Everything wrong with Hidden Figures

T. Racist

Its nitpicky to make a movie about it and nitpicky to say they shouldnt have

didn't they work in the basement or some other out of the way place?

...

I saw it, I just wanted all possible reasons I might have missed that it's a terrible piece of propaganda.

But I'm not as likely to find people who'd care about historical accuracy there.

>wahhhh talking about racism makes it propaganda

kys

Only one of these people is actually real
Why did they make the other two up?

In Margot Lee Shetterly's book, this is something that is experienced more by Mary Jackson than Katherine Johnson. Mary went to work on a project on NASA Langley's East Side alongside several white computers. She was not familiar with those buildings and when she asked a group of white women where the bathroom was, they giggled at her and offered no help. The closest bathroom was for whites. Humiliated and angry, Mary set off on a time-consuming search for a colored bathroom. Unlike in the movie, there were colored bathrooms on the East Side but not in every building. The sprint across the campus in the movie might be somewhat of an exaggeration, but finding a bathroom was indeed a point of frustration.

As for Katherine Johnson herself, Shetterly writes that when Katherine started working there, she didn't even realize that the bathrooms at Langley were segregated. This is because the bathrooms for white employees were unmarked and there weren't many colored bathrooms to be seen. It took a couple years before she was confronted with her mistake, but she simply ignored the comment and continued to use the white restrooms. No one brought it up again and she refused to enter the colored bathrooms.

we wuz astro nots n shieet

Usually, yes, but Kathrine gets promoted to a job in a more advanced building after her mathematical abilities are recognized. However, this building does not contain a single "colored" bathroom as she is literally the only black person working there. This leads to a situation where she is forced to run to the "colored" building and back whenever she needs to go to the bathroom. This happens over and over again throughout the movie, and eventually builds up to a scene where she breaks down crying when somebody asks her why she's always gone for so long whenever she needs to use the bathroom. In real-life, the situation with there being no "colored" bathrooms in the entire building did actually occur, but she never ran to another building because of it.

I don't think it ruins the movie, but it is a questionable choice to spend so much time focusing on something that didn't actually that way. To be clear, the movie treats this as a MAJOR plot-point in Katherine's story-line. Apparently it did happen to some other woman, but not Kathrine herself, so its more like an amalgamation of real events rather than a direct retelling.

It's important to note that the filmmakers didn't... actually read the book this was based on. Which should be shocking and yet isn't, even for films based on real events. What they read was a 55 page treatment of the book which included a line about how it was frustrating because they had segregated bathrooms, which the filmmakers used to come up with the bathroom subplot..

It's unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence with films based on real events. They may take something small and turn it into a huge plot point because it's more narrative friendly. In other words, it's more easily dramatically satisfying for them to build up to the character having to sprint again and again to the same segregated bathroom across campus, then get chastised for it and ultimately result in an emotional sequence than to depict her taking forever to find a bathroom initially because the white women wouldn't help her, and then have to find a building on the same campus to use the bathroom--still out of the way, still a frustrating experience, but not as punchy.

Common knowledge yes, but unpopular nonetheless. Probably why it gets very little media attention apart from the occasional documentary at 2am on a thursday night on Yesterday/History Channel.

Not a naziboo, and I can kinda understand the stigma that might be attached to it but it's still silly. It was the most pragmatic thing to do, and it absolutely paid off.

I love how non-Americans always act like this is some dark secret that they're exposing for the very first time. It's adorable.

if anything the "le nazi science got us to the moon xD" meme is overstated in American pop culture.

Was it ever a secret? I remember watching a movie in school about a kid who got into rockets because Dr. Von Braun was his hero and he ends up joining NASA and being involved with moon landings. So this 1950's kid knew about Dr. Braun was at NASA. So it wasn't a secret even back then.

/tv/ is like /pol/. They'll jump on the opportunity to stop negro kleptomania

>omg American history contains black people occasionally

Don't forget Dr. Strangelove.

nigs arent smart

Ther eisn't much actually historically wrong. It just triggers /pol/beards who think "they" invented space travel because they're the same skin color of those who actually did.

