“Hidden Figures” (2016) is a book by Margot Lee Shetterly that is better known as a 2016 Hollywood film of the same name. It tells the true story of how Black women in the US helped to put man into space. There were dozens of such Black women. “Hidden Figures” looks mainly at just three:
- Katherine Goble Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson)
- Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae)
- Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer)
They were called computers. We think of computers as machines – and many think of Blacks and women as lacking in intelligence and mathematical talent. But NASA, the part of the US government that put man on the Moon, did not have electronic computers at first, so computers were people, women mostly. And NASA in the 1960s was far more meritocratic than US society in the 2010s.
The book is way better. First, it tells way more of the story, from the 1940s to the 1980s – there is enough there for a miniseries. Second, it leaves out the White lens through which Hollywood tells stories. The book was written by a Black woman, the film was directed by a White man – and it shows.
It is good that they made the film: ten times more people will see the film than will ever read the book. And people in the US need to see that their stereotypes about Blacks and about women simply are not true. Not even close. But Ava DuVernay or some other Black woman should have directed it, not a White man.
White Saviour: The most glaring racist trope, by far, was when a White man destroyed a Coloured Women sign. It was a glorious moment in the film, seeing that hated sign come down – but in real life no White man had the moral outrage and courage to do that. Why do you think we have racism in the first place?
Racist Uncles: More generally, racism in the film is boiled down to Good Whites and Bad Whites. Hollywood likes to tell stories in a good guy/bad guy framework, but racism is not dichotomous like that. Cartoon racists, like Donald Trump, are the exception not the rule. Or were.
NASA, as Shetterly tells it, was less racist than what is common now in the US because:
- Push: A. Philip Randolph, a Black civil rights leader, had threatened to march on Washington during the height of the Second World War, which led to less racist hiring policies by the US government and therefore NASA.
- Pull: NASA, and its predecessor NACA that had worked on aircraft design, had such a huge need for mathematical and engineering talent that it would take whatever it could get.
- Propaganda: The world was watching NASA, so it had to live up to US propaganda of the Cold War about freedom, democracy, and equality.
The US has since retreated not just from the Moon, but from its democratic ideals.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- White lens
- NASA
- Annie Easley – another Black woman who worked for NASA
- The nadir of US race relations
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That scene in the movie with Kevin Costner’s character tearing the white only bathroom sign down didn’t happen. They just threw that end so the whites wouldn’t look like the real monsters they really were. Heard one of the ladies granddaughter tell that on a podcast on the segment about the human computers.
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I enjoyed the film with that said we never learned about this in school. So many accomplishments of black people we have yet to learn about.
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It was in February when I saw the film I remember Kevin Costner took the bathroom sign down forgot if it was the colored only or white only, the point in my first post is it didn’t happen.
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Nice, it’s hard for me to read books when I’ve seen the movie. Tearing down sign in film seemed unrealistic to me. Abagond, can you check your. Email please?
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“They were called computers. We think of computers as machines”
Typewriter also used to mean the person. A typewriter was someone who worked on a typewriting machine. Only later did typewriter come to mean the machine and the operator became called a typist.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/typewriter
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great movie, it was nice to see ‘cookie’ doing a positive uplifting role
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speaks a lot to not only racism but corporate culture/public sector beauracracy with security clearance
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“The US has since retreated not just from the Moon, but from its democratic ideals.”
As harsh as these times are, at least the mask of “democratic ideals” has dropped from the face of the USA. All of the ugliness our government exported to other countries and its internal colonies is now on full display for everyone to see.
It presents everyone courageous enough to not turn away from the hideous face of naked power with an opportunity learn from this time — and make changes for the future we want.
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Good thing is that nobody can blame Harvey Weinstein for this.
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For some personal reasons, I’ve been studying the Afro-American movies (or movies with Afro-American background) for some years.
While I value a lot The Help (Tat Tayor, 2011) or 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) and, especially, Black/White, AKA Guess Who? (Kevin Rodney Sullivan, 2005) I wouldn’t recommend the Hidden Figures as anything but an example of blaxploitation and pro-feminist propaganda of the worst typ, comparable perhaps to
The Hidden Figures are referred to as token flags by many lbgt-supporters as many times as Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016) was, if not more.
Eventually, both are examples of bad taste and poor imagination replaced by propaganda clishés (but all these things said here are just my personal opinion, of course, and should be regarded as such, for, due to the cultural reasons most of you are likely already aware of, I am not the voice of the entire ‘W.A.S.P.’ subculture 🙂 )
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UPD
….comparable perhaps to Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016) only.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
You missed the whole point of the movie. It’s about black women entrusted and able to work a better job despite the social backdrop of the times.
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Two films that also had a White Saviour theme.
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@jefe
Yeah, right, a white saviour trope, of course, especially in the 12 Years, with a screenplay written by a Black writer, based on a book of memoirs written by a Black protagonist, the movie being directed by another Black and based on Ifa / Reglas de Ocha esthetics…
You know, sometimes you folks seem to be justr like Russian antisemitists with their believes in a Jewish world scheemning against Slavs, the only difference is that your Jews are Whites and your Slavs are Blacks—
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@TeddyBearDaddy
I dislike feminism of any type, be it Afro or otherwise. To me, it’s an abomination of extremist views.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
So you prefer a fictional movie about black women working as household servants over a true story about black women succeeding in a STEM profession?
Why am I not surprised….
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I dislike feminism of any type, be it Afro or otherwise. To me, it’s an abomination of extremist views.
I can see where you get your views:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/07/putin-approves-change-to-law-decriminalising-domestic-violence
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@Herneith
Nope, you can’t (while I can see where you get yours; it’s daylight clear that you got them from The Guardian 🙂 )
The article holds a mixture of stereotypes and misinterpretations (e. g. Olga Batalina is not a main figure behind the law; Maria Alekhina and the PR are not protesters, they are just these two letter, the PR in its business sense; the decriminalisation concerns first-time episodes only, etc., etc.).
Last but not least, you make a false assumption between domestic violence and antifeminism.
Should I also least here some cases of physical and psychological violence experienced by Russian men from their close female relatives and partners?
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Last but not least, you make a false assumption between domestic violence and antifeminism.
The two are systemically and inextricably entwined. Nice try.
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@ Herneith
delicious chuckle
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@Herneith
”The two are systemically and inextricably entwined.”
In your world or in your life? Otherwise it’s nothing but a far-fetched asumption.
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“The US has since retreated not just from the Moon, but from its democratic ideals.”
That’s a quote for the ages.
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@ Pumpkin
Same here. This was one of the few cases where I saw the movie first and then read the book – mainly because I did not like how the movie made up stuff, like about the sign. I wanted to know what really happened, not the Whitewashed Hollywood version.
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Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson in the film) turned 100 yesterday. She is still alive!
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