The woman in the library, and the security guard who throws the woman and kids out, don't "magically" change. And there are a lot of characters (like the guy who helps the engineer) who are friendly from the beginning and don't have to change. No one in the courthouse scene is against the engineer lady, and no one at the university challenges her right to be there.
You accidentally reinforce my original point with this. This movie is mostly an awful lot of feel good fairy tale about 20th century race, for a 21st century audience that hungers to hear it.
Segregation was near universal and hideously violent (or at the very least, a constant threat of violence) at virtually all times for blacks. It had to be. Because white supremacy is a lie. And the only possible way to maintain what is fundamentally such a huge lie for 4 centuries is through massive amounts of subterfuge and violence.
So let me remind you of some of the more honest and memorable (and much, much more prevalent) imagery from that timeframe: Firehoses, lynchings, sit-ins, protest marches, burned out buses, police dogs, National Guardsmen, George Wallace-type speeches, bombs in churches, assassinations, angry white mobs, countless false imprisonments, corrupt state and local officials ignoring and/or joining the violence, dead civil rights workers and thousands upon thousands of arrests. To name but a few, of the REAL day-to-day realities of black life at that time.
So, is this movie hopeful and uplifting? Absolutely! But in no uncertain terms, it's portrayal of conditions for black people at that time is an absolute fairy tale. It was far, far worse.
So enjoy the movie. By all means. But understand it for what it really is. Mostly a fairy tale. Created for an audience hungry for fairy tales. Much like the thousands and thousands of Westerns out there. With their endless feel-good stories of noble and heroic cowboys and settlers. And the always savage and uncivilized Indians.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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gnome-5
8 years ago
But understand it for what it really is.
The movie focuses on how they were treated at NASA, which from their personal accounts, wasn't all that bad. Most of the bad stuff (the library, the news the engineer's husband and children are watching on TV) happens away from NASA. So, surprise! it's not a fairy tale. It just doesn't focus on the story you seem to want.
Strange that you recognize how difficult it was for people of color back then, but then you seem to downplay whites' actions by comparing them to a fictionalized "savage and uncivilized Indians." So white people are what -- misrepresented? -- like stereotypes of "red savages"? So they never did the horrible things you just admitted they did? I'm trying to follow your logic here...
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
Most of the bad stuff (the library, the news the engineer's husband and children are watching on TV) happens away from NASA.
Um...thanks...but I'm suddenly a little scared now. So I think I'm gonna choose to be done after that little involuntary display of "alternative facts".
Bye now.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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gnome-5
8 years ago
Um...thanks...but I'm suddenly a little scared now....after that little involuntary display of "alternative facts".
Considering that you haven't seen the movie, it's a little pretentious for you to claim to know what's represented in it, don't you think? And yes, the moment I most feared for the computer lady was when she was confronted in the library...
So I think I'm gonna choose to be done
If only this were true! I'm still hoping you'll explain your previous statements about cowboys and Indians. Which are the whites, and which are the blacks in your analogy?
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
I'm still hoping you'll explain your previous statements
No I won't. So you can stop hoping altogether.
Done means done.
Bye now.
***Edit***
And yes I have seen it.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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gnome-5
8 years ago
I'm glad you've actually seen it. I value your opinions a lot more now. Bye.
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subad
8 years ago
According to the accout of those 3 women NASA was actually even better then it was depicted in the movie. It might be a fairy tale, but it was sort of a fairy tale in real life for those black women who managed to get a job at NASA. This story is not about some average people, these are exceptionally talented people who worked really hard their entire life to get a good job. It's not suprising that at NASA - where the most talented, well educated and brightest people work - racism wasn't a big issue. But these three women didn't live the average black people life and they had it easier.
The aim of the movie was not to show us how black people did at that time, it's about three exceptional individuals in exceptional circumstances. We need these types of movies as well.
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
But these three women didn't live the average black people life and they had it easier.
Does Donald Trump have a school where he sells you guys degrees on this stuff?
