Hidden Figures: The real agenda is $$$ · 9:10pm May 22nd, 2017
Hidden Figures is a powerful story, and a surprising one. I and the people I watched it with kept asking, "Why haven't I heard about this before?"
But I remembered that Fargo began with the solemn text-over statement that
This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.
… which turned out to mean…
“There are actually two little elements in the story that were based on actual incidents,” Joel Coen told HuffPost. “One of them is the fact that there was a guy, I believe in the ‘60s or ‘70s, who was gumming up serial numbers for cars and defrauding the General Motors Finance Corporation. There was no kidnapping. There was no murder. It was a guy defrauding the GM Finance Corporation at some point.”
He continued, “The other thing based on something real: There was a murder in Connecticut, where a man killed his wife and disposed of the body — put her into a wood chipper. But beyond that, the story is made up.”
So I was googling "hidden figures true story" on my phone during the movie. The first few hits were fluff pieces that basically said "OMG there's a book on this though I haven't, y'know, read it". Then I found this website History vs. Hollywood that does nothing but compare historical movies to their true history, and it did an in-depth comparison of movie and book. I also checked biographies of the 3 main characters: Dorothy Vaughan (Wikipedia, NASA), Katherine Johnson (Wikipedia, NASA), and Mary Jackson (NASA).
Since it came out simultaneously with the non-fiction book, I expected the movie would stick pretty close to the account in the book, but choose events selectively, and film them in ways to make the movie a more or less politicized reconstruction.
What I found instead was bizarre: history rewritten with a combination of anti-white and anti-activist distortions. The opening scene tells you what movie Ted Melfi wanted to make: A racist cop approaches the three black women, whose car has broken down, and menaces them until he learns they work at NASA on the space program. Then he turns friendly and escorts them to work. This summarizes the movie's message: (A) White Americans were mostly racists, but (B) there was no need for resistance or protest; if black women did good white-collar white-nerd work, they would be recognized and accepted as equals.
HIDDEN FIGURES EXAGGERATES EVERYTHING
In Jesus Christ Superstar, there is a remarkable scene where they give Jesus 39 lashes. The remarkable thing is that they show all 39 lashes. It's either a brilliant violation or a brilliant fulfilment of the rule "always surprise." They started giving the lashes, and I thought they would have to cut away--they surely couldn't just keep on and show all 39 lashes. But they grind through all 39, showing the faces of Pilate, Herod, and the soldiers slowly change, from stern, eager, and vicious, to strained, nauseated, and exhausted.
Jesus Christ Superstar was not intended as history, but even so, that is the right way to film something terrible from history. The reality of 39 lashes is bad enough.
When I saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, I counted the lashes they gave Christ. I've forgotten now how many it was, but it was well over 100. We know that in real life they would have been very careful to give him no more than 39, because a Roman soldier who gave more than 40 lashes would himself be lashed. They exaggerated the pain and humiliation of the crucifixion in other ways as well. This is when I formulated Bad Horse's Rule of Historical Fetishism:
If you exaggerate a crucifixion, you're not making history; you're making some kind of porn.
There are true stories worth telling about black and female scientists and engineers accomplishing great things while suffering or fighting discrimination, like the story of the black experimental heart surgeon Vivien Thomas, which was told in the better and entirely obscure movie Something the Lord Made. Seriously, watch that movie instead of Hidden Figures. It's not based on a true story; it is a true story, it doesn't have a completely extraneous romance subplot, and you can buy the DVD for about $7.
[After I noticed all the web pages I read about Vivien Thomas used exactly the same wording, I discovered both they and the movie all rely entirely on Vivien Thomas' 1985 autobiography, which disagrees with Blalock's version of the story. I therefore can't guarantee that the movie is a true story.]
But Hollywood wanted to make a movie about three black women being put down by segregation and rampant racism at NASA even while they were struggling to help put American astronauts into space. The problem is it never happened that way.
- Everything in the movie except the space flights took place during 1943-1958, not 1961-1962, and at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, not at NASA. Dorothy was hired in 1943, Mary in 1951, Katherine in 1953. The battles over racism within NACA peaked in the late 1940s, not the 1960s (Hidden Figures chapter 10), and the most-serious were not triggered directly by racism, but by anti-communism, which tried to root out progressives from government jobs. NASA never had racially-segregated work groups or toilets; those were abolished in 1958 when NACA became NASA, in open defiance of Virginia state law. So the movie misrepresents the race situation in NASA in the early 1960s using a misrepresentation of events at NACA from the 1940s and 1950s.
