Imitation Game, but this time about the movie and Hollywood in general

I’ve seen a lot of bad movies, but the only one that I truly that I truly hate is The Imitation Game, a biographical film that came out in 2014 telling the story of British computer scientist and gay icon Alan Turing. The movie mainly focused on Turing’s childhood, his work at Bletchley Park during World War II, and his conviction for being gay. It was nominated for 8 oscars including best picture and won best adapted screenplay. When I took Introduction to Cinema in USC, it was one of the required films as a showcase of good film writing.

The movie itself was actually pretty well made. The director and production designers did a great job recreating England back in 1940s and Benedict Cumberbatch’s portal of Turing was pretty much above his average performance. What made me so angry was the way the writers distorted history so that they could create a version of Turing that fits their stereotypes.

In the film, Turing was depicted as someone who was socially awkward, hard to work with, and all the traits of a standard Benedict Cumberbatch character. While in real life, although he was indeed an introvert and probably on the spectrum, he was never that awkward or difficult. In fact, he was viewed as having a sense of humor, and had good working relationships with colleagues.

Yes, I do know historical films don’t have to be 100% accurate. I understand they need to dramatize the original events. The tale of how Turing broke Nazi Enigma Code was a fun tale for math professors to show their students what they learn is not completely useless, but for general audiences who is expecting some drama the original tale is a bit dull. I mean who would want to watch a 2 hour film of a bunch of British people building a giant machines then name it “Bomb” because it was too loud. I’ll take the current version where Dr. Strange fights with Tywin Lannister to single handedly build a machine that saves everyone and name it after his childhood crush, “Christopher”.

However, for a film about identity acceptance, The Imitation Game put forward a lot of negative stereotypes about autism and “nerds”. This is actually a common problem in pop culture. When portraying a genius, he or she must be annoying, obviously autistic and extremely anti-social, like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in Sherlock and Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. Whenever, there is an autistic character, he or she must be a genius like in the Rain Man. Most of the real life geniuses are really nice and not everybody who is on the spectrum is a magical card counter. People who do fits these Hollywood tropes do exist in real life. However, it is not right to take them as the only option and bending historical figures just to fit those tropes.

There is no need for me to restate the harm of stereotypes in films and TV, since it has been said everywhere again and again. I do want to shout out to the HBO series Silicone Vally that presented the best portrayal of computer nerds I have seen. The main characters there are awkward and sometimes difficult but never as crazy as the standard tropes. They are written as actual human instead of emotionless computing robots.

In all, I really wish writers could one day respect the subjects of their works.