Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Reasons to see Hidden Figures this weekend


I saw a tweet from LeslieMac about who would be willing to plan something on a city level to give this movie a good opening. That sounded like something I could possibly do.

Shortly after I post this, I am going to add all my Facebook connections to an event that does already exist for reminding people to go. This post will come first to explain why.


The first obvious reason is to encourage young people interested in STEM. While I believe we have made some progress, both gender and race bias exist in education, and that especially occurs in math and science.

We also know that there is potential to be good at math and science everywhere, and that people with those skills are often able to figure out how to make things happen. Sometimes it is getting a man into orbit, but an understanding of physical properties, natural laws, and how to calculate their interactions can take us many other places.

The movie is not directed at children, but they can enjoy it. Rated PG for mild language and thematic elements, it should be suitable for older children. I was just watching a segment of cast member Taraji P. Henson's guest appearance on the talk, and Julie Chen said her 7-year old son loved it and wanted to see it again.

I was surprised to see that the resources on the movie site do not capitalize on inspiring young people - especially those who might be otherwise discouraged from it - in math. Local resources may vary, but at least for my area, the Washington County Museum's exhibit on the Silicon Forest included a segment on women in technology, and a trip there could be a way of extending the conversation.


The movie resources include on PDF on faith and one on family. The family one is a lightly changed version of the faith one, and it doesn't focus as much on family as on community, but I like some of the questions it asks about what you might not be noticing. That capitalizes on the theme of "hidden figures", which represents both the solutions to be uncovered for solving their physics problems, and women themselves, relegated to the basement, could enough to do the work but not to be seen.


Inspiring people of all ages to believe that they can do things that defy the expectations of others, inspiring people to not allow the judgment of others to pigeonhole them, is reason enough to buy a movie ticket. It might not be reason enough to make an event and focus so hard on the opening weekend, even if there are some really good actors in it (which there are). Here are some reasons for the push:

Hollywood still likes to pay women less and pass over movies with women in the lead. They have often overlooked actual data in order to stick with that nonsense, but it still doesn't hurt to have such a movie report good box office sales.

Hollywood does the same thing with Black people. And they do this with other people of color. Then it becomes a reason to cast Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves as samurai, or make the live-action Mulan about a white guy, or have a Hawaiian native played by Emma Stone. I could go on, but I think the point is clear.

Sometimes Hollywood seems to think that only really loud movies sell. And then a cozy little book like The Hobbit becomes a convoluted, bombastic, three-part movie. Action films can be great, and broad comedies, but there should be lots of different types of movies out there, and part of making that happen is to go see them.

Because bigots are already trying to sink the movie. The IMDB board for it is full of people questioning that it happened, calling it PC revisionism. It's not getting as much publicity as the backlash against the new Ghostbusters but it's the same concept: sad people clinging so tightly to white supremacy that any acknowledgment or credit for any other race or gender cannot be allowed. It's pathetic, and it becomes more important to fight it every day.

So I will post this, and I will invite, and in my post I will also tag mothers of smart little girls and people I know who are good at community organizing. And also I will go see a movie.

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