Rules are only important in cricket, poetry, and the editing of classical texts

[sovay]

I am glad that the Boston Globe liked Breaking the Code, but I do not understand their characterization of the play as "Turing's struggle to integrate thinking with feeling, and his ultimate failure to do so." Even speaking strictly of the theatrical character, not the historical person, Turing's problem isn't that he can't relate to people; it's that one of the primary ways he relates is—will be, until the Sexual Offences Act 1967—illegal. Look at the title. Compartmentalization isn't the issue, transgression is. It's the rest of the world that prefers neat little boxes in which mathematicians are not engineers and thinkers don't win marathons and there is no such thing as a queer war hero. Also, there is nothing static about the passionate exploration of ideas: number theory, cryptanalysis, artificial intelligence. Your heart doesn't skip a beat at Gödel's theorem, so be it, but that doesn't make the subject intrinsically unexciting. I wish the reviewer wouldn't reinforce the same binaries that hurt Turing so badly. It's not like he had any time for them when he was alive.

(My very short initial review of the play here. I liked it.)

The hazelnut cake went over very well; it is much diminished from its original dimensions. I am less pleased about this sudden sore throat. Understatement. I want a body that works. I know there are people who have them.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Also, there is nothing static about the passionate exploration of ideas --You said it.

Also: Look at the title --awesome. Yes.

[sovay]

--You said it.

I feel strongly about this sort of thing.

It's a lovely play. If you can't make this production, I recommend reading it.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the meme of "Science is cold, science is impersonal, science has no feelings, science is a Vulcan working in a white lab under fluorescent lights" is alive and well with this critic.

Anyhow, even Vulcans have feelings like the rest of us. They're simply good at concealing them. And it sounds like Breaking the Code's Turing isn't depicted as a Vulcan at all.

[sovay]

Sounds like the meme of "Science is cold, science is impersonal, science has no feelings, science is a Vulcan working in a white lab under fluorescent lights" is alive and well with this critic.

It wasn't quite that dismissive, but closer than I would have liked: "[T]he challenge for the actor playing Turing is to find a way to anchor all the cerebral ideas in the heart of a living, breathing, human being." Er, the same way you anchor any other character talking about whatever else they love?

Anyhow, even Vulcans have feelings like the rest of us. They're simply good at concealing them.

(I didn't approve of the reboot's privileging of Spock's human side, though. It's not like there's a shortage of human characters in the Trek universe. The genuinely alien is to be cherished.)

And it sounds like Breaking the Code's Turing isn't depicted as a Vulcan at all.

No. See recommendation to asakiyume; there are ways in which I argue with the play, but it also introduced me to Alan Turing and I love it.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a recent, infuriating review of Stoppard's Arcadia by a critic who bought the cold science meme. I can see how you might find Arcadia passionless if you're the kind of person who shuts down at the mention of numbers; but I'm disappointed that the New Yorker would employ one.

Perhaps I should think of it as a handicap, like a club foot. Then employing him would be a charity.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Ye god of integers! That Arcadia reviewer was astoundingly wrongheaded, to the point of pitying the actors he saw as stuck in it. As if Stoppard's magnificent play were some sort of plexiglass rat maze.

Nine

[sovay]

As if Stoppard's magnificent play were some sort of plexiglass rat maze.

"Because there are some things even rats won't do . . ."

[sovay]

This reminds me of a recent, infuriating review of Stoppard's Arcadia by a critic who bought the cold science meme.

I saw that! I have never seen a production of Arcadia, but I have read and loved it: I was very confused.

Then employing him would be a charity.

I'm just not sure you should make it up to the tone-deaf guy by putting him in charge of music criticism . . .

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

The Globe review was platitudinal, that's all. He didn't feel like thinking -- but he still had a deadline, so he trotted out the clichés.

[sovay]

He didn't feel like thinking -- but he still had a deadline, so he trotted out the clichés.

That doesn't stop it from being bad reviewing!

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Send yours to the Globe, why not?

[sovay]

Send yours to the Globe, why not?

As a letter to the editor? What an interesting idea.