11 July 2014

Friday is the (Inspirational) Movie Night: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)

#inspirationalmovies



Cha-chan! Here you have a series (well, 13 times 44 minutes) that are breathtakingly inspirational on several levels: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014). It's a work of many people, including the antifeminist-but-rich-enough-to-fund-science-communication-projects Seth MacFarlane and the amazing Ann Druyan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Love for science and Carl Sagan has already been expressed on this blog, so now we just have to convince about the added extras that the new Cosmos includes.

Verónica Bayetti Flores has already done that in her Feministing.com article Five times Cosmos’ Neil deGrasse Tyson stole my feminist heart that captures very well how at times the new Cosmos goes even further than the Carl Sagan's one in criticizing the harm that we humans do to each other and other species. Some of the obstacles in our way to well-being and harmony that Cosmos identifies are lack of knowledge, of course, but also the predatory capitalism, religious dogmatism, human pettiness and the structurally discriminating hierarchies of knowledge that have left and keeps leaving behind many people... including women, of course. This Cosmos does introduce you to many females science pioneers you had no idea about. Plus, the discrimination and ridicule suffered by them is also very clear. And the determination and lucky circumstances needed to succeed in the men's world that science was is.

Among others, you'll get to know Ms. Annie Jump Cannon, Ms. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Ms. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Ms. Marie Tharp. And there are so much more of them! For more inspiration (for a Wikipedia research, at least), look at the poster they're selling at A Mighty Girl.



And just for the dessert, Neil's response to the question on gender bias in science (from 1:01:31 in the video, although you might also enjoy the rest of it). So we know that he's with us...




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