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Hidden Figures Themes

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Hidden Figures is a historical fiction film based on the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. It was released on December 25, 2016 and directed by Theodore Melfi.The main themes of Hidden Figures are discrimination based on a person’s race and sex. Hidden Figures is a film about Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. All three of these women are African-American and worked on the Mercury Seven launch for NASA during the space race. Katherine Johnson was a computer, or mathematician, working on the takeoff and landing calculations. Dorothy Vaughan was the acting supervisor of the west group, where the African-American women worked on their assignments. Mary Jackson worked on the Mercury Seven prototype in NASA’s Supersonic …show more content…

Throughout the movie there are multiple scenes of Katherine with her family. This allows for some better character development. You also get to see Mary’s home life and what it is like for her as she tries to get a engineering degree as an African-American woman. Hidden Figures does not give any background information on Dorothy Vaughan. There aren’t any scenes of here with family or other friends, and because of this there does not seem to be as much character development and she feels like more of a side character than the other two women. The film does still show Dorothy’s struggle with racism. She does the work of a supervisor, but is denied the job nonetheless. While Hidden Figures is more focused on the racism in the 1960s, there is also sexism. The film shows that these women were not only doubted by NASA, but the people in their own communities were also surprised by their ambitions. Although there are examples of sexism in the beginning of the film they are not brought up much by the characters. By the end they simply disappeared. This seemed like it was fairly important during the start of the film, but was not developed as the film went on. The racism on the other hand, was handled wonderfully. The actors were able to portray the time period quite

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