The Imitation Game Fails Test of Inspiring the Next Turings

reifman writes In 'The Imitation Game': Can This Big Fat Cliche Win Best Picture?, reviewer Monica Guzman blasts the film for distorting history and missing the opportunity to inspire today's tech savvy, highly surveilled generation to follow in Turing's path: Instead of an inventor, it shows a stereotype. Instead of inspiring us to follow in the footsteps of a person who shaped technology, the film inspires us only to get out of the way of the next genius who can. The Imitation Game changed aspects of the real Alan Turing's personality to conform more closely to our idea of the solitary nerd. It falls in line with the tired idea that only outcasts could love computers...As for explaining the science behind Turing's code-breaking machine, the movie doesn't bother. if invention doesn't deserve top billing in this story, where the technology at its heart is not only historically significant but hugely resonant in our lives today, then I don't know where it would. The message of the movie is that the uncommon man can do amazing things, but the message we need is that the common man, woman, anybody can and should tinker with the technology that manages our whole world.

Comments

common man

[itzly]

the message we need is that the common man, woman, anybody can and should tinker with the technology that manages our whole world.

Why ? One genius can do more on his own than a thousand mediocre people together.

Re:common man

[iluvcapra]

There's no such thing as a mediocre human being.

Re:common man

[sneakyimp]

The OP sounds like a great recipe for a terrible fucking movie. And yes, no ordinary person could have done what Turing did. Just comprehending his papers is a struggle -- even for such intellectual titans as myself.

Re:common man

[gweihir]

Actually, any number of mediocre people cannot match one genius. Stupidity in large numbers is just even more stupid. (And yes, the average person is limited enough in mental capabilities that "stupid" is an accurate description.)

Re:common man

[bloodhawk]

The single genius can do very little without the shoulders of the thousands that do the drudgery to stand upon.

Re:common man

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes there is-- we elect them all the time.

Some people are stronger than others, some are smarter, some have a fundamental understanding of computation (Turing) or electricity (Tesla) that the rest of us simply do not have-- This idea that we all *HAVE* to be equal is insane-- we should recognize, and celebrate, our differences. I would no more want Stephen Hawking to build my next house than I would want Usain Bolt to design a CPU for my next computer.

Humans are genuinely an amazing animal... but to claim that all humans are above average is to demonstrate a fundamental lack of awareness of both math, and humanity.

Re:common man

[sneakyimp]

You've obviously never heard of D4nny. I'm not sure I approve of comparing a brass-tacks intellectual contribution like Turing's to subjective pursuits like music. Turing's accomplishment is massive regardless of your feelings about it. Music's beauty is in the ear of the listener.

Re:common man

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? The vast majority of politicians are highly-educated, often with many academic awards, and also usually wealthy (many times by their own efforts).

They may seem mediocre because of the specious reasoning they give for their policies. This is an illusion created by your own credulity: you believe they are motivated by a statesman-like desire to serve the greater good. In fact, they are motivated by a very selfish desire to acquire and exercise power, and also to acquire great wealth (while empowering their political allies to do the same). They often lie in order to justify policies that accomplish this.

And they are very good at it.

Re:common man

[iluvcapra]

Indeed. I'm not as smart as Turing was, so he must have been a fuckin' genius. No living human could ever hope to match him. Basically a god.

You know he made some really important contributions to discrete mathematics, logic and what would eventually be called computer science. But a lot of people were able to make really important contributions to computer science and the war. What exactly makes Alan Turing a god, and not, say, Claude Shannon? Or Richard Feynman? Or Enrico Fermi?

Genius is a wondrous thing but its counterproductive to turn it into a cult.

Re:common man

[blue trane]

"to claim that all humans are above average is to demonstrate a fundamental lack of awareness of both math"

Simpson's Paradox means that everyone can bat lower than one guy for years, but still have a higher average than that one guy. So math allows situations where you can be above average while consistently scoring below average.

Re:common man

[LordLimecat]

The really scary thing about all of these posts is that I can easily imagine the people making them putting a visionary like Mao Zedong in power.

Its really kind of scary what happens when you put highly intelligent asocial people in power; one longs for the company of "stupid, mewling peasants".

Re:common man

[Gavagai80]

Nearly everyone is above average at something though. And Turing and every other genius are below average at many things.