- Many of the most-dramatic racist events were made up. The racist cop in the opening scene was made up. The scene where Katherine walks into her new office and is mistaken for a janitor never happened. There was no "coloured coffee pot".
- These "coloured computers" ("computer" was a job description in those days--the people weren't named after electronic computers; electronic computers were named after the people) were working in the most-progressive division (the Stability Research Division; Hidden Figures chapters 10 & 11) of a generally progressive organization, and it should have been praised for being dangerously progressive for its time and place (according to the FBI, which investigated it as a potential communist hotbed because of its progressive views) rather than being slandered as it was by this film.
- In an interview with WHRO-TV, Johnson stated that she "didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research. You had a mission and you worked on it, and it was important to you to do your job ... and play bridge at lunch." She added, "I didn't feel any segregation. I knew it was there, but I didn't feel it."
- Mary Jackson really did have to petition the court for permission to attend night school to take the classes needed to become an engineer at NASA. That was not exaggerated except by being moved to about 5 years later in time.
What you find in the historical account is that there was discrimination, but it was usually exaggerated in the movie to make it more dramatic, often to make it conform to the rule of three, which says that a character shouldn't get anything she wants until the third time she tries:
- The true story of the secret briefings: "I asked permission to go," says Katherine, "and they said, 'Well, the girls don't usually go,' and I said, 'Well, is there a law?' They said, 'No.' Then my boss said, 'Let her go.' And I began attending the briefings."
- The true story of how Katherine got her name on her paper:
In the early days of NASA women were not allowed to put their names on the reports—no woman in my division had had her name on a report. I was working with Ted Skopinski and he wanted to leave and go to Houston ... but Henry Pearson, our supervisor—he was not a fan of women—kept pushing him to finish the report we were working on. Finally, Ted told him, "Katherine should finish the report, she's done most of the work anyway." So Ted left Pearson with no choice; I finished the report and my name went on it, and that was the first time a woman in our division had her name on something.
- In the movie, Dorothy Vaughn was doing the work of a supervisor, but was not made a supervisor until the end of the movie in 1962 because of her racist boss. In reality she was made a supervisor in 1949, just 6 years after joining.
- re. running across the NASA Langley campus to use the bathroom:
In Margot Lee Shetterly's book, this is something that is experienced more by Mary Jackson (portrayed by Janelle Monáe) than Katherine Johnson. Mary went to work on a project on NASA [actually NACA] Langley's East Side alongside several white computers. She was not familiar with those buildings and when she asked a group of white women where the bathroom was, they giggled at her and offered no help. The closest bathroom was for whites. Humiliated and angry, Mary set off on a time-consuming search for a colored bathroom. Unlike in the movie, there were colored bathrooms on the East Side but not in every building. The sprint across the campus in the movie might be somewhat of an exaggeration, but finding a bathroom was indeed a point of frustration.
Making all these changes is like giving Jesus 100 lashes instead of 39. 39 lashes is enough. 100 means you're enjoying it.
A Note on Sexism, Racism, and Intersectionalism
NACA and NASA hired many black women as mathematicians and engineers, but very few black men. This appears to be because women were cheaper.
HIDDEN FIGURES IS (a little bit) ANTI-BLACK ACTIVISM
Shifting the conflict over race from the 1940s and the 1950s into the 1960s also shifts the credit for civil rights, away from blacks and towards the mostly-white activists of the 1960s. Is this an intentional part of the film's message?
I doubt it. Moving the discrimination from NACA to NASA makes a stronger, more compelling story, with better visuals, and references to things and people Americans know and care about, rather than to the obscure aeronautical engineering done at NACA.
But the movie showed the women, for the most part, silently and patiently suffering discrimination while performing their jobs superlatively. Their resistance to oppression was shown by Katherine yelling at her boss (which never happened), and repeatedly adding her name to her papers (which never happened). The most dramatic acts of resistance, however, are given to Kevin Costner: smashing the "Coloured" restroom sign with a sledgehammer, letting Katherine into the secret briefings, telling her boss to put her name on the paper, throwing out the "coloured coffee" pot, and letting Katherine into mission control (which did not happen IRL as she had no job to do there).
