Hidden Figures: A Representation of African American Women in Culture

The movie Hidden Figures follows the journey of three African-American women in the 1960s struggling to work in a racial and gender segregated computer research center. Due to the successful Soviet launch into space, the government feels pressure compete with the USSR in the Cold War and increases American efforts. Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn are assigned to work on the Space Task Force, being some of the only African-Americans to do so. The women fight to demonstrate and refine their skills, all while gaining their rightful promotions. Overall, these women must navigate their new work dynamics in a tense era for American-Americans and women to successfully send astronaut John Glenn to space.

This movie was released in 2016 by 20th Century Fox. The director is Theodore Melfi, a white, male screenwriter, film director, and producer. There are five producers, all of them are white, including two females. Hidden Figures grossed $236 million worldwide and was nominated for three Oscars and two Golden Globes.

Hidden Figures acts as an illustration of identity politics in media texts. Identity politics understands media by looking at how different identity groups are represented. It strives to look at who we are as a person or group of people. Identity politics build off positive and negative stereotypes in culture. A stereotype is a “predictable depiction that reflects and creates cultural prejudices”. Due to the “similarities deep within positive and negative stereotypes… these images are a part of the same phenomenon called 'othering'”. Essentially, "othering" is creating an “us vs them” dynamic with any group that is considered not ‘one of us’. The plot of Hidden Figures is driven by an understanding of stereotypes and how these women are depicted as overcoming these stereotypes.

Hidden Figures demonstrates how these specific women defy stereotypes for African American women. The plot creates an “us vs them” relationship by illustrating the power dynamics of the white men working at NASA and the African American women. The viewers of the film initially expect the women to act like their stereotypes and see them as the “other”.

However, the film moves their identity beyond the stereotypes by demonstrating the knowledge and professionalism of these women. For example, in the film, Mary Johnson contests the court to allow her to attend an all-white school to obtain her engineering degree. Fighting the legal dimension of discrimination allows the director to create a positive "other" image.

The film utilizes a common “othering” technique: setting the story in the past. By placing the problem in the past, it depicts dramatic representations and allows a layer of separation from any current form of these issues. Hidden Figures is set in the 1960s at the height of race and gender issues. The director creates a clear villain in the white, male supervisor, Paul Stafford. Although the narrative in Hidden Figures is straightforward in depicting African-American women’s experience, it fails to capture the nuances of that time.

Overall, Hidden Figures is a depiction of the African-American woman experience because the people who directed and produced the film were not members of this group. The film functions by presenting the stereotypes of these groups of people to create an “us vs them” power dynamic. The film demonstrates that the cases of breaking through stereotypes and into diversity is very limited. In the case of these women it happened, but the film doesn’t accurately represent the plight of all black women during this time.