Re:common man

[GauteL]

Others have failed to mention the peasants that worked the land that not only fed Mozart but kept Mozart's patrons wealthy enough to support the arts by commissioning Mozart's works, or indeed made it possible for all Mozart's spectators to enjoy arts rather than spend the day doing subsistence farming themselves. Without them, all arts we'd have would be able to sustain is the odd folk singing after a hard day's work.

Others have mentioned the craftsmen that made his instruments, but also keep in mind the folk that made and gathered paper, ink and quills he used to write his music. Or even the millions of ordinary people of his past that helped shape the language he used, without which it would be impossible to sustain human civilization.

Thus Mozart, stood on the shoulders of millions of completely ordinary folk.

The lesson here; next time you believe the bullshit of "self-made man" and "I didn't receive no help from nobody", think of what steps are actually necessary for the life we live today.

Re:common man

[war4peace]

OK, I'll bite.
I could say the same from the other point of view.
Each and any average dude uses products invented and designed by someone who was way above average, starting from fire and ending up with that "phat aiphone" in one's pocket.
The few rely on the work of the many and the many use the work of the few. Symbiosis at its best.

It is about gay right and acceptance.

[Mr.Zuka]

The movie is from start to finish is to show how gay people suffered in history, and breaking the gay stereotype of being "Fabulous". They weren't taking the nerd rights at all.

Re:It is about gay right and acceptance.

[turp182]

This. It was a relationship movie, about how some are persecuted for their relationship preferences.

I found it enjoyable and my wife, who was familiar with the name, did not know how it was going to end. And it really bothered her.

Her reaction was the movie fulfilling its intended goal in terms of getting someone to think about persecution. The historical perspective or "tech" was largely irrelevant in my opinion, it was a movie about how one person can be incredible, in the face of increasingly difficult odds, and then be destroyed by the same people after proving effective at being a genius.

It's almost like everyone except him was guilty of "not thinking well enough" while he alone (mostly) was guilty of "thinking/feeling wrong".

I haven't seen it, but I'm expecting Boyhood to win. It should have a lot of support on the concept and execution alone (it's a grander project than Lord of the Rings in my opinion, given the time frame during which it was produced - and a lack of CGI...).

Be realistic

[iluvcapra]

Yeah, move audiences are really chomping at the bit for a probing discussion of the Halting Problem and the Turing-Church correspondence.

The Imitation Game changed aspects of the real Alan Turing's personality to conform more closely to our idea of the solitary nerd. It falls in line with the tired idea that only outcasts could love computers...As for explaining the science behind Turing's code-breaking machine, the movie doesn't bother.

It's a complicated topic, mainly because his work for GCHQ was only tangentially related to his work on universal computing machines or his theoretical mathematics, they never actually built a Turing-complete computing system to defeat Enigma (with bombes) or the Fish cipher (Colossi) -- and even this distinction between the two fundamentally different problems is lost to the film.

The movie isn't about computers, it's not even really about codebreaking. The movie is about a recluse with a dark secret, who, despite not fitting in and being generally weird, finds a purpose for himself and a way to make a contribution to the war, only to see his greatest accomplishments hidden from view and perverted by the security state. The movie is basically a retelling of A Man for All Seasons.

Re:Be realistic

[Dutch Gun]

Have you seen Particle Fever? It's possible to make a movie about technically complex topics that's also accessible to a wider audience. Human drama is probably the most important element in any successful movie, but you can also surround that drama with technical information. People become more receptive to it that way, rather than eyes glazing over.

Re:Be realistic

[slimjim8094]

The movie is about a recluse with a dark secret, who, despite not fitting in and being generally weird, finds a purpose for himself and a way to make a contribution to the war, only to see his greatest accomplishments hidden from view and perverted by the security state.

Sigh. I saw the movie and it was a well-executed film, but it was essentially about a made-up person. I agree with your summary of the fictional character, but not the man. Turing was certainly eccentric, but he had friends, was liked by his colleagues, and had a good sense of humor. As terrible as his chemical castration was, it certainly didn't ruin his mind - he did some interesting work on mathematical biology inspired by those very changes. And he died more than a year after the end of his "treatment". And it was recast as an "us-vs-them" story, which simply isn't true - thousands of people were working on breaking Enigma and made steady progress throughout the war, with the support of the entire chain of command (in particular the Commander Denniston).

