“While there was a woman, who was 1/4 black, who worked at NASA, the entire story is complete bunk and massive exaggeration.”
I grew up in Hampton, VA in the 1950s and 1960s, the setting for the movie “Hidden Figures.” I have seen the movie and read the book on which the movie was based. As is typical, the movie takes some liberties with the facts. Most notably, it portrays events that transpired over a 15 year period, from 1947 to 1963, and compresses them into a couple of years in the early 1960s. However, your critique of the movie contains several errors of its own.
1. Neither the movie nor the book claimed that NASA was “saved” by the women who made the calculations for launch trajectories and orbits. That women were employed to make such calculations and, subsequently, some of them learned computer programming to keep their jobs is beyond dispute. The practice of employing women to make orbital calculations goes back at least 120 years, when the Harvard College Observatory employed women to make calculations of planetary orbits.
2. Katherine Johnson wasn’t the only African-American woman employed at NASA at the time. The other two African-American women portrayed in the movie, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughn, were also employed there during the same time. You make the point that Katherine Johnson was “only” 1/4 black. That was more than enough to relegate her to the “colored” bathrooms at the Langley Research Center at NASA, which existed until 1958. And since you are interested in skin tone, Mary Jackson’s skin was quite dark.
3. I interpreted the movie as bringing to the fore the role of women, as much as blacks, in the space program. There is a book, “Rocket Girls,” that came out about the same time as “Hidden Figures,” and recounts the similar role that women played at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA in the 1940s and 1950s.
1. While you defend the movie as taking "some liberties with the facts" - those warped "facts" are the core message and premise of the entire film. This isn't a case of an oblique reference to what type of car the lead character actually drove. This movie portends that Johnson's calculations were requested by John Glenn, and that the "heroic" numbers crunching of Johnson was responsible (in a very large way) for the success of a significant event in the space program. I called that "saved." You don't like that term. That's OK by me. But this story is largely fiction. And there are many articles that also believe it is nothing short of propaganda.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=hidden+figures+propaganda&*
2. That was more than enough to relegate her to the “colored” bathrooms at the Langley Research Center at NASA, which existed until 1958. And here we have victimization being played once again, and whites should cower in submission to guilt for the sins of the past - again. Sorry, but that card has been dealt too many times. I could re-hash the discrimination that my great-grandfather suffered for being an Irish immigrant, but Hollywood won't be interested in making a movie about it. I would guess that Johnson never made any statement about being discriminate by NASA because she didn't suffer any real discrimination. Moreover, she has never been cited in any contemporaneous or historical accounts as having any great contribution towards NASA, until now. That's because (I believe) her role and that of other "computers" was negligible. We are taking 10th grade math here, not something in the "genius" category. I am an Aerospace Engineer. Am I a "genius?" Hardly.
And since you are interested in skin tone
Oh please. Now you are just being ridiculous. This movie was made with an "in your face" weapon against "racism." It was also made in response to the #OscarsSoWhite protest of the black race hustlers. I believe that 100%. Those folks want race to be an issue - not me. By responding to it, we have to talk about the issue of race, because they brought it up.
Thanks for the info-Best movie of the year.