Recently, we witnessed history with the 60-year-old Malaysian star, Micelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian to win a highly coveted best actress trophy at the Academy Awards for playing Evelyn Wang in the sci-fi comedy film Everything Everywhere All At Once on 13th March 2023. Ke Huy Quan also picked up the Oscar for best supporting actor. Needless to say, Asians all around the world are celebrating and seeing it as a great and timely victory for Asians.
However, the hard question to answer is: should Christians be joining in the celebration?
The fact is that the movie does hold to a very LGBTQ+ affirming theme. One wonders if the film will even be considered Oscar worthy if not for the core LGBTQ+ affirming theme. The Oscars have always been very political and tend to affirm movies that are aligned with the messages they desire to put out.
A Gospel Coalition article writes: “At the movie’s climax, Evelyn turns to a kind of love that accepts without correcting, criticizing, or even disagreeing. She sits and vapes with her tax-auditor nemesis (Jamie Lee Curtis). In another universe (one where humans have hot dog fingers), she shares a strange, romantic dance with a version of the same tax auditor. Perhaps most noticeably, she confidently tells her father Gong Gong (James Hong) that Joy is in a lesbian relationship with girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel), signaling a shift from Evelyn’s initial disapproval of her daughter’s relationship (a plot point early in the film) to now full acceptance. If Becky is who Joy wants, then kindness—in Evelyn’s mind—means she must affirm this choice.”
At the very core, this is the kind of kindness the film is promoting. Ke Huy Quan’s character in the movie, Waymond offers the big idea of the movie when he says, “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.”
Which leads to a calculated guess on the core theme: “All the unwoke ones (anti-LGBTQ+) even when you don’t know what is going on, you should still show kindness to the woke ones (pro-LGBTQ+) and be accepting and affirming despite your ignorance.”
It is no wonder that Everything Everywhere All at Once director Daniel Scheinert says in his acceptance speech that drag “Is a threat to nobody” in his bid to call out drag bans.
Various scenes in the movie can also be seen as bids in normalising the LGBTQ+ lifestyle.
Is the LGBTQ+ theme absolutely core to the film’s narrative? Absolutely. In answering questions about China banning gay movies, Daniel Sheinert had said in an interview that “It’s not up to us if the movie is released in China, but all we said was that you can’t cut the gay storyline. That’s all we’ve said to foreign distribution people.” This sentiment is echoed by the other director Daniel Kwan, explaining that the movie “doesn’t work without it.”
We might need to educate our kids to be aware of such agendas going on in Hollywood and not be too quick to celebrate a film like this. We know that China will do so; they are certainly the wise ones in this.
Some would assert that Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan’s performances were awesome and most deserving of international recognition and that we should still celebrate their achievements without celebrating the movie itself. Or perhaps simply celebrate other aspects of the movie that are not at odds with biblical values. In this way, one can still be proud of the movie at some level and celebrate with fellow Asians. I am not sure about such an approach. It just doesn’t feel kosher to me.