The closest thing to those moments in real life were Katherine Johnson's refusal to use the coloured restrooms (in the 1950s), and Miriam Man's repeated removing of the "coloured computers" sign from the NACA cafeteria (in the 1940s). Why were these powerful acts of resistance acted out by a white man in the movie?
Melfi argued, reasonably, that NASA was desegregated by a white man, and in fact there were "white saviours" in the Stability Research Division.
You might suspect this "whiting out" was an anti-activist message, telling blacks to behave, act responsibly, and wait for whites to recognize them. I see here rather the hand of Costner. I have it on good authority, the kind so good I can't name it, that Costner only plays strong figures, and if the lines make someone else look smarter or better, he changes them. Costner was not going to look weaker than unknown women actors. He wouldn't even have had to make the change himself; his reputation is such that the producer or writer would have made that change before sending him the script.
THE REAL AGENDA IS MONEY
There are a distressing number of blog posts out there calling Hidden Figures a true history of segregation at NASA (which, as mentioned, never happened). There are a lot of other blog posts calling it out as being racist white propaganda for making Kevin Costner a white saviour. I think the real lesson here is that Hollywood's agenda is not progressive or regressive, but financial. At every point, they distorted the story whichever way they thought would help it make more money, whether that was telling a more-compelling story, making the persecution more dramatic, or getting Kevin Costner to put Butts In Seats ("BIS", as they write in Los Angeles).
There's a reason this phrase was invented. "Follow the money."
Ever since the Phoenicians invented it⁽*⁾, people have wanted it, and will do the dumbest things⁽¹⁾ to get it.
(*) Not sex, you dirty minded people.
(1) Except for work. That just doesn't fit in the modern age.
"I see here rather the hand of Costner. I have it on good authority, the kind so good I can't name it, that Costner only plays strong figures, and if the lines make someone else look stronger or smarter, he changes them."
Oh, like Shatner. I agree that this is probably true of the vast majority of 'draw' actors, because the producers want somebody important in the film to draw people in, much the same as a successful appearing CEO might draw a such an impressive salary despite their actual record, or a basketball/baseball player who might not score many points but the fans love/hate enough to buy tickets. Shatner was notorious for such antics, because in about every tell-all Trek book, the other actors all had at least one example of a script that gave their character a good line...and a few hours later after Bill had talked with the boss, suddenly the script had that line coming from Bill. He was the draw, and was willing to milk that for everything it was worth.
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. I think the first time I ever really noticed this kind of thing, it was the animated feature Balto. Still, Balto doesn't exacerbate problems going on right now.
4543071
Probably why The Tholian Web was such a good episode. Kirk was almost a non-entity, and it let everyone else shine. It's also probably why the dynamic between Kirk, McCoy, and Spock happened. Kelly and Nimoy didn't let Shatner get away with it as much, but the rest of the cast couldn't really fight it. Doohan and Takei in particular got screwed.
>Reads blog on twisting historical stories for money, latches on to only tangentially trekkie comment.
I hate this kind of thing. The truth is enough to sell the message, quit undermining good issues.
4543183
It's the classic "lying for Jesus" tactic: as long as it gets you converts to your cause/ideology/religion, it's OK.
The fun part is, if even the evangelists for X don't believe that the facts are good enough to convince people, what does that tell you about (their version of) X?
4543211
I point that last bit out regularly on my lonely and intermittent mission to get people to just calm down and be honest.
4543159
Yeah, I noticed it in Braveheart, aka Triumph of the Willie.
For starters, prima noctae wasn't real. Of course things were perfectly awful for women in the Middle Ages in so goddamn many ways it tempts one to ask "what's one more spot to a leopard?" But when you produce what is billed as an historical epic, and you fold into that history a lie, you induce the audience not to suspend disbelief, but to believe in lies. And if you link it explicitly to nationalist politics, you induce the nationalists to found their nation upon lies.
And then the supposition that William Wallace introduced Naplm, nunchaku and Jeffersonian democracy to medieval Scotland, while the Plantagenets invented the push-up bra...GAH! It's all too much.
Granted it was a good movie. Even a great one. Acting, dialog, plot, pacing--fantastic. I sat through it without ever having to go to the bathroom. Even my bladder was enthralled.
