Hidden Figures and the Issue(s)

Cafe Society
1

I just watched “Hidden Figures” on DVD with the family. I have to ask if anyone else felt the movie played down the race issue for the sex issue. While race was depicted as the issue for most of the film, there were times where I felt the director shied away from or toned down the Black issue and went for the strictly “female” issue. …Did anyone else feel this way?

If I am not imagining this, why would the director have pulled some punches?

2

No, I didn’t feel that way. Which scenes are you talking about?

3

The scenes that stick out in my head* are the needing to pee scenes, which was clearly a race thing and not a female thing.

*I had to run out and pee too.

4

The needing to pee thing was all about segregated bathrooms – if she had been white, she could have made a second trip to the bathroom in the building. But she wasn’t, so she had to walk a mile every time.

5

+1

6

Besides all the tear-jerking music at the end that had me sobbing like a baby, the most striking moment of the movie was when the white female supervisor said to the black computer supervisor, after the latter had proven her point that she had just as much ability, if not more, than most of the others at the facility, that she held no animosity or disparaging feelings towards the black computer supervisor and her black–all female–computer team, the black computer supervisor then said the nicest yet most truthful thing she could: “I know you sincerely believe that.”
End of convo.

I just watched it myself this afternoon.

I guess I hi-jacked the OP. The “female” issue was, I think, partly to bring home to the viewer the many insults piled on top of the more serious injuries inflicted upon African Americans–in so many more ways than many whites can even begin to imagine.

7

The movie was a vehicle for issues - gender, race, pay. I didn’t notice that one was featured over any other. It was all manufactured and had nothing to do with the actual story. Not that there were no gender, race and pay issues in the fifties. The real story is that NACA/NASA was a great place to work.

Crane