Hidden Figures is a box office success representative of the socio-political climate of the modern cinematic developments in the West. With the Hollywood stamp of approval, so to speak, Theodore Melfi’s directing and the diplomatic writing of Margot Lee Shetterly expose a ‘hidden’ moment in American history. This film promotes hope in a time of political confusion, i.e. the construction of a wall to illustrate Donald Trump’s xenophobic approach “to making America great again.” The sixties is a strategic backdrop for interweaving three distinct stories, accounting for each woman’s experience and service to NASA. These women’s legacies contributed to the launching of John Glenn into orbit. Their minds are the metaphorical shields to …show more content…
Katherine vehemently debases Harrison of his public condemnation for her frequent absences. Katharine speaks to the distance she travels each and every time she needs to relieve herself. She expresses the burden of these prejudices, which obstruct her work, her livelihood, and her responsibility as a single mother to provide for her daughters. The following scene is a touching demonstration of breaking racial boundaries. Harrison knocks the “coloured” sign down and asserts, “Here at NASA we all pee the same colour.” Hidden Figures embeds a powerful theme for change. This film addresses the endurance of principles impeding change, including, amendments in politics, and democratic systems. Paul Strafford, a NASA engineer undervalues Katherine’s work. Refusing to let her sit in on the editorial meeting of John Glen’s fast approaching mission. Strafford’s behaviour is telling of his insecurities and fear of competition. He personifies those who aim to preserve the distinctions between the public and the domestic. The trivialization of Katherine’s role is challenged when Strafford says, “There’s no protocol for women attending,” and Katherine’s responds, “There’s no protocol for a man circling Earth either, sir.” The film acknowledges the beauty of diversity and the mixing of gender, race, and class. Thankfully, Strafford’s character develops
In the book Hidden Figures written by Margot Lee Shetterly, Katherine Johnson is one of the main characters. Known as a human computer working for NASA. Katherine is a very smart woman who graduated from college when she was 18 years old and when she was 10 years old she attended high school. She is one of the first African Americans to work for NASA. She would work on some of the hardest calculations and would still find ways to solve them. She was a very hard worker but did not get credit for what she did because she is African American, she made history.
The film Hidden Figures is based on a true story and adapted from the book ‘Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race’ by Margot Lee Shetterly. The movie is centered around a trio of African-American women who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and played an essential role in sending John Glenn to space amidst a burgeoning Space Race between the United States of America and Russia. Based in Hampton, Virginia in the 1960’s, film depicts the deep racism and sexism prevalent in the United States at that time. The film provides a glimpse of the stark realities that black women faced at the time. From the segregated bathrooms and
Due to the fact that the space race took place between the years of 1957-1975, the height of the civil rights movement was in effect. Considering the fact that much more was happening in the 1950s-60s, the year that this movie is taking place, these people are not incorrect when they say that there was more racial conflict present than just the segregation of colored and white bathrooms. Nevertheless, the purpose of Melfi’s film was not to depict all of the racial injustices towards African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, but an emphasis on how inequality directly affected the work that they did inside NASA. As seen in the film, the primary focus is on the work they do that is imperative to their work at NASA. For example, Melfi shows Vaughan being questioned in the library for looking at a book in the white section of the library. Although she is outside of NASA, Melfi portrays that Vaughan needs the book to learn about how to program the IBM machine at NASA. Melfi’s exclusion of other prevalent racial injustices was for the purpose of focusing all of the attention on what they faced as African-American mathematicians at NASA. John A. Murray writes in agreement, as he writes about the purpose of Hidden Figures, states that “African-American women working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (later known
Hidden Figures by Theodore Melifi, is a movie about the untold story of three strong women who were the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into Orbit. The director not only shows the brains behind the succession but also shows the day to day struggle of being a women of color at NASA. Crafting the symbolic meanings behind everyday use, giving us a comprehensive strategic outlook on life.
Hidden Figures is a story of beauty, wonder, and determination. Facing discrimination in many ways, let the stories of three virtuosos disclose to you how a lady, regardless of many major obstacles, can, even back in the 1960s, cross the end goal. Placed in the world-famous NASA, the women present a grand amount of resistance, demonstrating just how powerful they really are. While it might be hard to find her in the crowd, we know she is there, running and jumping over the bars, demolishing walls as they emerge.
