Hidden Figures Movie

Just saw the movie "Hidden Figures" at Amazon, which is a true story, dramatized but not excessively, about three black women who worked at NASA in the sixties, helping to put John Glenn into orbit. I kept wondering how on earth I had never heard of these women before, any of them but especially Katherine Johnson who is the main character, a genius mathematician. She's still living at 98 and I saw some interviews with her on You Tube.It also made me wonder about my own racism that I would never have imagined a black woman mathematical genius. Let alone a whole department full of them all working at NASA. It's a very "consciousness-raising" movie, and for me thoroughly enjoyable as well as educational and inspiring. I wouldn't have imagined a whole department of white women genius mathematicians either though, and they were there too. In their own department. Segregation was a reality in those days and it's a main part of the story.I saw it twice. I also watched some interviews at You Tube with the cast as well as with Katherine Johnson, who is probably smarter than Dr. Adequate.I just wanted to put something up about this movie I think it's so good.;Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Glad you enjoyed it. Are you familiar with Amazing Grace?

I appreciate your sincere and honest statement where. Admissions of this kind cannot be easy. We all have some racism (and other ism) that we don't like to acknowledge. I thought the movie was okay. But my wife raves about it just as you do. I take this as high praise of Dr. Adequate.

Some of my math oriented magazines had some good reviews of the book upon which the movie is based. I've put it on my acquisition list.

The movie is good mainly because the story is new and generally unknown, certainly to me, and because it's such a success story for black women. But it's well enough done too.Like I said it's a "consciousness-raising" story, you learn from it, for instance it doesn't matter how much you know about segregation you need to get some idea of how it was experienced by the people who lived it. It's taken for granted by Katherine and friends in the movie, it's "just the way things are" and a lot of the time she hardly even notices it she just adapts to whatever the situation calls for. If you watch interviews with the real Katherine you might note that some questions meant to bring out her experience of segregation go over her head and she answers in some other context. She knew her abilities and the social handicap was just there to be gotten around.But the movie shows the hardship of it in her having to go all the way to the Colored Women's Restroom which is half a mile away so that she's always late back to work. Also her coworkers give her a coffeepot of her own so that she won't have to share theirs, and they don't even bother to make the coffee for her. And there are lots of subtle exchanges between her and her superiors and coworkers in which even her obvious superiority at the work she does gets suppressed. And then there's the scene that made me cringe where a group of white women are standing together to greet the astronauts while the group of black women stand about ten feet away from them. It makes you happy when John Glenn takes the time to go over to them and shake their hands and you hope it's true. From the interviews with the cast I saw and the writer, it WAS true, all the incidents in the movie are true to what really happened, though they were often dramatized to stand out. Not necessarily. I know he's a mathematician and when he was describing himself, years ago now, he called himself a genius. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

According to one of the interviews I saw at YouTube the book was only a proposal when it was picked up to be a movie, and got written after the movie was already underway.

No I hadn't heard of her, good to know.There are certainly white women geniuses who also deserve recognition. I think of the women of "Bletchley Circle" as geniuses, the English women who worked as codebreakers on Nazi communications during WWII. There's a TV series based on them. Also the story of Alan Turing who broke the Nazi "Enigma Code" includes the woman mathematical genius Joan Clarke who worked with him. (That story involves a primitive computer that Turing designed. "Hidden Figures" is also about the first days of computers as one of the women makes herself a programming expert.)But it's the racial story of "Hidden Figures" that's the eyeopener. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thanks, Faith. That's interesting. None of my sources mentioned that.

Just reading that link, I can't be the only person who thinks Dr Adequate reads as British.

I'm not sure how you got it from that link but somewhere else he said he's British, but lives in the US.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And here I thought he was just some handsome genius American who wrote like a handsome genius British fella, my worldview has been restored.

Might I recommend the film The Imitation Game, for things concerning Bletchley, and Turing and Joan Clarke in particular? Perhaps The Imitation Game can be the "gay story eye-opener"?

I saw the film about Turing and Clarke, couldn't remember the title; yes I remember now that he was gay and went through some horrific treatment for it. It's a sad story for sure but not unfamiliar; to me the story of the black women at NASA was absolutely brand new, and that's what a lot of people say about it, particularly black women.

What is it that was surprising to you?

Well, I can't speak for Faith, but I'm also surprised that, seeing how important computers (the humans ones) were, that either women or African-Americans were allowed such a role at that time. I don't think that their stories were all that well known to most people. Certainly not to me. It's a history that hasn't been told on a wide scale.