He's such an interesting person with a fascinating story - it's a real damn shame they basically invented a character to give his name.

Re:Be realistic

[Smallpond]

Ratings on IMDB:

• Particle Fever, 7.5
• Beavis and Butt-head, 7.6

Hmmm.

Re:Be realistic

[msobkow]

No one ever said it was a documentary. It's a movie meant to entertain, not inform.

Re:Be realistic

[linuxrocks123]

And he died more than a year after the end of his "treatment".

This. There is a good chance that Turing actually didn't commit suicide, but rather died of accidental cyanide inhalation. He had set up a chemical lab in his living space and wasn't exactly using OSHA-approved storage protocols for dangerous chemicals. His mother, at the time, said she didn't think he'd killed himself, and contemporary accounts were that he was doing pretty okay. The supposedly cyanide-poisoned apple was not tested for cyanide. None of this is conclusive.

IMO, any modern report on Turing should account for the possibility he didn't kill himself. The suicide angle makes a great story for gay rights activists, but it does a disservice to the memory of this great man to reduce him to a political talking point. The forced hormone treatment was abominable, whether or not it drove him to suicide. There's a chance it did, and a chance it did not.

Smart people are jerks?

[rmdingler]

I find it ironic that the movie chooses to portray Turing in an inaccurately negative light,

when so many times, the film industry polishes up a flawed human hero in a Hollywood retelling.

Re:Smart people are jerks?

[Savage-Rabbit]

I find it ironic that the movie chooses to portray Turing in an inaccurately negative light,

when so many times, the film industry polishes up a flawed human hero in a Hollywood retelling.

What I find ironic is how they manage to mention the people who actually cracked Enigma twice and only in passing. First one of those British intelligence types blurts out something about Enigma being "stolen by Polish intelligence" and a second time when Turing claims his machine is based on "an old Polish decryption device" (or something to that effect). At the time this movie is supposed to have happened the bomba kryptologiczna, which is probably what they are referring, to was about 3 years old. That may be dated technology today but by the standard of the 1930s three years was not 'old technology'. Turing achieved great things but he and his team didn't crack Enigma all on their own with British ingenuity. They stood on the shoulders of people like Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski and many others who cracked Enigma with Polish ingenuity. They were the ones who originally had the audacity to think that they could crack the world's most sophisticated cypher technology with the meagre resources the Polish cypher bureau had.

griping about historical accuracy in this case

[circletimessquare]

sounds more like "my agenda wasn't served by this picture"

every single historical film ever made, and ever will be made, will be inaccurate. because you can't distill someone's life or a major event into 2 hours and retain accuracy. which doesn't mean anything

because to pay homage to someone we admire, and to make more people aware of the great things they did, far, far outweighs the griping someone might have about accuracy

don't get me wrong: there is such a thing as propaganda and lies. but as long as a film remains broadly accurate we can forgive a foible here and there

for example: there are also people griping about the films "american sniper," and "selma." i'm not going to say if chris kyle did or said ugly things that were conveniently ignored, and i'm not going to say if lyndon johnson's attitudes were incorrectly conveyed. because it doesn't matter to my point in this post. what i'm going to say (i have to be careful because you can set off all sorts of pointless tangential arguments based on misunderstanding) that my *personal* belief is: getting someone interested in the history far outweighs these foibles

the movies were obviously made with care and concern, and were not made as ugly propaganda attack pieces, which also exist, and are what is worthy of ridicule and condemnation. the intentions of the people making "american sniper", "selma", and "the imitation game" were good, honorary to their subject matter, historically faithful if not 100% accurate, and were obviously not made with the intention of ignorant attack pieces. so they are all worthy films anyone should see, to get more people interested in these important topics, as we all should be, to learn from them

and if someone is more interested in the actual history, they can pursue the actual historical facts in academic treatises, documentaries, biographies, etc. which will never, ever be boiled down into 2 hour pop movies

i will say this: the controversies about lbj in "selma", and chris kyle in "american sniper", are far more substantial than these weak contrived complaints about "the imitation game"

Re:griping about historical accuracy in this case

[BarbaraHudson]

maybeTheyAreAJavaProgrammer? After all, we all have our faults :-)

Re: griping about historical accuracy in this case

[sneakyimp]

Yes! You tell 'em. UR NOT THE BOSS OF ME. Also, I like the lowercase thing. Reminds me of ee cummings

