Hidden Figures

(Diapo 1)        The movie I'm going to deal with is Hidden Figures. It is an adaptation from the novel written by Margot Lee Shetterly, realised in 2016 by Theodore Melfy. (Diapo 2)The story turns around 3 main characters, 3 women who played an important role in the space race, but they are stuck in the shadow of their male colleagues. (Diapo 3)They are Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan. At the begining, they are just computers, but they reach more important jobs in the NASA, they contribued to win the space race in 1962. (Diapo4)

        At the begining of the movie, Katherine's parents discovered that she is a genious in mathematics and they will do their best to help her being successful. Just after this scene we meet these 3 women who were arrested by a policeman who doesn't believe that they work in NASA. After they show him the proof, he escorts them. They work in a computers group of african americans women but they aspire to be more important. When Soviets are in verge of winning the space race, The director, Harrison engages Katherine to check calculations. She is the first african american woman who join this group but it is difficult for her because a part of informations are confidential. The director decides at a moment to let her to have access to these information to win the space race. In her side, Dorothy leads the computer group, but it is not an official job, and so she requests her work to be recognized to her white supervisor it will be long but she finally gets the supervision of this group. For Mary, after few weeks of collaboration with an engineer, this one suggests her to become an engineer too. Firstly she refused because she is black and she is a woman, but he says that he is a Polish Jew, he has escaped the Nazi extermination camps and, yet, he is working on the development of a rocket that will go into space. So she deciced to follow his advise

        The movie Hidden Figures demonstrates the success of theses 3 african american women who help the NASA to win the space race. It shows the recognition of some people of their talent, more precisely John Glenn : (Diapo5) he was the first american who go into space, and he refused to go into space until Katherine Johnson, one of these 3 famous women checked all the calculations. Mary Jackson becomes an engineer, and Dorothy Vaughan leads a group who work with the IBM, a new calculating machine, it is the ancestor of the computer (diapo7)

Then, the movie shows the segregation and the discrimination in the society, at this time NASA was in Longley, in Virginia, a state which practiced segregation. (diapo 8) There are references to the fight for equality between whites and african americans, to the civil rights movement with Martin LutherKing. Indeed in the movie we can see places like restaurants whose separated population in two groups, we can see bathroom reserved for african american women. (diapo9) By the way, at a moment in the movie, the boss of Katherine broke the sign « Coloured women ». He took this decision after Katherine told him about her problem : when she want to go to the bathroom she must to cross all the buildings to use the bathroom reserved for african americans women, what makes her late at work. He thought and he realised that it is stupid to obliged women to walk to the other end of the building to find bathroom when there are more near, moreover he needs her to win the space race. Doing this he refused the segregation. (diapo 10)

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