Are you human? Are you alive?
I had managed to forget until last night that there is a film about Turing coming out this year. I wish it were not starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
I need to be clear on this point: I don't dislike Cumberbatch. He's marvelous in Cabin Pressure (2008–), a radio series that I strongly recommend everyone run out and listen to now. I don't think he needs to be granted an automatic monopoly on portrayals of famously brilliant people, but I've quite enjoyed the episodes of Sherlock I've been shown and I remain sorry that I missed his National Theatre Frankenstein. It's just that—Tumblr notwithstanding—as far as I know, he's straight. And I am all for being an ally, but . . . I think I actually mind. Turing is an icon. Don't tell me there were no queer actors who couldn't have knocked the role out of the park. Aside from the fact that it is a big-budget production and I worry generally. I worry it won't trust the audience with science or mathematics or the life of the mind. I worry it won't trust them with eccentricity that doesn't fit a familiar shape. I worry about its handling of Joan Clarke—I don't want her erased, because she was a fucking amazing cryptanalyst, but I don't want her reduced to a pining would-be love interest, either, as in Whitemore's Breaking the Code (1986). They were engaged for six months and broke it off by mutual agreement and never stopped playing marathon sessions of chess all the while; they were friends until he died. Keira Knightley's playing her. I want my fears to be groundless, but I know what happens to history when it meets Hollywood. I don't want them to screw this one up. And I don't want it to be so hagiographical no one fucks in it at all.
(This is a small point and a nitpicky one, because I haven't cared in many other historical instances, but it jars every time I see a photo: haircut or no, Cumberbatch's weird looks aren't Turing's. Turing was brickier. Breaking the Code at least got that right with Derek Jacobi. Who's been with his partner Richard Clifford for thirty-seven years. No points for the raving Oxfordianism, though.)
Apparently this is my day for shouting about film, because![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee listened to me very patiently on the subject of Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which holds the weird distinction of being the first time I realized a story was about the wrong person. (At least, the first time that I could articulate the problem. I was in high school.) Mostly copied from comments:
Gentleman's Agreement is an absolutely classic narrative of the type "person of privilege has their social conscience awakened by observing how bad it is for people whom the narrative doesn't bother to extend much interiority to, if any." And it was groundbreaking in its direct treatment of anti-Semitism and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and I'm not saying it wasn't valuable, especially in 1947, but it was still incredibly frustrating to watch. On some level the script recognizes that John Garfield's Dave Goldman, being actually Jewish, might have something to say about anti-Semitism that Gregory Peck's Phil Green is never going to understand in two weeks undercover as "Phil Greenberg" or maybe a lifetime. He spends a lot of time calling other characters on their casually racist bullshit. There's a great scene late in the film where he meets with Phil's (white, Christian, well-bred) ex-fiancée and she tells him that she had to leave a party recently because someone told a racist joke and Dave, far from being impressed, tells her flat-out that if she let him get away with it—if she left without saying a word about why—she's just as much of a problem as the man who told the joke or their friends who laughed at it. That's something many people don't get even now. And I give the film genuine credit for not making Dave a long-suffering saint; he's John Garfield, all right, he's quick, scrappy, angry. He fights back and he expects anyone who claims to be on his side to do the same, whether they lose friends for it or get punched in the face. But he's still the supporting character whom the film uses as its moral center and we are meant to feel warmer and fuzzier about Phil opening his eyes to the realities of America and writing his searing exposé of polite upper-middle-class anti-Semitism and aaaaaargh.
Writing this out, I realized: that's because the film expects us to be Phil, not Dave. The nice white Christian upper middle class who deplored the Nazi atrocities, but still wouldn't like those people in our golf club. The ones who need their horizons broadened. Whereas I watched the film in sympathy with Dave; Phil's world was the alien one to me. I can't believe it took me until now to parse that. High school movie-watching me was not the most discerning critic. Mostly I got: Anti-Semitism is terrible! Good thing our protagonist is only pretending to be Jewish for a newspaper story and can drop it at any time and return to his life of newly enlightened WASP privilege! Dave Goldman should have been the protagonist.
It all comes back to voices, doesn't it. Who speaks and who is spoken for. More voices, dammit.
