Fairly recently, a movie entitled Hidden Figures was released. This is a fact-based movie that tells the story of women who were involved in the space program. Unfortunately, until the movie came out, many people didn’t even know the story of these women. That’s because history has largely chosen to exclude them as opposed to telling their story of participation. As a direct result, most individuals believe that the entire space program was the work of men and that women had little to do with it, except for providing the supportive role of beautiful housewife for those individuals who were working with the program.
In reality, women were largely responsible for the success of the space program. Without their ability to figure out some of the most difficult calculations in existence, it remains entirely unclear whether or not the space program would ever have gotten off the ground in the first place, no pun intended. There is a better than average chance that it might not have ever come to fruition and even if it had, it wouldn’t have been as successful as it ultimately was, thanks in large part to the efforts of these women. Since they weren’t given the attention they were due at the time of the event and they were basically ignored by history, the movie’s title Hidden Figures is quite appropriate.
Thankfully, their story has finally been told. It was so popular that National Geographic has decided to create a series based on these individuals. The movie was created as a result of a book that was written with the same title and the series promises to base its information off of that source as well. When it’s all said and done, nobody knows if any of the people that acted in the movie will choose to maintain their roles in the series, but even if new actors and actresses have to be found, the series promises to continue telling the story that was begun in the movie.
This is fairly new territory for National Geographic, although they have ventured into this type of educational entertainment venue in the past, if only once or twice. If you base the probable success of the television show off of how successful the movie was, it promises to be something that many people will choose to watch. This is important because the show is designed to tell about a very important chapter in history that up until last year, virtually no one knew anything about.
People have learned about the space program in their history books for decades. However, those history books seem to be selective in what they chose to teach people. It’s nice that the full story is finally becoming available and that younger generations will have the opportunity to learn about everyone that was involved with the space program, as opposed to only learning about those that have been selected to be remembered. Hopefully, the National Geographic show will continue to tell their story in a way that educates even more individuals and creates a lasting impression.
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