Hidden Figures is
exactly what we need right now (especially during Black History Month) -- a comfort film. In an era when a promise to
“make America great again” has led to brutally divisive rhetoric on many sides,
it’s cheering to see a movie that celebrates the coming together of all sorts
of people in pursuit of a grand goal: putting Americans into space. This true
story of three black female NASA employees, gifted in mathematics and what we
today call STEM, is a heartening reminder that when we’re able to look past
ethnic, gender, and religious differences, not even the sky’s the limit.
In Hidden Figures the
cast of characters is (as a scientist might put it) binary. In and around
Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia circa 1960, you were either white
or black, either male or female. Brief screen-time is given to a
thickly-accented Jewish survivor of the
Holocaust who now is working overtime to put astronauts aloft via the Mercury
program. But among the space scientists, and also among the crowds gathered to
watch and cheer, there seems to be no such thing as a Latino, a Middle
Easterner or an Asian. Probably this reflects the reality of Virginia in that
era, essentially the same one glimpsed in the equally excellent film Loving, which focused on the Supreme
Court decision that overturned state bans on interracial marriage. In any case,
Hidden Figures fundamentally belongs
to three black actresses--Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe—who
are so vibrant and appealing that it’s no wonder this film received the
prestigious SAG award for its ensemble cast. (Mahershahla Ali, an Oscar
favorite as the sympathetic drug dealer in Moonlight,
here switches gears to play a straight-arrow love interest.)
Each of the three women at the center of Hidden Figures has impressive
intellectual gifts. They are all ready, willing, and able to provide key
technical support for a fledgling U.S. program that is desperate to overcome
the Soviet Union’s head-start in space. But because of the color of their skin
the three are relegated to a separate unit in a separate building. It is only when
the NASA chiefs become desperate (in a pre-computer age) for expert
mathematical help on the first Mercury launch that Katharine Goble (Henson) is
ushered into the all-white, all-male domain over which Kevin Costner presides.
Still, despite her elevation, she faces constant bias, dramatized by the head
engineer’s refusal to allow her name on key reports and especially by her daily
races to a distant “colored” bathroom when nature calls.
The bathroom issue, of course, reflects the Southern
segregation policies of the time. But in many ways, all women were at a marked disadvantage at Langley (and probably
throughout NASA) in this era. They were
valued as support staff, but were traditionally barred from strategic briefings
and kept far from the inner workings of the space program. Women back then were
assumed to be wives and mothers, waiting at home for their hard-working
spouses. Those who snagged NASA jobs were herded together in their own
divisions, and had to adhere to strict codes: modest dresses of a certain
length, high heels, no jewelry other than a wedding ring and a modest strand of
pearls. (Essentially, they were dressed not for long hours of work but for a
tea party.) The supervisor character played by Kirsten Dunst hints at what
happens when a smart woman is undervalued: she makes life miserable for those
even further down the chain of command.
But it’s the black trio you’ll remember: women who prove
there’s no color bar in space.
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