![]() They are shown as intelligent, witty women whose stories don’t hinge on their ability to swiftly marry and churn out babies (although they do both). To its credit, the film focuses primarily on the women and their career paths at NASA. This is one of many scenes where black stories are told in a way that assuages white guilt. While this scene showcases director Theodore Melfi’s attempt to highlight women of colour who can hold their own in Jim Crow America, it also establishes the thread of white leadership that runs throughout the film: these women follow the white cop. The officer responds by offering them a police escort all the way to Langley, and the scene ends with Jackson noting the irony of a car full of black women chasing a white cop down the road. ![]() The women explain to the white cop that they work at NASA and have stopped only long enough for Vaughan to fix the car’s starter. It is 1961 in middle-of-nowhere Virginia, and a police car approaches. In one of Hidden Figures’ opening scenes, Johnson, Vaughan, and Jackson stand beside their broken-down car. It should not, however, have been told like this. This is a phenomenal story that should have been told a long time ago. Just look at how on point their outfits are as they get shit done and write complicated space travel math stuff, all while rolling their eyes at the dumb white men (and catty white women) around them. ![]() Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe, respectively). Instead, it co-opts a story about the black experience and adds white saviours.īut, you say, spluttering, the movie shows how some of the most brilliant minds at NASA were black women! Note the radness of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson (played by Taraji P. It doesn’t rewrite the past to recontextualize the present, and it doesn’t set out to undo the damage perpetrated by white narratives about people of co¬lour. If you’re looking to feel good about how reasonable most white people were during Jim Crow America, Hidden Figures is your movie.
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