Spending the Weekend at the Movies

Last weekend my husband and I visited 3 theaters and watched four movies for our Valentine's Date. It was a great idea that I must attribute to my husband after we opted not to do anything on the day or go in for the usual Valentine's Day festivities. I did send him a video card and posted it to his Facebook account so that his friends and our family could enjoy it too.

Of the films we watched one is a candidate for Best Film at the Oscars, another was a dud, one released last week and the other didn't appear to do very well at the box office. We had a good time eating too much popcorn and drinking too much cherry coke.

First film: Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures is a truly spectacular look at history that hasn’t been shared with a mass audience before. I sincerely hope the work these ladies did inspires the next generation of space explorers. The filmmakers told the stories of three friends, all working moms, who were brilliant in their respective fields. They addressed the fight for civil rights through the women’s relationships with the respective men in their personal lives and through television footage. Mary says it best when she tells her husband that there are many paths to the same goals and not all have to be violent. They did a great deal for black women and did even more for all women and should be recognized as the heroes that they are.

From the very beginning of the film we are taken back to the 1960’s. The writers took the edge off with Mary Jackson’s commentary about three black women chasing a white police officer. As the story continued, I wondered if it was as hard for the white actors in the film to say ‘colored’ and the other racist comments as it was for the black actors to hear them. There is a moment when Dorothy and Vivian, the white supervisor, meet in the bathroom. Vivian says that she has nothing against Dorothy’s people to which Dorothy responds, “I’m sure you believe that.” This was particularly poignant for me because so many white people also believe that they aren’t racist and have nothing against minorities even today despite statistical evidence to the contrary.

Hidden Figures is very much about the black women who gave much of their lives in the pursuit of reaching the stars, but it is also about the larger story of women being accepted in STEM fields because they have brilliant minds too. Notice how the ‘computers’ are all women with degrees who have been relegated to being glorified secretaries for their male counterparts. Katherine Johnson pushes her direct supervisor, Paul Stanford to even get her name on the reports that included her work as a major component. Mary Jackson’s path was a little different in that her supervisor, the Polish engineer Karl Zielinski, encourages her to apply to the NASA engineering program by reminding her that he escaped the Nazis and is now working on a spacecraft. From the beginning of the film when Dorothy Vaughn informs the cop that ‘there are quite a few women working at NASA,’ the audience is reminded again and again that the film is about this larger story.

My favorite character was Mrs. Dorothy Vaughn, played by the indomitable Octavia Spencer. Despite not being recognized for her supervisory work, Dorothy makes every effort to encourage her friends to chase their opportunities. She always has an eye to the future and fights for herself and her ‘girls,’ the women who make up the West Computer Group. She saw the threat and opportunity presented by the new machine, the IBM, and takes the initiative to read up on coding and the IBM manuals when no one else is watching. Her forethought saved the jobs of all of her ‘girls’ and made her an incredibly valuable asset for NASA for the remainder of her career.

No matter who you are, you need to see this film. It is a wonderful opportunity to show your daughters and nieces that they too can be mathematicians, engineers, and computer coders. These ladies deserved to be honored for their contributions to space explorations, their various fields, and most especially for furthering civil rights in their quiet way. Recommended for children old enough to sit quietly and ready to welcome some rediscovered national heroes.