>I just wanted all possible reasons I might have missed that it's a terrible piece of propaganda.
You can't dismiss it as propaganda if you yourself don't know shit about the topic

Mein Führer!

I can valk!

It wasn't even the anti-racism, they basically give credit to 3 black women for what hundreds of hyper intelligent white guys and former nazis did. Pretty ridiculous, all they were was number crunchers they did nothing important except serve as calculators and appeal to the black demographic.

Its propoganda as fuck

>Apparently it did happen to some other woman, but not Kathrine herself, so its more like an amalgamation of real events rather than a direct retelling
OK, I haven't seen the movie and I have no idea whether it's decent or trash, but this isn't a fair criticism. This sort of thing -- historical movies being amalgamations of real events, taking events that happened to one person and transplanting them to another character, even combining multiple real people into one character for the sake of narrative simplicity, is EXTREMELY COMMON.

It's not a "questionable choice." Movies like this are above all DRAMATIZATIONS of real life events. They're not documentaries, and they don't strive for 1:1 accuracy with history or even the source material, and they don't claim to. OF COURSE they prod events around to make them more narratively satisfying. If people don't understand this and think they're watching something that all literally happened, instead of a *story* heavily inspired by real events, that's on them, not the filmmakers.

Quality contribution.

what specific thing did they take credit for?

I want to fuck the MILF in the middle, I saw her thick ass while scrolling by Empire. Not interested in the show but goddamn.

Once ze rockets go up, who cares where zey go down. Zat's not my department.

What? They never implied that it was entirely their doing. Just that they did have an important contribution in the space program.

Says Wernher Von Braun.

Are you saying it's wrong to praise cultural values that lead to achievements?

>cultural values.
von braun initially worked for a government that discarded scientific knowledge because it was (((Jewish)))

Black women are hotter than that

October Sky. Good movie, I watched most of it on TV a long time ago.
Best fucking movie ever made. Also one of the most accurate depictions of nuclear strategic command in any film.

WE

Bitch, it was even mentioned in Captain America 2, if it wasn't popular before it is now

Why do racist people call blacks apes of most apes have pale skin?

*if

The nose
The protruded jaw

Prognathism
Supraorbital ridge
Sagittal crest
Other robust maxillofacial features

the "also rans" of "historical drama" revolving around spaceflight

you must be colourblind

Are you a homosexual by any chance?

the skin color in this example doesn't apply, it is the resemblance and the facial features, the shape of their nose, head, lips

Underrated post

you are making up your mind beforehand and now you just want whatever that aligns with your beliefs

They don't have prominent ridges tho and chimps barely have noses

I like how this post has the most replies in the thread.

>Everything wrong with Hidden Figures
The subject matter doesn't interest me. I will be completely honest in saying that I am just not interested in the struggles of black Americans from a historical viewpoint. There have been vastly more numerous cases of discrimination worthy of my study.

Every group has been compared to apes in the past. Look up the Dutch monkey

Pretty much this.

If you have to invent 2/3rds of the protagonists and take a woman who is only 1/64th black and blackwash her, then make up an entirely contrived and non-existant conflict JUST to get SOME kind of plotline going, chances are the movie isn't worth my time.

Call me when we get an actual movie about von Braun, then I'll be impressed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny_in_humans

>Ashley Montagu said that Negroids have the following neotenous traits relative to Caucasoids: flattish nose, flat roof of the nose, small ears, narrower joints, frontal skull eminences, later closure of the premaxillary sutures, less hairy, longer eyelashes and cruciform pattern of the lower second and third molars.

About the brow ridge: While some black people have prominent ones (Charlie Murphy, Jamie Principle), they're a lot smaller on average than Caucasians. I hope you aren't confusing blacks with Aboriginals, who mind you, despite having more neoteny than Neanderthals, are the most robust looking humans today.

The Chinese thought Europeans came from monkeys because the only somewhat humanoid creatures with red hair in the area are monkeys and the orangutan.

1/64th black? She's obviously a black woman, but one who's close to being a mulatto. I'd say she's about as black as Quincy Jones.