Conclusions
Telling Socially Significant Stories
As Manthia Diawara and bell hooks argue, mainstream styles and productions of cinema fail to tell the radical and culturally resistant stories that serve the political needs of historically-marginalized audiences. Indeed, the production choices of Hidden Figures demonstrate appeasement to culturally-dominant White audiences despite the film’s subject matter as a story about overcoming racism and sexism.
Theodore Melfi, Hidden Figures, ©2016, Fox 2000 Pictures.
Star effect substantially contributes to this film’s reception with mainstream audiences, solidifying its palatability, not its cultural significance. Furthermore, the composition of mise-en-scene serves as a barrier between the story and the audience, preventing the spectator from adequately empathizing with the characters and their struggles. Therefore, the cultural work of this film about three remarkable and overcoming women, while important to promoting the visibility of marginalized achievements, does not create a sense of responsibility for mainstream audiences to recognize and remedy present-day discrimination.
Bell hooks asks, "where are our autobiographies that do not falsely represent our reality in the interest of promoting monolithic notions of black female experience or celebrating how wonderfully we have managed to overcome oppression?” (59). Contrary to the narrative that Theodore Melfi creates, our society has not yet managed to overcome discrimination and oppression. Hidden Figures follows in the footsteps of other Hollywood films to maintain, rather than radically subvert, the status quo.