I believe that hidden figures supports the author’s argument. Based on a true story, this historical film tells the story of three African American women who worked at NASA and eventually helped launch the astronaut John Glenn in space. While history views this women as invisible, the movie works to celebrate their contribution to American History. Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about black female mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Space Race. The film stars Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury and other missions. The film also features Octavia Spencer as NASA supervisor and mathematician Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monáe as NASA engineer Mary Jackson, with Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell, and Mahershala Ali in supporting roles. Not only does Hidden figures feature an all female main cast, these women are simultaneously African American women, it is a cultural turning point as well as a turning point in the film history, hidden figures is so important for modern culture because it details a little known but vitally important part of American history. It’s a good-hearted look at a time of great change both in the American cultural shifts in the space race and in terms of race and how African American women made their mark at NASA.
The Wolf of Wall Street deploys the traditional ‘Male Gaze’. The film was praised upon release while simultaneously being criticized for supposedly glorifying the debaucherous actions of the characters. The filmmakers intentions of these portrayed actions were misconstrued as supporting these actions rather than displaying the juvenile ‘frat boy’ nature. Throughout the film the main character (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio) indulges in sex, drugs and many other condemnable feats, the most prominent of which is the continuous objectification of women, the film failed to send the message it originally set out to achieve.
Creed, released in 2015, was directed by Ryan Coogler, the film deploys the newer ‘Female Gaze’ thanks to its director of photography Maryse Alberi, despite being a very ‘macho’ film about men punching each other the camera does not often objectify these men but rather displays them in full stature and size by moving the camera back and viewing them from outside of the ring and from an audience member’s point of view. At a pivotal point in the film there is a single shot sequence, the camera rotates around the two characters in the ring as the fight progresses, the two minute scene focuses solely on the characters faces, with shots rarely moving below the shoulders.
This week, we will be looking at our final area of
theoretical focus – Postcolonialism.
The teaching slides contain three tasks (definitions/ film identification and justification/application of theory) for you to complete independently.
Remember, that every slide contains hyperlinks to
explanatory videos or film clips/trailers which should boost your understanding
of the ideas presented.
The due date for this work is Tuesday the 2nd June.
The first two tasks (definitions and justification) should go on the blog and the essay task should be e mailed to me as a word document with a word count and reference list of quotations/citations used.
This topic links to both the Textual Analysis and Comparative Study Assessments (worth 40% of the course) which require a lot of knowledge of theory and the ability to apply that theory to specific films independently.