Re:griping about historical accuracy in this case

[circletimessquare]

exactly

there is the popular opinion of the genius standing alone, advancing the world as an island

of course, every single "genius" who ever existed, merely stood on the shoulder of others

for the british wwii cryptological effort (obviously not just turing), the polish effort was the foundation on which all the british exertions proved possible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

the efforts of

Marian Rejewski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Jerzy Róycki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

Henryk Zygalski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

and many other poles

the poles were horribly brutalized in wwii, by russians and germans

let us never forget:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

pure evil:

The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, with a lower limit of confirmed dead of 21,768.[1] According to Soviet documents declassified in 1990, 21,857 Polish internees and prisoners were executed after 3 April 1940: 14,552 prisoners of war (most or all of them from the three camps) and 7,305 prisoners in western parts of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs.[26][b] Of them 4,421 were from Kozelsk, 3,820 from Starobelsk, 6,311 from Ostashkov, and 7,305 from Byelorussian and Ukrainian prisons.[26][b] Head of the NKVD POW department, Maj. General P. K. Soprunenko, organized "selections" of Polish officers to be massacred at Katyn and elsewhere.[27]

Those who died at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 non-commissioned officers, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, 131 refugees, 20 university professors, 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots.[22] In all, the NKVD executed almost half the Polish officer corps.[22] Altogether, during the massacre the NKVD executed 14 Polish generals:[28] Leon Billewicz (ret.), Bronisaw Bohatyrewicz (ret.), Xawery Czernicki (admiral), Stanisaw Haller (ret.), Aleksander Kowalewski (ret.), Henryk Minkiewicz (ret.), Kazimierz Orlik-ukoski, Konstanty Plisowski (ret.), Rudolf Prich (murdered in Lviv), Franciszek Sikorski (ret.), Leonard Skierski (ret.), Piotr Skuratowicz, Mieczysaw Smorawiski and Alojzy Wir-Konas (promoted posthumously). Not all of the executed were ethnic Poles, because the Second Polish Republic was a multiethnic state, and its officer corps included Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Jews.[29] It is estimated that about 8% of Katyn massacre victims were Polish Jews.[29] 395 prisoners were spared from the slaughter,[1] among them Stanisaw Swianiewicz and Józef Czapski.[22] They were taken to the Yukhnov camp and then to Gryazovets.[18]

Up to 99% of the remaining prisoners were subsequently murdered. People from the Kozelsk camp were executed in the Katyn forest; people from the Starobelsk camp were murdered in the inner NKVD prison of Kharkiv and the bodies were buried near the village of Piatykhatky; and police officers from the Ostashkov camp were murdered in the internal NKVD prison of Kalinin (Tver) and buried in Mednoye.[18]

Detailed information on the executions in the Kalinin NKVD prison was provided during a hearing by Dmitrii Tokarev, former head of the Board of the District NKVD in Kalinin. According to Tokarev, the shooting started in the evening and ended at dawn. The first transport, on 4 April 1940, carried 390 people, and the executioners had difficulty killing so many people in one night. The following transports held no more than 250 people. The executions were usually performed with German-made 9

Re:griping about historical accuracy in this case

[u38cg]

There is a difference between not being able to include facts and outright misrepresentation. The Turing on screen is nothing like the historical Turing that shines through contemporaneous accounts. There is literally nothing about this film that is broadly accurate apart from a two sentence summary.

It's a movie

[mwvdlee]

It's a movie. It's message was "Give us your money".
Any message beyond that is just to get people to give their money more readily.

Re:Reviewer totally missed the point

[sneakyimp]

Sort of. The Allies probably would have won anyway due to a preponderance of economic strength. However, the impact of the code-breaking was truly profound and it's hard to overstate its importance. The US naval war in the Pacific -- in particular the Battle of Midway -- was an especially stark illustration of the advantage that intel brings. The Allies located the Japanese fleet and got their planes in the air first and essentially crippled the Japanese navy for the duration of the war. Information brings tremendous power in warfare.

Re:Reviewer totally missed the point

[BarbaraHudson]

It's been estimated that Turing's work saved about 2 million lives. Anyone else have a greater claim to fame?

The movie got four things right!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Alen Turing was gay.
2. He was briefly engaged to his coworker lady friend.
3. He worked on Enigma.
4. He died after the war.

