The Moviegoer: Hidden Figures
Abigail Benjamin
This Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday take everyone you love to see "Hidden Figures" starring West Virginian heroine, Katherine Johnson, and two African-American Colleagues at NASA in 1961. This movie is the perfect antidote to all Presidential Election Stress from 2016. The film describes the segregation and sexism that all women faced as Math geniuses in vivid detail. The movie trailer highlights the indignity of segregated bathrooms. Even more chilling to my nine-year-old daughter was how none of the white men in an elite NASA room would share a coffee pot with Katherine Johnson. While working on the complex geometry that would allow the astronauts to safely reenter the earth's atmosphere, she had to drink coffee from her own ancient coffee maker marked "Colored."
The performances are even among all three female leads. In the way home from the movie, my daughters and I had a hard time deciding on our favorites. Kudos to the screenwriter for amazing, yet realistic sounding dialogue. This is a movie I want to see often, so I can memorize all the "drop the mike" lines these smart women used in ordinary microaggression moments to fight sexism and racism. Hidden Figures is history without the boredom, and the discovery of inspiring new role-models without the lecture. Enjoy! Let's go make our own spectular splashes on world history!