Hidden Figures

It's that time of year again when everyone is getting ready for the Academy Awards and we are rushing out to see the big movies of the year. Last year, I wrote about the The Revenant that was a very immersive, visceral cinematic experience that won three Oscars. This year, Hidden Figures is making a big impression on me. Bruce and I loved it. It is based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly, by the same title, about the black women who worked at NASA as "human computers". They basically calculated math for the engineers to save the engineers time so they could do more important tasks. The story is specifically about three women, Mary Jackson played by Janelle Monáe, Katherine Goble played by Taraji P. Henson, and Dorothy Vaughan played by Octavia Spencer.

All three had incredible stories but the movie was mainly focused on Katherine Goble who was a mathematician protégé. Similar to women at Boeing called Rosie the Riveters, where 47 percent of the workers were women during the World War II, NASA began hiring black "human computers" in 1941. The movie is set in 1961 at NASA Langley in Virginia, part of the Jim Crow south. While they did the same work as their white counterparts, the black computers were paid less and relegated to the segregated west section of the Langley campus, where they had to use separate dining and bathroom facilities. They became known as the "West Computers."  Dorothy Vaughan was their supervisor. 

The movie did an excellent job depicting all the obstacles these women had to overcome  and that is what makes me love this movie so much.   These were strong women.  I can't even imagine how hard it must have been to even slightly succeed as a black woman in those days.  They kept showing Katherine Goble running the 1/2 mile trek across the Langley campus just to use the black women's restroom after she got transferred to the special task group computing the trajectories for Alan Shepard's historic flight in 1961. 

Dorothy Vaughan recommended her for that job knowing that "Any upward movement is movement for us all", one of the many thought-provoking lines in the film.  Vaughan was one of NASA's early computer hires during World War II and she became a leader and advocate for the "West Computers."  She became NASA's first black supervisor, and then later, an expert FORTRAN programmer. (She had to self-teach herself programming from a book she stole from the library because she couldn't check it out due to her skin color.)  The third character was Mary Jackson who was hired at Langley in 1951.  After several years as a computer, Jackson took an assignment in assisting senior aeronautical research engineer Kazimierz Czarnecki and he encouraged her to become a engineer herself. To do that, she needed to take after-work graduate courses held at segregated Hampton High School.  She had to petition city hall to attend but she won, completed the courses and was NASA's first black female engineer.

Some of my favorite scenes were those of John Glenn.  While the three women's stories were front and center, you can't help love John Glenn and especially since his recent death, makes this film particularly timely.  Featured prominently, Glenn is depicted as a goal-oriented, joke-making, tension-cutting, folksy guy.  According to NASA historian, Bill Barry, that's pretty much exactly how he was.  "Everybody thinks of John Glenn as this iconic war hero... and astronaut, but what's missed a lot is his humanity," says Berry, "Glenn was in a classic sense, a gentleman. He was always concerned about the people around him and it didn't matter what package they were in. He was a real people person."  The second half of the film primarily focuses on John Glenn's 1962 trip orbiting the globe when Katherine Goble's main job was to double-check the newly-installed IBM 7090's trajectory calculations.  There were very tense moments and John Glenn did request that calculations specifically be hand checked to confirm trajectories and entry points that the IBM computer spat out, as Glenn did not completely trust computers, "get the girl to check the numbers...you know, the smart one".  We loved that scene. 

Despite the racism and sexism, the film is decidedly un-somber.  It doesn't dwell much on the particulars of aeronautical science; instead, it revels in the intelligence and warmth of its subjects, in their successes both in and out of the office and it wants viewers to do so, too.  You can expect some clapping and cheering after moments of victory and loud groans whenever acts of racism take place (there are many).  But a buoyant soundtrack including Pharrell Williams and regular doses of comic relief help keep the tone light and optimistic despite the serious issue at hand. 

Other stars in the cast include Kevin Costner as Katherine's boss and eventual ally; Jim Parsons as the engineer that Katherine works for and types all her reports and calculations with his name on them, when she must leave her name off (so infuriating, but there are a lot of infuriating parts in this film); Kirsten Dunst as Dorothy's manager and the epitome of the racist-who-thinks-she's-not type; and Glen Powell as the lovable John Glenn.  There is so much to talk about after watching this film, be sure to go with others and plan time afterwards to talk about it.  With all that is going on with our country with racism, closing our borders and discrimination, is our nation heading backwards to a time like this again?  It was considered normal and acceptable what these women had to endure.  Nobody thought anything of their inferior treatment, despite how smart they were.  Much about this is very familiar in our present time and I can't help to think that history is about to repeat itself.  But I hope not.