As a film about three pioneering Black women in 1960s Virginia, Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures tells a true and socially important story about forgotten minority contributions to the Space Race. Just the like the “new math” that Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson discover for John Glen’s orbital space flight, these monumental women were concealed by the shortsightedness of their White colleagues. This Fox 2000 Studios film brings these minority experiences to life, but at the same time consciously makes the story palatable to mainstream audiences. In a film review in The Atlantic, Lenika Cruz states that "Hidden Figures doesn’t hide its efforts to be a crowdpleaser—depending on audience size, you can expect clapping and cheering after moments of victory, and loud groans whenever egregious acts of racism take place (there are many)." While the film was lauded by critics and viewers, its "feel-goodness" fails to develop cultural work that adequately acknowledges the connection that discrimination in the past has to the present. The conditions of production and the editing of the film contribute to the over progressivist narrative of the film, demonstrating Hollywood’s “white-washing” of marginalized identities and stories.

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