{"id":12163,"date":"2017-01-19T16:53:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T08:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/?p=12163"},"modified":"2017-01-17T16:59:12","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T08:59:12","slug":"kevin-costner-breaks-chains-of-discrimation-in-the-highly-inspiring-hidden-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/2017\/01\/19\/kevin-costner-breaks-chains-of-discrimation-in-the-highly-inspiring-hidden-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Costner breaks chains of Discrimation in the highly-inspiring “Hidden Figures”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The legendary Oscar winning actor Kevin Costner stars in the highly-inspiring movie based on the lives of real women who dared the odds in \u201cHidden Figures\u201d along with Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominated Taraji P. Henson, Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, Grammy nominated Janelle Mon\u00e1e , Golden Globe nominee Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons with a powerful score from multiple Grammy winning musician\/composer Pharrell Williams.<\/p>\n

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In \u201cHidden Figures\u201d Costner plays the head of NASA\u2019s Space Task Group, (the fictional) Al Harrison, who needs the best possible mathematicians regardless of gender or race.\u00a0 Harrison wants Katherine Johnson (Henson) to work on John Glenn\u2019s mission, because she has the skills needed to calculate the astronaut\u2019s trajectory, which entails writing new formulas, making sure Glenn returns to Earth safely. As the movie unfolds, we discover that although Johnson is working on the mission, she is given little credit and is hamstrung in her endeavors because of endemic prejudice.<\/p>\n

During the turbulent 60s, battling discrimination at home and in the workplace, Katherine Johnson, (Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominated Taraji P. Henson) Dorothy Vaughan (Oscar winner Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Grammy nominated Janelle Mon\u00e1e), all stellar mathematicians, were undeterred in their pursuit of academic excellence. Instrumental in helping America to eventually win the space race, they broke down barriers, laying the groundwork for future generations.<\/p>\n

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Costner reveals that his role helped break barriers at a time when discrimination was thickly embedded in the nation\u2019s culture. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t care about color.\u00a0 What\u2019s most important to him is the math and the science. He just knows that America is behind in the space race and he understands that they need to get ahead and he does not care where the great ideas come from: whatever the person\u2019s sex or color. He is a pragmatist and sometimes pragmatists like him are so focused, they are not even aware of the racism that\u2019s going on around them. Harrison would look up from his desk and see this woman saying: \u2018don\u2019t you see that I can\u2019t drink coffee here? Don\u2019t you see that I have to go to another bathroom a long way away from here [because of segregation]?\u2019 Harrison is oblivious and is not even looking or thinking of any of that. And that\u2019s when somebody says to him: \u2018well take a look now!\u2019 So he does. And yet Harrison is also the kind of person who has a high level of empathy and fairness, so that when the injustice is put right in front of his eyes, he says: \u2018Of course, that\u2019s wrong, that should be fixed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like Al Harrison succeed because they have a strong desire to compete, along with a national vision and a level of personal pride. This is somebody who does not want America to lose [the space race]. Competition is a really healthy thing and make no mistake, this was a competition and we (America) were losing. Only a person who\u2019s losing is really looking at things carefully, deciding that they\u2019ve got to do something different. He thinks the best thing is to get to the top. But he realizes that NASA wasn\u2019t even allowing the best people (like Katherine Johnson) to have their voice,\u201d concludes Costner.<\/p>\n

\u201cHidden Figures\u201d opens February 22<\/span> in cinemas nationwide from 20th<\/sup> Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legendary Oscar winning actor Kevin Costner stars in the highly-inspiring movie based on the lives of real women who dared the odds in \u201cHidden Figures\u201d along with Golden Globe winner and Emmy nominated Taraji P. Henson, Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, Grammy nominated Janelle Mon\u00e1e , Golden Globe nominee Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons with a powerful score from multiple Grammy winning musician\/composer Pharrell Williams. In \u201cHidden Figures\u201d Costner plays the head of NASA\u2019s Space Task Group, (the fictional) Al Harrison, who needs the best possible mathematicians regardless of gender or race.\u00a0 Harrison wants Katherine Johnson (Henson) to work on John Glenn\u2019s mission, because she has the skills needed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[983,1004,2083,2084,499,2085,119,1148],"class_list":["post-12163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-983","tag-films","tag-hidden-figures","tag-kevin-costner","tag-movies","tag-octavia-spencer","tag-philippines","tag-theaters"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/01\/kevin-costner-in-HIDDEN-FIGURES-1-e1484643469295.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12168,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163\/revisions\/12168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primer.com.ph\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}