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Tuesday 21st February 2017

5202/18122
We went to see Hidden Figures tonight, an incredible, if occasionally slightly too saccharine film about the black women who worked behind the scenes at NASA in the early 60s and the prejudice they faced. It’s an inspirational story, but also a reminder of how recently America was a segregated society. Whilst not wishing to look complacent about where we are now with issues like this or the very real possibility we might be moving backwards, it’s almost beyond belief that our grand parents generation accepted this dehumanising and offensive system where water fountains and bathrooms and transport were divided up based on the colour of someone’s skin. The film was greatly enhanced for me by the expressions of genuine shock and anger from the black women sitting in the row behind us. But it was a reminder to us all to stand up for what is right and fair, in the face of ignorance and prejudice.
And as a fan of history I just enjoy seeing people being given credit for what they did. Katherine Johnson is delightfully still alive and able to see all the things now being done to honour her part in the space programme. Hidden Figures is a nice testament, but even more impressive there is an episode of Timeless revolving around her. And I can think of no greater honour than that. Sure, name some buildings after her if you will, but nothing can be better than being in a time travel TV show that has no understanding of the implications of time travel.
Back to Hidden Figures (in some ways superior to Timeless, though I think they should still have put some time travel in it)- what’s nearly as exciting is to see a film which is so much about maths, making it almost as much a victory for nerds as for the other victims of prejudice. I am joking. Nerds will never be equal. It’s a tough call to make equations exciting to a cinema audience, but the life and death thrills of getting a sum right (even if they have conflated the time line to make it seem last minute) are genuine and exciting. I just wish there had been some mathematicians in the row behind, exclaiming with disbelief when the problem of moving from one kind of orbit to another was solved.
Go and see the film, if only to see the way that people can be dehumanised by other people (and then try and look at our own times and work out what the people in 50 years time will think of us - and pray to God they think we are monsters, cos otherwise we’ll have slipped backwards). Also to be inspired by people who understood that it is possible to stand up for what is right and what you believe. It helps if you’re brilliant at maths or computers or engineering and people need you to get them into space, but it works for us all.


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