Hidden Figures, a film set in Virginia in the 1960s, depicts three African American women facing insurmountable barriers. The underlying premise is that if it were not for Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, who were "human computers" at NASA, they would not have sent a man into space and ultimately to the Moon. Despite setbacks such as the political and social climate at the height of Jim Crow, which exposed the discriminatory laws and prejudicial practices prevalent at the time, these women rose up to be an integral part of sending a man to the space. When I saw the film, I thought, like many others, that as a society we are extremely far from racist ideas, but looking more closely, we see that we have not gone far at all and continue to treat people differently, simply on the basis of the color of their skin. As a modern world society, we can undeniably say that racial discrimination is still as prevalent today as it was in the 1960s. While it may not be to the same extent, the ideas still flourish today. The Flashback to Pioneering Women sheds light on racial discrimination and disparities that still exist. Even if more explicit racism is not fully effective, many today, as in the film, struggle with these issues. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The film depicts white supremacist practices and the abhorrent attitudes that come with them. Viewers are encouraged to take the perspective of African American women and feel truly baffled that this story hasn't been told before. Where the audience sees Katherine, a math prodigy delivered to an all-white male room where brains and racism collide. We see that segregation and this conflict in the film are expressed more with images than with dialogues. An example of this is when throughout the film Katherine has to run 40 minutes to go to the only "colorful" bathroom on the other side of the NASA campus. At the same time, she has to deal with men who refuse to share the same kettle as her. The theme of “contamination” that whites idiotically believed had been brought to them by African Americans is frightening. We are reminded of how these women were treated as outsiders in their own country, even as they helped the nation achieve global success. Multiple scenes use a variety of bird's-eye shots showing the distance Katherine must travel, including close-ups to show her struggle as she does so. Mr. Harrison finally notices that she goes out for 40 minutes a day and asks her why and she replies, “There's no bathroom. There are no colored bathrooms in this building, nor in any other building off the west campus which is half a mile away… And I work like a dog, day and night! Living on coffee from a pot that none of you want to touch. Here close-ups are used to convey Katherine's emotions and frustration and how she is soaked from running in the rain and shows her frustrations with daily humiliations that her other white male colleagues fail to notice. These shots allow us to experience her pain alongside her. It shows how some values, attitudes and beliefs of the time such as segregation and white supremacy need to be challenged even if it is not the popular position of the time. Another example of these images is Dorothy's trip to the library, with her children on the cusp of adolescence, witnessing civil rights activists chanting "segregation must be eliminated" at a protest in.