But my brain knew full well it was being conned.
I totally agree with 'Yea, it's dramatized, heavily' based on your points. But I would argue it's 4543071 on the nose here. Make it more compellingly about the triumph of good people over racism as dramatically as possible, you get better reviews and sell more tickets.
Then again you can do that with completely fictional films too, which is why Get Out is so successful and has grossed 229 million on a 4.5 million dollar budget (While also taking the piss out of white liberals the entire movie)
I agree with pretty much everything you say here, but for the way you said this:
...sounds kinda racist itself, when you've only mentioned a single act by one White side-character in the movie. Many people in the US (unfortunately) believe that any negative portrayal of a White person is racist, even in historical context. Some people might stop reading when they get to that line because it sounds like you're ranting about the persecution of Whites for no reason other than a single scene featuring a White man discriminating against Black ladies in the 50's.
That said:
Movies built for the masses are usually crap. Writers and directors intentionally use bad stories to give their "less well-read" viewers pleasant feelings—so more people will watch the movie. If they'd shown the Black women standing up for themselves, it would have been a little more controversial, and fewer people would have recommended it. And Luna forbid the main characters have any flaws, because that might seem racist to someone, or at least be unpalatable to those viewers who are hoping for perfect superheroes triumphing against impossible odds through sheer virtue. That's totally how the world works. (In Donald Trump's head, at least.)
The "Historical Friction" episode of Steven Universe is relevant to this.
Seriously, it's worth watching.
4543417
Eh, I think that's only a side effect of Get Out, not the main intended effect. Get Out is a horror movie for Black people who fear that the Whites who seem to treat them as equals are secretly racist. It might serve as commentary on race, but I don't think that was the main intent of the movie.
4543444
If you look at commentary on Get Out, the 'It is condemning Post-Racial White Liberalism' is basically in every single review/analysis.
It's a comedy-horror film, and the social commentary in it hits on themes like White Liberals benefiting from their 'Enlightened' attitudes while ignoring the reality of the black experience in today's America.
I believe what you said about Costner, but I find another explanation equally as likely. After all, who is the anti-racist messaging directed at? White audiences obviously. They're the racists, right? So if you're writing with the intent to teach modern day racists the error of their ways, which would you think might more strongly affect their self-reflection: a black woman fighting racism, or a white man fighting it, or turning from his racist ways?
I mean, if you want to convince christians of the evils of their religion, I don't think you make a movie about atheists trashing christians the whole time, you make it about a christian coming to grips with the evils of his religion, and then becoming an atheist.
4543489
That feels like a bad example, mostly because I cannot imagine either version really doing anything other than making people angry.
4543439
I meant that the opening scene summarizes the movie. At the time, I couldn't think of any whites in the movie who aren't either racists or dickish, but there is at least one--John Glenn. Kevin Costner's character isn't racist, and I guess you could argue he isn't a dick? Very abrasive, though.
4543542
Certainly for some, or even many, but I think one version will piss them off a lot less. People who are blindly loyal to their worldview are probably beyond your reach to sway no matter what. So your options there are probably either never write to them or only pander to them. But if you want to reach those who may, you perhaps deem, be more reasonable or open to critique of their views, the best way to go is, I think, something close to what I described. :) I could always be wrong of course.
4543481 "Get Out" has got it wrong. Here is the real "white progressive racism": Many stereotypical Huffington Post-reading, Portland-moving-to white progressives sincerely believe all people are the same--because they think, under their skin, all people are really like them. Once poverty and discrimination are ended, everyone will finally think and act like them. They call for diversity when all they want is rap music and Thai noodles.
These same people may believe whites are more wicked than all the other races. This is not because they're ignorant of history, but because they think other races should be regarded as being in a state of innocence, and not responsible for their own actions, until they are whiteified (brought into the socioeconomic conditions that will free them to act & think in the natural, objectively-correct, "white" (ivy-league progressive) way). Only one already in such a state of whiteness is free to reject the one true way, and fall into sin, as the South did. Therefore, only whites, or those who "act white", can be evil.
I realize this is obscure. Ivy-league progressivism today is a combination of Puritanism and Marxist philosophy. The second paragraph above explains its view of white guilt in Puritan terms, in which whites possess a universal wisdom which corresponds to the knowledge of good and evil. Below, I will restate it in Marxist terms. This may clarify it. Or not.
