There are people that prefer to read a book but then there are many people who would prefer to watch the movie over the book.
Why do people do this? Most people do it because it’s faster, easier to remember, and it’s visual when you’re watching the movie. An example of this can be the movie Hidden Figures. This movie was based off of the book. Hidden Figures is about how three African-American women worked for NASA. These women were discriminated against and were constantly thrown down for being a woman and colored. Since there is a movie and a book, which one is better?
This story is a real life story and these three women that were the real life individuals’ names are Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. For these characters, they chose Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan, and Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson.
These three women had to prove themselves to men and everyone else to prove that they can do this and they can do that. In the movie, there are specific scenes that show how these women were put down because of their race and of their sex.
In the book, there were multiple parts where I could just envision what was actually happening in the book. The way that Margot Lee Shetterly wrote made me fall in love with the book and her words. Shetterly makes me want to read more books like this where I can be educated on the real life stories of what happened to the oppressed and how people handled these situations.
What I mean by how I fell in love with Shetterly’s words is a paragraph that she wrote about Mary, “Mary, however, was determined to clamber over every fence she encountered and pull everyone she knew behind her. The deep humanitarianism that was her family inheritance had taught her to see achievement as something that functioned like a bank account, something you drew on when you were in need and made deposits to when you were blessed with surplus” (Shetterly, p. 196).
Shetterly is a very strong writer and she isn’t like most writers, she is someone who makes you want to continue reading her book and anything else that she writes. She pulls you into the book and makes it hard to put the book down.
This scene specifically is one of the reasons why I like the Hidden Figures movie so much. Al Harrison, the boss of Katherine, asked where Katherine was. He was upset and angry but Katherine was running to another building in the rain, just so she can use the colored ladies room. When she gets back, he asks her, “Where the hell have you been? Everywhere I look, you’re not where I need you to be. It’s not my imagination. Now where the hell do you go every day?” and she responds with, “To the bathroom, sir.” This only upsets Harrison more and he says, “To the bathroom. To the damn bathroom. For 40 minutes a day? What do you do in there? We’re T-minus zero here. I put a lot of faith in you.” Katherine says, “There’s no bathroom for me here,” Harrison begins to ask, “What do you mean there’s no bathroom for you here,” Before Katherine interrupts him and says, “There is no bathroom. There are no colored bathrooms in this building or any building outside the West Campus, which is half a mine away. Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself. And I can’t use one of the handy bikes. Picture that, Mr. Harrison. My uniform — skirt below my knees, my heels, and a simple string of pearls. Well, I don’t own pearls! Lord knows you don’t pay coloreds enough to afford pearls! And I work like a dog, day and night, living off of coffee from a pot none of you want to touch! So excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day.”
No words can depict this scene, only actions can. I choose the movie over the book because I can read the book over and over but I will never know what it’s like to be shamed simply because of the color of my skin. This movie shouted at me loud and clear what these women had to go through simply because they were colored and they were women.
So lastly, in my own opinion, I would give the movie a 10 out of 10 and the book an 8 out of 10.