Besides that it was a complete fiction. "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" was more historically accurate.
If you want the truth, I suggest starting with wikipedia: "Marian Rejewski", then "Bombe", then "Bletchley Park", then "Coventry Blitz".
Sadly, the real story is way more interesting and moved much faster than the movie. The Poles gave Enigma cracking plans to the French and the Brits on July 24th 1939. The Brits started up Bletchley Park, brought in Turing and many others, and had a working Enigma cracking program (many machines) by the end of fall 1939!

Another interesting detail that many books on Enigma (and this movie very loosely alludes to) still get wrong has to do with the German upgrade to their code machine in 1942. David Kahn in his "The Codebreakers" book attributes the success in cracking Enigma after 1942 to capturing code books. The truth is that Alan Turing became the technical ambassador to the United States and came over the pond November 1942. He met with some engineers at NCR and developed an electronic version of the mechanical bombe, the plans were finished and approved by the US Navy in January 1943, and the first working prototypes that were 10000 faster than the British bombs were working by May. The rest of that story is at wikipedia: "United States Naval Computing Machine Laboratory".

These are the stories I want to see, not the I'm-the-misunderstood-genius-Asperger-syndrome Turning bullshit that "Imitation Game" put out there.

- Minarke

Re:The movie got four things right!

[PopeRatzo]

These are the stories I want to see

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." - Mark Twain.

Telling such a complex story in 90 minutes is not trivial. All dramatizations require fictional mechanisms that leave certain things out and include other things. I will bet that even those wikipedia entries you describe are incomplete, self-serving, and miss the truth by varying degrees. It's OK. Stories are how we pass along meaning. An exact 1:1 match with reality is not desirable, nor does it make it more likely that the viewer will come away with understanding. And devotion to the precise truth will definitely not make for indelible absorption of meaning.

If someone saw The Imitation Game and learned of Turing and then went on to maybe read a book or look him up online, then it's done its job. People who are not curious enough to do that will probably not be harmed by being told a good story.

The message most people get out of the movie....

[Lumpy]

People in general are scumbag assholes. And if you are smart and save your entire country, the assholes will beat you down anyways.

Ask Neil Degrasse Tyson how much hate mail he gets from the idiot assholes of the world. Just look at the man's twitter feed.

If you are smart, the raging morons of the world will hate you. This is a stone cold fact.

Most socially defective peole ARE drawn to STEM

[Pro923]

During my 23 years as a programming engineer, I've noticed that a lot of the people with the same job just aren't good at it. They tend to be nerdy. My speculative theory is that social dropouts are drawn towards computers, because a computer offers a very simple social interaction - whether it be with people connected through the network, or with a computer itself. I'd estimate that 80-90% of the people who claim software engineer as their profession, actually suck at it and chose it because there's nowhere else in the corporate world for them to fit. The other 10-20%, like myself are normal people with normal social desires and a slew of hobbies. I've always gotten along better with the sales guys than the other programmers. I like to golf, drink beer and eat steaks. It's pretty simple, really.

Re:The problem

[geezer nerd]

Turing was gay and he was on of the few British that actually did anything in the early computer field. That's why we hear about him, not because of his accomplishments, which were few and unimportant.

If his accomplishments were so unimportant, then why is the preeminent award in computing named for him? And why are his papers used as the foundation for much of Computer Science?

And if you think the British were little active in the early days of computing, I suggest you go and study your history better.

Re:Different Agenda

[Rob Y.]

Your loaded use of "Gay agenda", aside, you're actually right. The writer of this movie sees it as a much needed apology to a brilliant man (are you denying that?) who made an enormous contribution to the war effort (are you denying that?) that happend to contain the seeds of the computer revolution we now all take for granted (are you denying that?). And after all that was persecuted by his government and essentially driven to suicide. Apologies are probably in order, no?

So what's the Gay agenda here - not to torture people for who they are?

The original article bemoans the way technology is (or is not) presented in the film. And it has a point - but it's beside the point. Yes, this film was made to teach us some history (more accurate, one might argue, than the history in "American Sniper"), but mostly to elevate a man who deeply deserves to be known and appreciated. And there was some interesting history in there anyway - about the weak link in the German messages that allowed the code to be broken, and about the way the army sometimes held back on what it had intercepted (at the cost of lives) in order to keep secret what they knew. It just wasn't history of technology. Sorry - different film.