On Oscars and ASEAN

The twin triumphs of 60-year-old Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh and Vietnamese-American émigré Ke Huy Quan, 51, for their award-winning roles at this year's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences event should also be a win for Southeast Asia, but it is not apparent. In an age where representation in popular culture is moving away from the Caucasian archetype and embracing the increasingly diverse, it is still too easy to slip into nondescript labels such as black or Asian.

It would be easy to conflate the gushing of Malaysian pride as Asian when watching the footage of Michelle's mother in Kuala Lumpur celebrating her daughter's win at a local viewing party. The Southeast Asian Queen, as some endearingly call Michelle, owes her acting career to the Hong Kong martial arts film scene, rather than her native Malaysian cinema. It took a Bond movie in 1997 for her to break into Hollywood ( Tomorrow Never Dies ).

For Quan the Comeback Kid, Hollywood does not do justice to his Vietnamese roots either, and people still manage to butcher his name. Having lived through early Asian stereotypes of coming "fresh off the boat" from a refugee camp in Hong Kong, Quan was plucked out of obscurity to star as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and later as Data in The Goonies , giving his family a lifeline to pursue the American Dream. His return to acting two decades later, after giving up due to a lack of work for Asian actors, was seen more as the culmination of the everyman's dream.