As an astronautics student, your then-young correspondent, along with the rest of his mainly white European classmates, found themselves well and truly trounced by the black kid on the course in the highly mathematical spacecraft dynamics and control exam (Euler can go hang!). In fact, this young mathematical genius managed to get over twice as many marks as the rest of us! So much for our poor teaching excuse, or the white supremacists’ notion that those of afro-caribbean descent are not so smart. This is basically the point about the new movie Hidden Figures (2016): that the black population has been underestimated and has a great deal to contribute on an intellectual level – if they are given the chance to do so. Directed by Theodore Melfi, and based on true events in the early sixties time period, it tells how three black mathematicians, Katherine G. Johnson (the 98 year-old Johnson was consulted by the actors during the production of the film), Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, overcame barriers as they worked their way up at NASA’s Langley space center in Virginia.
Hidden Figures poster. Courtesy: 20th Century Fox
These “women of colour” start off by being “coloured computers”. That is, they are paid to make detailed mathematical calculations before the era of electronic computers proper – an arrival of which in the form of an IBM mainframe that later threatens their very employment.
Slowly but surely these women’s talents are discovered by NASA who are desperately working to get their man into space via Project Mercury before the Russians do. These women rise despite the best efforts of the “system” and the endemic racism that puts hurdles in their way. For while slavery had been banned a century earlier, coloured folk, even in a Northern state like Virginia, were still viewed as serfs in general and even had to use separate washrooms to the white population. Meanwhile arrogant police and security men lord it over black population for their own pleasure (maybe things have not changed so much).
Leading the pack of our heroines is Katherine G. Johnson as played by Taraji P. Henson, who became key in the business of planning launch trajectories and re-entry modelling. She is a youngish fortysomething black mother trying to hold it together after the death of her husband (yes – there is some love interest on the way). Trying their best with their own career aspirations are Dorothy Vaughn (played by Octavia Spenser), who is constantly denied promotion, and Mary Jackson (as played by Janelle Monae) who aspires to be an aerospace engineer. Overseeing the mathematical research, is the kindly but initially blind-to-their-problems, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner’s character) as Director of the Space Task Group at Langley.
The movie is engaging and has one rooting for our three ladies. True, bits of the script-for-dramatic-effect will make true space aficionados wince, like having mathematicians in their own mission control room, or making reference to the uncommonly used at the time modern UTC time standard. There are some other minor errors. The real life tale’s timeline which began in 1958 appears to have been significantly contracted for artistic reasons. And while the late astronaut John Glenn is rightly shown as probably the nicest of all the Mercury astronauts, actor Glen Powell’s hair is way too long. In real life Glenn had an almost bald crew cut.
Villains of the piece, well apart from Johnson’s all white sexist and racist male colleagues (and of course the Soviet Union), are a proceduralist NASA personnel manager played by Kirsten Dunst, who gives a fine turn in trying to maintain the toilet colour-bar rule until she can hold back the tide no longer. Likewise, in a non-comedy role, but one in which his character still fails to keep his intellectual arrogance and envy in check, is Big Bang Theory TV comedy actor Jim Parsons. In this he portrays the type of boss who steals his workers’ best ideas – in this case Johnson’s mathematical launch and re-entry analysis – passing them off as his own.
Good and heart-warming so this movie is, in such a tale there is always the danger of the over-promotion of black achievement just to make an “empowerment” point. This happened in taught history at British schools during the 1990s when, for similar reasons the very Anglo-Saxon Florence Nightingale had her Crimean War role as founder of modern nursing almost usurped by the historically less significant Jamaican-born Mary Seacole, even if Seacole was probably the better nurse. Nevertheless, in this real life story’s case, there is genuine achievement to note – especially by Katherine G. Johnson who is now venerated within NASA, not only for her work on the Mercury programme but also for calculating the trajectory for the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
As it is, perhaps the fact that these black women could make any significant contribution to NASA’s early manned space programme under the unfair and difficult conditions of racism and segregation should be celebrated. For while Hidden Figures’ anti-racism story is slightly preachy (as is politically correctness in general), this film reminds you that the anti-racist message at its heart remains morally right.
Seradata’s Rating: A solid space launch 7.5/10. A feel good (mainly) true story but which makes you want to shout at some of the pantomime villains on screen. It has three Oscar nominations which is a mathematical indication that it is worth a look.