I need to be clear on this point: I don't dislike Cumberbatch. He's marvelous in Cabin Pressure (2008–), a radio series that I strongly recommend everyone run out and listen to now. I don't think he needs to be granted an automatic monopoly on portrayals of famously brilliant people, but I've quite enjoyed the episodes of Sherlock I've been shown and I remain sorry that I missed his National Theatre Frankenstein. It's just that—Tumblr notwithstanding—as far as I know, he's straight. And I am all for being an ally, but . . . I think I actually mind. Turing is an icon. Don't tell me there were no queer actors who couldn't have knocked the role out of the park. Aside from the fact that it is a big-budget production and I worry generally. I worry it won't trust the audience with science or mathematics or the life of the mind. I worry it won't trust them with eccentricity that doesn't fit a familiar shape. I worry about its handling of Joan Clarke—I don't want her erased, because she was a fucking amazing cryptanalyst, but I don't want her reduced to a pining would-be love interest, either, as in Whitemore's Breaking the Code (1986). They were engaged for six months and broke it off by mutual agreement and never stopped playing marathon sessions of chess all the while; they were friends until he died. Keira Knightley's playing her. I want my fears to be groundless, but I know what happens to history when it meets Hollywood. I don't want them to screw this one up. And I don't want it to be so hagiographical no one fucks in it at all.
(This is a small point and a nitpicky one, because I haven't cared in many other historical instances, but it jars every time I see a photo: haircut or no, Cumberbatch's weird looks aren't Turing's. Turing was brickier. Breaking the Code at least got that right with Derek Jacobi. Who's been with his partner Richard Clifford for thirty-seven years. No points for the raving Oxfordianism, though.)
Apparently this is my day for shouting about film, because
yhlee listened to me very patiently on the subject of Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which holds the weird distinction of being the first time I realized a story was about the wrong person. (At least, the first time that I could articulate the problem. I was in high school.) Mostly copied from comments:Gentleman's Agreement is an absolutely classic narrative of the type "person of privilege has their social conscience awakened by observing how bad it is for people whom the narrative doesn't bother to extend much interiority to, if any." And it was groundbreaking in its direct treatment of anti-Semitism and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and I'm not saying it wasn't valuable, especially in 1947, but it was still incredibly frustrating to watch. On some level the script recognizes that John Garfield's Dave Goldman, being actually Jewish, might have something to say about anti-Semitism that Gregory Peck's Phil Green is never going to understand in two weeks undercover as "Phil Greenberg" or maybe a lifetime. He spends a lot of time calling other characters on their casually racist bullshit. There's a great scene late in the film where he meets with Phil's (white, Christian, well-bred) ex-fiancée and she tells him that she had to leave a party recently because someone told a racist joke and Dave, far from being impressed, tells her flat-out that if she let him get away with it—if she left without saying a word about why—she's just as much of a problem as the man who told the joke or their friends who laughed at it. That's something many people don't get even now. And I give the film genuine credit for not making Dave a long-suffering saint; he's John Garfield, all right, he's quick, scrappy, angry. He fights back and he expects anyone who claims to be on his side to do the same, whether they lose friends for it or get punched in the face. But he's still the supporting character whom the film uses as its moral center and we are meant to feel warmer and fuzzier about Phil opening his eyes to the realities of America and writing his searing exposé of polite upper-middle-class anti-Semitism and aaaaaargh.
Writing this out, I realized: that's because the film expects us to be Phil, not Dave. The nice white Christian upper middle class who deplored the Nazi atrocities, but still wouldn't like those people in our golf club. The ones who need their horizons broadened. Whereas I watched the film in sympathy with Dave; Phil's world was the alien one to me. I can't believe it took me until now to parse that. High school movie-watching me was not the most discerning critic. Mostly I got: Anti-Semitism is terrible! Good thing our protagonist is only pretending to be Jewish for a newspaper story and can drop it at any time and return to his life of newly enlightened WASP privilege! Dave Goldman should have been the protagonist.
It all comes back to voices, doesn't it. Who speaks and who is spoken for. More voices, dammit.
no subject
Burn Gorman would make a beautiful Turing, which is pretty much what I thought as soon as I saw the film. He's slighter, but he has the right bones in his face, and that haircut doesn't look any better on him.
What's Turn?
no subject
Have you heard about The Bletchley Circle? Turing doesn't appear to be in it, but I'm very curious to see if and how it makes reference to him. it's another series I haven't yet seen, but a couple of my friends speak very highly of it.
no subject
Huh. I . . . know almost nothing about that period. That sounds like it could be very neat. Let me know what you think wen you get hold of it?
Have you heard about The Bletchley Circle?
Both