Now that I’ve had much of today to let the 95th Academy Awards seep through and sink in, I’m finally able to attach some context to it that seemed a bit elusive last night. It turns out some stuff happened that was a really big and historic deal, as well as one thing that proved eminently confusing.
We can start with Michelle Yeoh’s victory as Best Actress for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the first Asian woman to win the trophy in nearly 100 years of the Academy Awards. It was a culture-shifting moment that Yeoh utterly grasped in her thrilling acceptance speech: “For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities. This is proof to dream big and that dreams do come true. Ladies, don’t let anyone ever tell you you are past your prime. Never give up!”
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It should escape no one that the significance of Yeoh’s win was enhanced by her being handed her statuette by Halle Berry, who 21 years before became the first African American woman to be honored in the category. It was extraordinary to watch Yeoh and Berry embrace and share a few private words. But almost equally historic was Ruth Carter’s costume design triumph for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” that made her the first Black woman to win more than one of the golden guys. This is a rather astonishing stat, one that left a radically different impression in its wake than last year’s image of one African American man slapping another onstage over a perceived insult.
Sarah Polley’s adapted screenplay win was also a wildly popular one in the room, giving women two victories in the category in as many years for the first time and acknowledging that women know how to write, even if the jury is apparently still out on whether they can direct.
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