When we look at Kathrine Johnson, from Hidden Figures, faces so many challenges throughout her career. Since she is black and a women, she is treated as less than what she is. Despite her proven abilities, she is forced to work even harder than the men of NASA just
During the Reagan-era in American society of the 1980s, there were more opportunities for middle-class college graduates and women for work as there was a rise in rise of hi-tech firms, finance and retail. Where as for men, the decline in heavy industry made it hard for men to find high paid full-time work in industry, in which so many working-class men joined the military. Yet Ripley with all these male attributes can relate more to men in the Reagan-era. ’ James Cameron rewrites Ripley as an action hero, as Aliens (1986) is a military expedition/combat film. At the same time, the political climate of the Reagan era informed the film’s conservative revision of Ripley into a socially authorized female role: the “mother” Ellen Ripley’.
Margot Lee Shetterly’s presentation about her book, Hidden Figures, was moving and emotionally provoking. She discussed her writing process and highlighted the achievements of the many women featured in her book. I think what struck me the most is that, until her book was published, I had no idea that there were that many women who were so involved in NASA and other aspects of the “space race”. It saddened me that I was just learning this piece of America’s history as a young adult, and especially in a time of such controversial political change, made me think.
Mary Wollstonecraft describes it best as being “deeply frustrated by the revolutionaries’ neglect of women’s rights” (Osborne, 2001). Watching Hidden Figures, I found myself deeply frustrated by the neglect of women, and African-American, rights. The movie depicts the wide-spread socially accepted practice of treating women and people of color as being less than humans. The movie starts out in Hampton, Virginia in 1961. At this is a time in history Martin Luther King Jr. is on the rise, and peaceful boycotting begins.
Hidden Figures is a movie that focused on three women and the space race. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson played a main role in helping NASA with the space race. All three of them worked to help for John Glenn’s flight to orbit the earth. The behind the scenes that lead up to Mercury-Atlas 6’s blast off was acknowledged in the movie Hidden Figures. 1961 is when all of the major change that lead to today’s history started to happen inside of NASA.
Progression in technology comes with progression of education. The movie “Hidden Figures” highlights the opportunities involved when intelligent, courageous women take strides to create the math to send astronauts to the moon. This movie is about three historical African American women who worked as “human computers” at the NASA Research Center in Langley, VA in the early 1960’s. Katherine Johnson (fellow mathematician), Dorothy Vaughn (programmer) and Mary Jackson (engineer), contributed to NASA space program to successfully send John Glenn, the first man to orbit around the earth, Project Mercury and later Apollo II mission. The film is a powerful reminder of the destructive consequences of discrimination. It holds important career lessons about how to manage and excel at work even under challenging circumstances.
Hidden Figures tells a story of the early American space program, which is also to say that it tells a story of the
Hidden Figures was an emotional movie that showed the triumph of African Americans through the racially segregated 1960s. In a space center in Virginia, three unlikely African American women help launch a rocket into space with their genius minds. The film follows Katherine (Taraji Henson), Dorothy (Octavia Spencer),and Mary (Janelle Monàe) as they progress in NASA's space program and help to stand up against racism. All of the women begin as computer, or human calculators, but each reach for the stars with larger aspirations. Katherine was moved up for work in a office, that happened to be all whites. Dorothy is the “supervisor” of the computers and does whatever she can to help the women there. Mary has hopes to be an engineer and the dedication to get there. The everyday struggles these women face is horrific but they always stand up against the racism and stick up for each other.
The film ‘Hidden Figures’ directed by Theodore Melfi, Katherine, Mary and other African American woman who work at NASA but are stopped from achieving their goals because they are ‘coloured’. Melfi uses props, dialogue and music to manipulate the audience to think that racism takes effort to resolve, to not let racism stop you from doing/achieving what you want and that we are all human.
Eventually in “Hidden Figures” the president and boss saw potential in one of the African-American females. Once the potential was