(l to r) Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) , Mary Winston Jackson (Janelle Monáe), and Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) are hired by NASA for their mathematics ability.
HIDDEN FIGURES
Film Review by Marlene Ardoin
After just five minutes of watching “Hidden Figures,” I was hooked into rooting for these three Black women, who somehow during the 50’s and 60’s, managed to get hired by NASA as mathematicians.
Trying to keep a critical eye, I have to say that the subject matter of this film has the same time frame as other films in this year’s crop, like “Jackie” and “Fences.” The characters in each of these films have the pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy up on the walls of their home.
Even though segregation was still an issue during this time period, these women, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) , Mary Winston Jackson (Janelle Monáe) , and Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) somehow managed to get a hands down great mathematics education under their belts.
Let’s face it, even today, in 2017, the United States is 29th in math and science on the world stage.
So, what did these women do at a time when women were not even encouraged to educate at all?
After a little research, I discovered that each of these women were educated in an all-Black University. So, they did not have to deal with the pressure to be subservient or less than what they were capable of being.
One other observation was that, they were each light-skinned, straight-haired in appearance, which also removed a few other barriers in a world that sees the dominant group through this lens.
Mathematics is not boring in this film.
Katherine kills it with her mathematical demonstrations.
Mary wins in court, when she applies to take an all-White, all-male Engineers course.
And, Dorothy made me laugh with her rationalization for taking a book that she needed out of the Whites-only section of the library.
Kevin Costner as Al Harrison, the director of the Space Task Group is convincing as the color-blind, fair-minded leader, who fixes the coffee pot situation and the bathroom sign situation, all while beating the Russians in the space race.
I have to hand it to these women, they are all geniuses when it comes to balancing marriage, children and careers.
They all were also teachers before being hired by NASA.
Dorothy was especially alert to the quickly shifting computer oriented times.
I lived through these times, but from the White privilege perspective. This was a time when many Whites became allies to Blacks. It was also an important time of the women’s rights struggle.
Sad to say, but many of the male protesters did not want male privilege to change. Thank you NASA for employing some enlightened male employers and leaders.
Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury.
Biography of Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson
Biography of Mary Winston Jackson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jackson_(engineer)
Biography of Dorothy Johnson Vaughan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Vaughan
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