Author: vance.413

Text Review: Hidden Figures

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The movie Hidden figures is about three African American women who get hired by NASA during the Space Race of the 1960s, and end up making significant contributions to get John Glenn up in space and back safely. The movie not only shows the mathematical problem-solving struggles of the women, but even more importantly, the film explores the way that injustice made their work even harder compared to their white, mostly male counterparts. One strong example of this that pops up throughout the film is the fact that there is only one restroom for “colored” people on the entire NASA base, which happens to be half a mile away from the building where the character Katherine Johnson works. This injustice of segregation makes it so that she has to spend considerable time away from her work and additionally, she gets in trouble for disappearing since nobody else is aware of the issue since it doesn’t impact them.

This film also touches on intersectionality because the three main characters are both African American as well as women in STEM. Many times, as women, their male counterparts take recognition for their work and they also did not get paid as well. On top of the hardships that come along with being a woman in STEM, they were African Americans so the white women who fought for more rights often left them and their unique struggles out of the conversation. This dynamic is specifically seen in the interactions that the women have with their manager Vivian who is not sympathetic to the added injustices of intersectionality and fails to provide them opportunities to work their way up, instead, she leaves her own privileges unexercised for African American’s sake.

I think that this movie sparks major conversations about injustice because, throughout the movie, the audience can see that these three women are among the most qualified and skilled people for these positions in NASA, yet they are the ones with the most hurdles to jump. It can make us think about these same circumstances in modern times. How many African Americans, or especially African American women, could be running businesses successfully, curing diseases, or sending men to space, however, they can’t because they lack access to money, education, or opportunity as a result of decades of systemic injustices? The women in Hidden figures are able to succeed despite all the factors pulling them down, yet we know that some people in marginal communities are not so lucky.

Injustice within Film and Photography – Systemic Injustice Showcase

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In my world cinema class this week we talked about how the colors of a developed film are based on a thing called the Shirley card and, between the 1940s and 1990s, the accuracy of the colors in the photos was based on a Shirley card with solely white-based skin tone. In other words, the chemical solutions used to develop color film would only create a color balance that favored white people (Kris Paulsen).

To me, this is a clear example of implicit bias that was allowed to continue on for far too long before it got addressed and it had major implications. Right from the start, this inequality allowed for a light skin tone to be established as the national ideal in all forms of film and photos. Not only would this leave room for racism in cultural discourse, but it would also underrepresent people with dark skin tones in media, film, advertisements, photography, and more.  We can look at the next layer of racial discrimination here and note how this could’ve been used to keep black people out of the film industry as actors since the colors would not be realistic. Even if they were able to make it into a film, the audience may be unable to relate well to their character or sympathize because if the color is too unrealistic, it may act in dehumanizing ways. To this final point, Marjane Satrapi knew the power of a dehumanizing visual which is why she chose to make her characters visually simplistic in Persepolis, in order to avoid “Othering” by her global audience.

This topic can be viewed in relation to De Beauvoir’s theory in which men are viewed as the default sex, or the One, and women are defined in contrast to men, as the Other.  The issue of the Shirley card perpetuated a cultural bias along these lines in which people assume and accept whiteness as the default rather than working to create a narrative in which having a full spectrum of skin tones is the norm.

Today many of the issues have been fixed with the introduction of new camera technology and Shirley cards, however, there are still times when film’s inherent bias shines through (see the video above for more details). While the industry works on making technology an equalizer, we as a society should uplift actors or models with darker skin who as a group have a history of more barriers to overcome in order to make it in the industry. If we ensure people with darker skin tones get into the media then it will create a new norm where the representation of all people is the national ideal, not light skin tones.

Link to further reading:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-bias-photography.html

 

Works Cited

Kris Paulsen, Module 8.2, History of Art 2901, 26:35

Origins of the Three Worlds Ideology (Week 3)

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The ideology of our globe being composed of three different “worlds” came to light during the 1950s when a man named Alfred Sauvy coined the term to describe the different players of the Cold War. In the “First World” we find western, capitalist countries; in the “Second World” we find the opposed communists, and then there is a category that captures all others who don’t fit into the previous groups and they were labeled the “Third World.” While the term “Third World” started off as meaning they weren’t aligned with either side of the Cold War, it has evolved to mean a country is developing or undeveloped (Andrews).

Even back during the times of the Cold War, the definition was unclear. In “What was the Third World” by B.R. Tomlinson he states that rather than being a clearly analyzed group, it may have been “simply a convenient and rather vague label for an imprecise collection of states… and some of the common problems they faced” (307). This convenience of grouping overshadows the diversity of countries that get lumped into the “Third World.” Not only do these places have different political beliefs, cultures, social aspects, economics, and histories from their global neighbors, they also have that same diversity within their own borders (Tomlinson 308). The ideology of Three Worlds, therefore, implements the kind of dilemma that is outlined in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” ted talk.

Fredric Jameson, whose work is the topic of the reading by Aijaz Ahmad, labels this single story as “national allegories” and claims a piece of third world literature cannot exist outside of it. Ahmad refutes this thinking and brings up points similar to those of Tomlinson. Ahmad disagrees with the grouping of all third world countries and defining them based on imperialism and colonialism because it limits their story to one that is only significant when considering outside influences. Knowing the origin of the Three World ideology can help one consider how the term is likely outdated now, and how it was never a great categorical approach to begin with.

 

Works Cited

Andrews, Evan. “Why are countries classified as First, Second, or Third World?” History.com. Aug. 22, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/why-are-countries-classified-as-first-second-or-third-world. Accessed 1 Sept. 2021.

Tomlinson, BR. “What Was the Third World?” JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY, vol. 38, no. 2, Apr. 2003, pp. 307–321. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edswah&AN=000182213300008&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 1 Sept. 2021.

 

Other Useful Links:

—“If You Shouldn’t Call It The Third World, What Should You Call It?”:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/04/372684438/if-you-shouldnt-call-it-the-third-world-what-should-you-call-it

—“5 terms to use as an alternative to ‘Third World’”

https://borgenproject.org/alternative-to-third-world/