Hidden Figures won the best cast award at the Screenwriters Actors Guild to thunderous applause. Taraji P Henson’s acceptance speech helped me clarify my unease with the subliminal message of the film when she said:
“These women did not complain about the problems, their circumstances, the issues. We know about what was going on in that era, but they didn’t complain; they focused on solutions. This story is about unity. This story is about what happens when we put our differences aside and come together as a human race.”
This is what bothered me about the movie. Why is it wrong to complain when faced with segregated toilets, inferior education, the murder of youth like Emmitt Till, and police brutality? These women didn’t complain because it wasn’t safe; these women, like millions of others, didn’t complain because of fear of being fired or the risk of physical harm. The idea of glamorizing the fact that these women didn’t complain plays into the narrative that “free will” was involved in their decision. When Henson talks about “putting our differences aside,” what differences is she referring to: white supremacy, or injustice, or general issues that make white people feel uncomfortable? What topics are placed on the altar in order to negotiate Black and white unity or “getting things done?”
Movies are a part of the propaganda narrative that we subliminally digest. That was the message of the narrative, one promoted by former President Obama to predominately Black students and audiences: Stop whining and complaining, just continue to get the job done. General Colin Powell, in his memoir notes that in the Army, African-Americans would complain about being assigned menial chores but since he was from an immigrant family he didn’t come to the job with the same baggage. From his vantage point, not only was he able to sweep the floor but devise efficient methods to get the job done.
The women of Hidden Figures are caught in a no-win situation of segregation, violence and limited options and choose the path of least resistance. It was a path that allowed them to raise their families in relative safety, have distorted but normal lives under whites supremacy and earn a living. No small achievement for Black women during this era.
Black audiences liked this movie because it portrayed the brilliance of these three major characters but also graphically choreographed the indignities they suffered. From Katherine Johnson having to run across campus, sometimes in the rain to colored bathrooms, bypassing “whites only” restrooms, to Dorothy Vaughan not able to use a local library, to Mary Jackson having to attend a segregated night class to study engineering. Black audiences can relate to the indignities and disregard that is still the backdrop to our lives in America.
But the acquiescence of the main characters to racism and the white saviors who show up in the nick of time was also a predicable theme in the movie. For example, the white men in Katherine Johnson’s office gave her the cold shoulder when she poured coffee from the office coffee pot. The next day, next to the office coffee pot was a smaller coffee pot labeled “colored.” She clearly understood the indignity of the gesture but didn’t complain. Katherine confronts her white boss, Kevin Costner, about the indignity of using a colored toilet and a colored coffee pot after he questions her lengthy absences away from her desk. Later Costner, outraged, takes a hammer to the “colored toilet sign” with Black folks passively looking on.