Since that previous list clearly did not have the desired effect, I'll rephrase it. Racism in the 1960's was a dirty, gross, filthy, take-no-prisoners affair. And once again, it was the law of the land. Which means it was absolutely universal. Not practicing it was against FEDERAL law! So, regardless of what you (and clearly millions of others) need so desperately to believe about "the accounts of those women", there was no such thing as "a little oasis of professionalism and exceptional character" at NASA (or anywhere else) at that time.
In fact, quite simply, if the "bastion of equality" at NASA that you guys clearly hunger for was actually true, there would have effectively been no real point to making the movie in the first place. Because their stories of overcoming hardship and resistance in order to succeed in that alternate reality would have been cinematically UN-dramatic and UN-exceptional.
Racism in the 1960's America was an inconceivably brutal and ABSOLUTELY universal norm. No major exceptions on the scale you're implying, period. Regardless of what you THINK you're hearing between the lines of their personal testimonies. (Scattered and VERY rare individuals, maybe. But facility wide...not a chance in hell.) That's nothing close to how the entire underlying nationwide system of INSTITUTIONAL racism was very, very specifically designed to work in the first place. Sorry to burst that bubble.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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subad
8 years ago
Does Donald Trump have a school where he sells you guys degrees on this stuff?
No need to be childish. You are also very much mistaken about it...
"So, regardless of what you (and clearly millions of others) need so desperately to believe about "the accounts of those women"
The women whos life the movie is based upon said that. You are in denial if you think you know better then themselves...
"I didn't feel the segregation at NASA, because everybody there was doing research," (Katherine Johnson)In fact, quite simply, if the "bastion of equality" at NASA that you guys clearly hunger for was actually true, there would have effectively been no real point to making the movie in the first place. Because their stories of overcoming hardship and resistance in order to succeed in that alternate reality would have been cinematically UN-dramatic and UN-exceptional.
Exactly, that's why the movie exaggerates how bad it was at NASA. Movies always exaggerates things for dramatic and entertainment purpose, it's natural, otherwise it would be boring for wide audiences.
I would like to point out that laws are just one thing, the attitude of your enviroment - you're co-workers in this case - is just as important for the quality of life. Segregation was a law, and NASA had to abide by it of course and that certainly was pretty bad but the employees mostly viewed the "colored" co-workers as equal peers - that's what Katherine Johnson said personally. If you think that's not a big difference you're mistaken.
Racism in the 1960's America was an inconceivably brutal and ABSOLUTELY universal norm.
It was law. It wasn't universal norm. Society wasn't homogenous back then - as it still isn't and never will be. Ending segregation and the whole civil rights issue couldn't have been achieved if racism was universal. There were a lot of people against segregation and it is not suprising that a workplace filled with highly educated people wasn't the most racist workplaces in the US. I still stand by my statement, that these women had it better then the average black person at that time and the movie does not represent the experience of the entire black community of the time - just a part of it. And that's fine, that's why we make more movies. :)
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
better then the average black person
Such a concept does not exist.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
What's more, it is quite offensive for someone like yourself to view the very necessity for such an arrangement to be an acceptable or even positive thing in the first place.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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thesnowleopard
8 years ago
What's more, it is quite offensive for someone like yourself to view the very necessity for such an arrangement to be an acceptable or even positive thing in the first place.
I'm actually a little disturbed that you are so set on the idea that no African-American--certainly no African-American woman--could have succeeded in that time period due to the extreme racism in some areas and generalized racism most places. Such an attitude is a-historical and ignores the many, varied and quite-clever ways some African-Americans found to get around the obstacles of Segregation, and to gain education and achieve coveted positions like those at NASA. Yes, they were discriminated against. Yes, that made achieving their goals than it did for most white men (as it does still), but there's nothing healthy (and a lot disrespectful to these pioneers) about insisting that the only way we can perceive African Americans in history is as helpless victims of racism.
The Historical Meow
http://thesnowleopard.net
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
better then the average black person
You very much misunderstood my point.
