![]() ![]() This is not to say that such storytelling is easy work, however. Black people wouldn’t be bothered by a movie that shows white characters who are oppressive at worst and aloof and unhelpful at best, anymore than women would be bothered by the male characters in “Stepford Wives.” So this kind of alteration only serves to soothe the conscience of white people.An inspiring story not aspiring for originality, Hidden Figures forgoes new math for simple arithmetic, boasting a different kind of edginess just in telling a tale of marginalized trailblazers that needs to be told and seen. The answer to that question is pretty obvious. But if the raw material is so powerful and interesting, why did the writers need to add a white guy who “does the right thing”? There’s no need for “Hidden Figures” to follow the true-life story to the letter - it’s not a documentary. The book confirms this: She “sat tight in the office, watching the transmission on a television.” Johnson told me she was at her desk when the launch took place she was not allowed into Mission Control. Cue a series of traded glances between benevolent white boss and thankful black employee.Īgain, this was fabricated to make the white hero look good. She, the lone black woman in a sea of white men, is then allowed to watch the historic flight. She delivers them to Mission Control, but is not allowed to enter - presumably because she’s a black woman - until Costner’s character appears and ushers her in. In the film, Johnson finishes some last-minute calculations that allow for the historic launch to proceed. Incidentally, there’s another heartwarming scene that is also fiction. And so who cares who does the right thing, as long as the right thing is achieved?” “There needs to be white people who do the right thing, there needs to be black people who do the right thing,” Melfi said. He said he didn’t see a problem with adding a white hero into the story. I then asked the film’s director, Theodore Melfi, why he had chosen to include a scene that never happened, and whether he thought portraying Johnson as being saved by a benevolent white character diminished what she did in real life. “I just went on in the white one,” she said. To confirm this, I asked Johnson if she used the Colored bathrooms. The book states very clearly that Johnson “refused to so much as enter the Colored bathrooms,” and that nobody ever tried to make her do so. The film is based on a book written by Margot Lee Shetterly, which is itself based on interviews with the actual black women who worked at the Langley Research Center. Here at NASA, we all pee the same color.” Then, as a crowd of black women look on, he delivers a powerful, funny rejection of Jim Crow segregation: “No more colored restrooms. So he picks up a crowbar, heads to the bathroom, and smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign. ![]() He is aghast, apparently having been unaware racism was taking place under his nose. Her white boss, played by Kevin Costner, discovers this only when Johnson returns to her desk from a bathroom break, drenched after running for half an hour in the rain. So every time she needs to relieve herself, she has to run across the campus to a building with a “Colored” bathroom. Henson, is transferred to a new building, where there are no bathrooms for black women. Math genius Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. ![]() ![]() One of the storylines in “Hidden Figures” centers around a bathroom. It’s just a shame the story got so whitewashed. ![]()
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