Stars Honored at Golden Ring Awards,
Ask Community for Moral Support

Asian American performers have made progress, but not enough.

Phillip Rhee

     Hollywood's cast of characters has changed for the better since actor and producer Phillip Rhee was a youth: now, movies feature Asian Americans as role models.

     "One of the reasons I got into the film business (was) because all the heroes that's been portrayed on the screen were everybody other than Asian Americans," said Rhee, who was honored at the Golden Ring Awards on Saturday. "Something was burning inside
of me, saying, 'I need to change this.'"

     At the awards ceremony, Asian American performers celebrated their progress in film, music, and other art forms while asking the community to give its artists stronger moral support.

     The Asian American Arts Foundation created the biennial Golden Ring Awards in 1995 to recognize Asian Americans' contributions to the arts. The third awards show, held at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, occurred in the wake of the Hispanic, African American and Asian communities' criticism of "whitewashed" network television.

     The scarcity of ethnic characters in network shows prompted a national press conference to address the issue and a call to boycott the networks during September.

     This year, not a single television show features an Asian American leading character, according to AAAF.

     "We hope that the Golden Ring Awards is one small step to representing the talent that we have in our community," said Jeff Adachi, chairman of the organization's board of directors. "We know it's there. We've got to support it. We've got to promote it."

Ming Na Wen (L) & Nicole Wong (R)

     That pool of talent includes actress Ming-Na Wen, who gave voice to the character Mulan in Disney's feature animated film, starred in The Joy Luck Club, played the lead female role in Streetfighter, and performed in numerous television shows and theater productions.

     For her strong and positive portrayals of diverse and complex characters, Wen received the Anna May Wong award of excellence. The award's namesake, one of the first Asian American screen actresses, grew so bitter about the bleak future awaiting Asian Americans in film that she quit the business in the 1940s.

     "I wish she was around today to see what is happening in this industry and how she helped to pave the way," Wen said.

    

Lou Diamond Phillips

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, a Golden Ring Award recipient whose film credits include the lead role in La Bamba, said Hollywood suffers from "ignorance or a lack of imagination" when it comes to casting for films.

     "They don't see (it as), 'You know, this role could be Asian, this role could be African American, this role could be Latino.' They don't think that way," said Phillips, whose multicultural heritage includes Chinese ancestry.

Tatyana Ali

     Tatyana Ali, a singer and actress who played Ashley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air sitcom, said she turned off her television set last year because the fall lineup didn't feature characters who represented her.

     "You are a consumer," Ali said. "You can be in control of what you watch. That's really how things have to be changed."

     In television and film, Ali has only played African American roles. But in real life, she is of East Indian and Panamanian descent. Ali received the Emerging Artist Award.

     Most critics pointed fingers at the networks for leaving minorities out of prominent acting roles. Yet the awards show revealed the lack of community support for Asian American performers was partially to blame.

     "We would rather be scientists and engineers and lawyers and all those other things," Adachi said.

     Such circumstances are familiar to Golden Ring recipient Chang Chen-Yi, who followed his heart instead of the honorable Asian American career path. Chen-Yi's parents wanted him to become an engineer, but he had a passion for drawing and instead became a Disney animator who supervised the character design in Mulan.

     Asian Americans need to band together in support of aspiring artists because "art is so important to our everyday survival, to our self-dignity, to the image that we hold of ourselves, the image that our children will hold of who we are," Adachi said. 

     While the Asian American community may offer weak support, families have been the pillars in several honorees' careers.

     Chris Chan Lee, whose movie Yellow won the Best Asian American Independent Film award, thanked his family for "their love and support and for letting me go to film school and for not becoming what they wanted me to be."

Ann Carli

     Music Producer Ann Carli, who help develop the careers of Will Smith and A Tribe Called Quest and produced the soundtracks for Men in Black and other films, credited her mother for providing advice that guided Carli through her profession.

     "You can do anything you want to. Different doesn't mean bad. It means special," Carli recalled her mother saying.

     Poet and social activist Janice Mirikitani received the Lifetime Achievement Award. Her written work ranges from Japanese in America to women speaking out against incest and abuse.

     Mirikitani said her family's love and guidance helped shape her career.

     "When my mother broke her silence to testify about the camps that imprisoned us during World War II, her voice commanded that I break my silence and always fight and write against apathy and dominion." 

     Dancer and choreographer Pearl Ubungen received a Golden Ring Award for working with underprivileged communities in her art. An excerpt was performed from her work The I-Hotel/The Fall, a 20th anniversary commemoration of the eviction of elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants from the I-Hotel.

    

Amy Hill

Comedian Amy Hill hosted the show and award presenters included actor James Shigeta, actress Miika Taka, actor Robin Shou, actor Gedde Wantanabe, actor Dante Basco, model Rick Yune, writer Ben Fong-Torres and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

     The awards ceremony was punctuated with performances by hip-hop dancers Stylelements, rap artists The Mountain Brothers, alternative rock band Julie Plug, violinist Mia Wu, R&B vocalists One Voice, and singer Pat Suzuki. The show also paid tribute to Charlie Low and the Forbidden City Nightclub, the first nightclub to feature only Asian American entertainers. 

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Nicole C. Wong is a junior at U.C. Berkeley majoring in business administration and pursuing a career in journalism.  Over the summer, she reported for the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Business Reporting Intern.  She also has written for AsianWeek and the San Francisco Chronicle. Wong serves as a board of directors student representative for the Asian American Journalists Association's San Francisco Chapter and works for fair and accurate media coverage of Asian Pacific communities.

Jeannie Cuan is a marketing professional, and enjoys doing photography on her leisure time.
She received her B.A. in Mass Communications from UC Berkeley.