I was addressing the age-old mentality that is equivalent to: "Even in the time of slavery, some slave owners were kind". "So why do you persist in painting a picture of ALL slave owners as bad people."
It has nothing whatsoever to do with minimizing their success. But rather counterbalancing the somewhat exaggerated portrayals of how much benevolence, paternalism and altruism was supposedly responsible for their success, INSTEAD of their own hard work and unfathomable persistence.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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goosh69
8 years ago
The actual real life women in depicted in the movie did not experience all of that at NASA...NASA MOSTLY employed WELL-EDUCATED NON-SOUTHERNERS, who happened to work in the South. But all those MIT and Berkeley and Harvard grads were not all born in deepest Mississippi. There are plenty of OTHER movies portraying what you say.
Defender of the weak, and enemy of the weak minded.
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
Total unadulterated BS. It was FEDERAL law. And interwoven into the social and political infrastructure of every tiny hamlet in America (not just the South). So, even if what you espouse was somehow miraculously true, do you really think that even minimally counterbalances in any appreciable way the overall psychological agony of living every other minute of an entire lifetime under a system of Apartheid? Really?
And just as an aside, do you know who created the framework for Nazi Germany's final solution? Literally, the most "WELL-EDUCATED" people in Germany. The BEST of their MOST educated doctors and psychiatrists. So, despite much popular belief, it is an extreme illusion that higher education is anything close to a protection against bigotry. Thus, that they were "WELL-EDUCATED NON-SOUTHERNERS" means almost nothing. And the final irony is that the institutions you named off have since been shown to have had vast financial investments in BOTH American slavery, AND South African Apartheid.
So, to say this movie was about their time at NASA, and not that OTHER stuff is disingenuous at best, and delusional at worst. One way or another, in 1961 that OTHER stuff was omnipresent throughout ALL aspects of American life. So, one can only pretend to either not see it, or that it didn't exist. But it was EVERYWHERE.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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goosh69
8 years ago
Jim Crow laws governing bathrooms and encouraging Lynching were written into Federal Law? Fail. Redlining of mortgages, sure. Not any of the stuff you wrote about in the earlier post. That was all state and local law, or state and local officials turning a blind eye.
You are like the bizarro reverse of the racist trolls on this board. They claim none of this discrimination really happened (and that they women were not instrumental to boot.) You, on the other hand, think that if we are not saying "Birth of a Nation" or Mississippi Burning, then we are not seeing the real truth. But the real truth is that these women SAY NOW (because Katherine is alive), that Nasa in the South. was not as bad as the South as a whole.
Defender of the weak, and enemy of the weak minded.
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littlegeorgie
8 years ago
Nasa in the South. was not as bad as the South as a whole
So, despite every other minute of their entire lives (and especially their "not-so-gifted" children and extended family members' lives) being endlessly consumed in the injustice and violence of white supremacy, we should somehow join hands and sing and dance because NASA was supposedly "not as bad" as the entire rest of America (and therefore evidence that victory against racism is just a heartbeat away)? That's the same type of logic as the bigots who believe Obama's presidency is the penultimate evidence that institutional racism no longer exists.
And by the way, could you please stop implying that American Apartheid was a only disease of "the South".
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
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goosh69
8 years ago
The movie was about Nasa. There are plenty of other movies about the general black experience in the South (or in America as a whole.) There were movies like that made in 2016! You are free to see them. Not EVERY movie about black people pre-1970 has to involve lynching etc. You are just too much of a firebrand for this particular film.
Defender of the weak, and enemy of the weak minded.
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Alerra (244)
4 years ago
Actually from what has been written about Kazimierz Czarnecki (the Karl Zielinski character), he and Jackson really did have a good working relationship right from the get-go. He was the one who actually recruited Jackson to come and work for him -- in person -- after SHE (not Katherine Johnson) ranted about the lack of available restrooms. They would go on to co-author several papers together, and Jackson eventually organized his retirement party in 1979. So despite how many African Americans were (and are still) treated by many people, Czarnecki and Jackson clearly got along well together.
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