The Imitation Game

I went to see Birdman last week (a great movie, by the way) and I was reminded by the trailers of the imminent release of The Imitation Game. The movie tells the true story of Alan Turing, a British genius who broke Enigma, the encryption device used by the Nazis during WWII. It is widely accepted that Turing’s work gave a decisive edge to the Allies, to the point that the war could have lasted much longer if it wasn’t for him. Turing went on to found and pioneer several fields that led to the development of modern computing.

I’m a computer scientist, I like going to the movies – it should be a no brainer for me to buy a ticket and run to see it now. But I can’t. As has been reported for months and as the trailer demonstrates: Turing’s homosexuality is downplayed to the point that someone seeing the trailer with a naive eye might think he was a plain straight guy. Turing was chemically castrated by his own country and killed himself over it.

This is 2014. The fight for marriage equality in the US isn’t over, but it’s made incredible strides in the past decade. Yet Hollywood appears ignorant and unable to recognize the simple sexual identity of a real-life hero they are seeking to make money from. And even though Turing’s homosexuality might be evoked in the movie, the trailer leaves no doubt as to the side of his sentimental life they prefered to insist on: his relationship with Joan Clarke.

Regardless of the production qualities of this movie, I can’t bear myself to spend $13 on something that is such an obvious fraud. If you can’t look at History without tried to bend it to a heteronormative vision, maybe you shouldn’t be in the business of making biopics.