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score 1/10
even in 1969, NASA and the federal government would have been proud to show off any black contributions to the moon landing. By highlighting black contributions to the Apollo program, NASA could have kept blacks from singing songs like Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" (which bemoaned how a rat could bite the black singer's sister while white people were on the moon). But this didn't happen.
Why didn't someone from NASA bring up Katherine Johnson back then to counter this negative publicity? Because her contributions were so insignificant no one with NASA noticed them enough to highlight them. Which is why Hidden Figures matters and must be lavished with awards and praise. It creates a new narrative, completely devoid of truth, about black participation in man's greatest achievement even in the face of discrimination. It's a narrative for a certain audience—it should be noted women made up 64 percent of the opening weekend audience, with minorities representing 57 percent of those seeing the film—want to hear. Yet surely audiences wanted to believe it in 1969 as well. Katherine Johnson, were her contributions so vital, could have been the much-needed minority public relations asset to parade around to the media back then. But her value as a symbol was limited— because her contributions were trivial.And she can only be brought up now because the real truth about black opposition to the space program has been hidden in plain sight.
grag_dane 16 August 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3781756/ |
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21-11-2019 10:12:55
