On Saturday night, me and Harry went to see Hidden Figures at the Broadway in Nottingham. I've been wanting to see it for ages but had never got round to it, so having Harry up for the weekend seemed like the perfect time.
Hidden Figures is based on a true story about three black women, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P Henderson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), all mathematicians who worked for NASA during some of the most vital years in the US space program. During the film, you see how each of them work their arses off to get where they want to be, despite racial segregation and sexism, and how they experience life outside of work in a world of white hegemony.
I thought this film was really refreshing. Especially as we've been hearing a lot more of the Black Lives Matter campaign in the last couple of years. Taraji P. Henderson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae play their roles with such emotion and integrity, they really have portrayed the honesty and feelings within the story. You begin to understand how these women must have felt when they were constantly being told to leave public places because the whites "didn't want any trouble" and having to walk half a mile to go to the coloured bathroom. Honestly, you see "coloured" this, "coloured" that so many times during the film you almost have to laugh, it seems so unrealistic, yet that's how it was. It's shocking.
It also makes you realise that you can achieve anything. I got this feeling when I watched Eddie the Eagle too the other day. It sounds so cliche, I know, but these ladies pushed and pushed to achieve more than they ever thought they could. After Mary Jackson was told that she couldn't apply for an Engineering job at NASA, because she didn't have the qualifications, she went to court and persuaded the judge to let her attend an all-white school, even if it was just night school. Katherine Johnson was told that she was no longer needed because of a new IBM computer system, which could work 100 times faster than any human brain could, yet they eventually realised they needed her when the IBM was giving out incorrect co-ordinates for John Glenn's launch (the first American to orbit the Earth). She then went on to help calculate the trajectory for the Apollo 11 flight to the moon in 1969.
If you haven't seen this film already then I really recommend that you should. Not only is it motivational and educational, but it's also a really good watch in general!
Georgia.xo
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