The Revelations of Hidden Figures
Feb. 12th, 2017 01:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlI loved it.
I love it on So Many Levels. It's a well crafted movie in the way it uses the medium to tell the story. It depicts working mothers positively, men being supportive of women, and women being supportive of each other; it depicts multiple brilliant Black women so the lesson wasn't that one Black person might possibly be brilliant but that brilliance is no less common among Black women than any other group of people; it depicts how thinking feels very well, using just sound and sight. It had a big dollop of the annoying trope where Black People Describe The Awfulness of Racism So White People Solve It For Them but whatever, that comes with the territory in our present culture, I'd rather have the movie with it than not have the movie at all.
And at the end they showed us the actual women the movie was about. And also this movie has the best use of the Power Walk since The Right Stuff And in this day and age, considering the kakistocracy we Americans decided to vote into power, seeing a movie in favor of racial equality, women in STEM, and science in general is both a present delight and a hope for the future.
So, I loved it on so many levels, and am immensely grateful to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eustaciavye for taking me to see it.
Of course I wish I had known this story when I was fifteen and arguing with my classmates abut whether Black people are as intelligent and capable as anyone else, or twenty and arguing the same thing on The Nose discussion server, or twenty-five and arguing the same thing on the Elbows mailing list. I mean, I doubt I would have managed to change anyone's mind any more than I ever did (and boy did I fail and fail and fail) but I would have had extra evidence that I was right.
And I feel a little guilty, in my mediocre secretary hood, towards these brilliant, determined women, but I figure, I still have my brain and there's more than one way to be an intellectual, to learn and to promote learning. Mary Johnson went back to school, as a working mom, after going to court to get the right to do so. I'll keep looking to see what I can do.
Next, to read the book!
I love it on So Many Levels. It's a well crafted movie in the way it uses the medium to tell the story. It depicts working mothers positively, men being supportive of women, and women being supportive of each other; it depicts multiple brilliant Black women so the lesson wasn't that one Black person might possibly be brilliant but that brilliance is no less common among Black women than any other group of people; it depicts how thinking feels very well, using just sound and sight. It had a big dollop of the annoying trope where Black People Describe The Awfulness of Racism So White People Solve It For Them but whatever, that comes with the territory in our present culture, I'd rather have the movie with it than not have the movie at all.
And at the end they showed us the actual women the movie was about. And also this movie has the best use of the Power Walk since The Right Stuff And in this day and age, considering the kakistocracy we Americans decided to vote into power, seeing a movie in favor of racial equality, women in STEM, and science in general is both a present delight and a hope for the future.
So, I loved it on so many levels, and am immensely grateful to
eustaciavye for taking me to see it.Of course I wish I had known this story when I was fifteen and arguing with my classmates abut whether Black people are as intelligent and capable as anyone else, or twenty and arguing the same thing on The Nose discussion server, or twenty-five and arguing the same thing on the Elbows mailing list. I mean, I doubt I would have managed to change anyone's mind any more than I ever did (and boy did I fail and fail and fail) but I would have had extra evidence that I was right.
And I feel a little guilty, in my mediocre secretary hood, towards these brilliant, determined women, but I figure, I still have my brain and there's more than one way to be an intellectual, to learn and to promote learning. Mary Johnson went back to school, as a working mom, after going to court to get the right to do so. I'll keep looking to see what I can do.
Next, to read the book!
