It wasn’t until 2021 that multiple Black women were nominated in the Best Actress category for the first time since 1973, and it also marked the first time that a woman of color received a second nomination in the category. It wouldn’t be until 2023 that a second woman of color would win the Academy Award for Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (2022). 

Clearly, Berry’s words have only recently been taken to heart, even if the consciousness of the public and the opportunity she introduced were previously squandered. 

This lack of recognition isn’t just limited to Black women. Every non-white race remains criminally underrepresented in the acting categories — a reflection of the lack of substantial roles available and offered to people of color in Hollywood. While Merle Oberon was the first Asian woman nominated in 1936, she hid her half-Indian heritage throughout her career, making Yeoh the first Asian woman to be nominated for Best Actress who proudly represented her background. In the ceremony’s 94-year-long history, nine Latine women and three Indigenous American women have been nominated for the award. No Middle Eastern, North African, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander women have won Best Actress in a Supporting Role, according to the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Yeoh’s win offers a second chance to turn a moment of recognition into a progressing movement for representation. But how can we seize this theoretical opportunity and implement it into practice? This key difference between Yeoh’s and Berry’s wins could be used to catalyze representation for the better.

During Berry’s time, stories about people of color were generally made from the perspective and influence of white people. Without exception, every single Black woman nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars was nominated for playing a historical figure (usually a slave or a sharecropper), a promiscuous object of desire, a maid or a single mother on welfare. Berry herself played a consolidation of these tropes: an abusive single mother living in poverty whose character is mostly remembered for an incredibly graphic sex scene with a white man. 

This lack of variety pales in comparison to the complex, nuanced, powerful and original characters offered to other white Best Actress winners of the 21st century, such as Cate Blanchett’s spiraling socialite in “Blue Jasmine” (2013) and Julianne Moore’s tortured intellectual in “Still Alice” (2014). 

The lack of representation is not a testament to the skill or qualifications of actresses of color; instead, it is a reflection of the lack of roles offered to people of color. Studio executives often justify this by saying that actors of color trying to break into the industry are too financially risky and cannot be box office draws. 

Famous director Ridley Scott used a similar justification in assembling an all-white cast for “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014) despite the film set in ancient Egypt, saying he couldn’t pursue such an expensive film and “say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such.” These are thinly veiled excuses to avoid addressing topics of institutional racism because unknown white actors are cast frequently, and labeled as ingenues and prodigies. The same chance should be taken for all actors, regardless of their heritage or ethnicity. 

However, the parameters of Hollywood representation and success are gradually readjusting as more stories of color are being created and overseen by artists of color. As a result, nuanced representation, developed characters and accurate stories are told. 

While “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and Yeoh’s performance at the ceremony act as prime examples of the power true representation holds, these significant wins do not offset the other showcases of Hollywood racism that marred this year’s award ceremony. 

The performance of “Naatu Naatu”, from the Indian film “RRR” (2022), didn’t contain a single actor of South Asian descent, nor was it choreographed by a single South Asian choreographer. In fact, its two lead dancers were only Brown-passing with Indian phenotypes rather than being Indian themselves. Ironically, notorious “nepo baby” Jamie Lee Curtis’ supporting acting win for the same film as Yeoh, viewed as a lifetime achievement award, triumphed over fellow industry legend Angela Bassett for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2022). This proves that women of color are not only held back by their roles, but by how they are treated in the industry.

The fight against institutional racism in cinema is far from over; we can’t let Academy voters treat representation as a light switch that is turned on and off at their discretion. We can’t just let Yeoh walk off stage with her award, dust our hands off and say that the job is done. Critical analysis of popular culture and ongoing conversations of tribulations faced by actors of color are still required to continue mobilizing the fight and need to be implemented in Hollywood in order to keep the door open for every nameless, faceless woman of color.