The paradoxes of American Marxist anthropology are that (A) it teaches that human nature and ethics are culturally determined, and hence arbitrary, yet claims we are all obligated to accept its own ethics and culture, and (B) it teaches us to view other cultures through the accepting eyes of cultural relativism, but to critique American culture as objectively evil. This can be explained by realizing that Marxism is an allegory for Christianity. Marx is Jesus; his writings are the Bible; the withering away of the State is Paradise. The mythical pre-industrial Etsy economy of free, fulfilled, independent artisans is the Garden of Eden. The free market of goods and labor is the world; participation in it is sin. The development of money and capital was the original sin; alienation is the resulting curse. Underdeveloped nations have not yet fallen, and their inhabitants are still innocent and incapable of sin. But we are no longer innocent, and must be critiqued according to the truth revealed to those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge of money and markets. It is our duty to bring the Word of Marx to innocent cultures. Like bringing Christianity, this will dispel their innocence, condemning them if they reject Marx, but bringing them into our eternal fellowship if they accept Him. Until they have developed capital markets, such cultures may not be accused of sin.
(The similarities between Marxism and Christianity are why Marxists persecute Christians, while socialists don't. Marxists recognize Christianity as a competing sect.)
4543580 Well, I'd argue those are in some ways just shades of the same core, really. It's a degree of blindness that whitewashes the negatives that exist in non-white cultures, but also whitewashes the failures of said white liberals to actively engage instead of culturally bubbling themselves away.
Well, I've still got Schindler's List on the brain at the moment. I'd love to compare notes on that as to how it actually feels so much worse by going for the 39 lashes than for the 100, when the 39 lashes is horrible enough on its own.
4543576
The biggest 'problem' I would say, is that you can abandon the toxic parts of your faith, without abandoning your faith altogether.
Through it all, my problem remains that there are people getting in the way of taking over space.
4543580
Here's another real-world example of that phenomenon. Twitter's founder is sorry he created a service where "everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas", because he assumed it would lead to everyone thinking just like him.
Wait, different people have different views, opinions, morals, ethics, philosophies?
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4543686
Definitely ^.^
I'm not against Christianity by the way. I'm Christian myself. :) I just used it as an example, because it's a popular belief nowadays that all religion is evil and unreasonable. So I figured the analogy would stick better. I mean personally I don't find any toxic parts of my faith, but I know that's a minority opinion
4543580
This, pretty much.
Why do people even NEED a dogmatic philosophy? Hasn't humanity learned how stupid blind adherence to dogma is?
4543183 This is unfortunately true of many true stories. They are exaggerated to sell a cause, and in so doing, they lose all their truth and their power.
4543580 Excellent summary.
..and I used to like long texts, not so long ago! :( I don't think I understand what you really wanted to say here, Bad Horse ..are you complaining about same thing as I, "a lot of nice-sounding words backed by no action"? yeah, seems to be universal problem, no-one even coming to mitigating even partially.. any new movement grow and fail into this trap. And thus become part of problem...
as for you being white male ....huh, here on Fimfiction you look like black bad horse . One can start to wonder why ....
5082737
Hello! Welcome! If you're asking what did I mean in the original post, the post showed, from the original book the movie was based on, and from interviews with the characters portrayed in the movie, that the most-powerful incidents in the movie indicting NASA and America for racisms were all fabricated. If you watch the movie's DVD and listen to the actor's commentary audiotrack, every time they comment on some incident or circumstance as showing how racist America was (e.g., the white cop pulling them over, having to run across campus to find a coloured restroom, being asked to empty the trash, having a separate "coloured" coffeepot, and even the entire conceit that all these things happened at NASA), it's something that never happened. But the actors thought the whole script was true, and everyone who sees the movie thinks they were true.
The scriptwriters probably thought, "We're trying to show racism in America, so here are some incidents we can make up that could have happened, that will make the point strongly and emotionally." But that's dishonest when you present something as a true story. It's the same ideological exaggeration I criticized Mel Gibson's "The passion of the Christ" for.
5085428 (Bad Horse)
yeah, I also dislike when something untrue presented as true. But social reality tend to be ..complicated, for study and especially for navigating it.