Addendum: My trip to St. Louis was cancelled due to an ice storm. Mark, Lisa, and I saw Hidden Figures in Fort Wayne. It lived up to the hype.
Nay, it went way beyond the hype.
Three things I’m still thinking about today:
1. It was life affirming to watch a film where black women were multidimensional, heroic not pitiable, vulnerable not helpless. Powerful moments were done so elegantly that they hang in my mind like paintings.
One scene in particular is Dorothy Vaughn’s reaction to a suggestion by a white supervisor that the latter isn’t trying to hold back “colored” workers.
“I’m sure you believe that.” Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) smiles, turns on her heels, and walks out of the bathroom.
No Madea-esque scene needed. Sometimes the cruelest cut is delivered with a dagger rather than a battle-axe.
2. It was affirming to watch a film where black men were supportive of their wives’ callings. Indeed, families were in it together. It felt real because it saw it with my own parents.
The importance of family and friendship is important: It took a village to raise geniuses to lift a pilot into space and guide him back.
3. At the end of the film, I thought about the 2011 film Margin Call, and the character Peter Sullivan (Zack Quinton) who has a doctorate in propulsion engineering.
When asked by his Wall Streets bosses why he’s crunching numbers on exotic debt obligations rather than at, say, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the answer is obvious: “[The] money here is considerably more attractive.”
Once, our heroes soared above us in capsules — delivered to the heavens by a choir of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, technicians, and yes, even bureaucrats.
It sounds fatalistic, but today it feels as if too many of our best and brightest are as earthbound as we are.
There are those who are trying to go above and beyond. Visit the moon again? Nope, they’re way past that. Check out:
Led by Mae Jemison, interstellar travel is the goal of this joint project of NASA and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Elon Musk’s venture wants to colonize Mars.
Free posters to fuel the imagination
