[math-fun] "Imitation Game" slanders Turing
FYI -- I hope this post isn't too political. "nobody  until film-makers came along  accused [Turing] of being a traitor" The blatantly false story line in this film really is a gross insult to Turing's memory & legacy; given the strict libel laws in England, I'm surprised that this film can even be shown there without getting sued. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/20/the-imitation-game-invents-new-s...
Yeah, that's pretty outrageous. It makes sense for docudramas to make up some facts. But when they turn history on its head and slander a great person in the process . . ., that's unforgivable. I just hope there's some party with legal standing to challenge them in court who does so. --Dan
On Nov 20, 2014, at 9:49 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
FYI -- I hope this post isn't too political.
"nobody until film-makers came along accused [Turing] of being a traitor"
The blatantly false story line in this film really is a gross insult to Turing's memory & legacy; given the strict libel laws in England, I'm surprised that this film can even be shown there without getting sued.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/20/the-imitation-game-invents-new-s...
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
I just hope there's some party with legal standing to challenge them in court who does so.
#1) Hollywood movies are works of fiction. What part of "fiction" do you not understand? #2) Dead people do not have standing to defend their reputations. They're rather hard to cross examine.
I don't know if this particular film has the usual disclaimer ("any relationship with reality is purely coincidental"), but most ordinary viewers will assume that this is "the" Alan Turing who invented the Turing Machine and the Imitation Game. When Hollywood wants to diverge from the facts as much as this, they usually change names and other things to avoid confusion. At least Hollywood changed the name of the German submarine (from U-110 to U-571) that was captured when they also changed the _country_ which captured the it (from the UK to the US) ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28film%29 Even with those changes, Hollywood came under attack from none other than Tony Blair for stealing the credit for the capture from British sailors. At 12:40 PM 11/20/2014, Dave Dyer wrote:
#1) Hollywood movies are works of fiction. What part of "fiction" do you not understand?
Today's New York Times has an article that contains this passage: ----- Is it permissible, to put it plainly, for a composer, playwright, filmmaker or whomever to alter, tweak or fictionalize a story for artistic ends? Inevitably, the distortions will infuriate those who are in the know or were personally affected. ----- This question is not resolved, of course, in the article. I mention this solely to point out that things may not be as clear-cut as the post below suggests. --Dan
On Nov 20, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> wrote:
I just hope there's some party with legal standing to challenge them in court who does so.
#1) Hollywood movies are works of fiction. What part of "fiction" do you not understand?
#2) Dead people do not have standing to defend their reputations. They're rather hard to cross examine.
Turing was a bloody genius who with his small band of mathematicians, engineers & hackers cut years off the war & thereby saved the lives of an awful lot of people. He was then kicked in the teeth by his own govt (perhaps with the encouragement of the US govt), and may have committed suicide as a result. It then took 50 years of lobbying just to clear his name. Instead of making his birthday a f**king national holiday, Hollywood comes out with a film that suggests that he might have been a traitor. Yes, everyone who _survived_ (or whose parents survived) WWII was "personally affected" by Turing, and we should all be infuriated. As I've said before, the real WWII secret wasn't the atomic bomb -- its only secret there was whether it would work & therefore no longer secret after August, 1945 -- but the tremendous strides in cryptography -- including the building of digital electronic devices. Thus Turing & co were actually more important than the Manhattan project. Today we're all carrying around Enigma-killers in our pockets, but where are those personal and/or home atomic reactors? At 04:55 PM 11/23/2014, Dan Asimov wrote:
Today's New York Times has an article that contains this passage:
----- Is it permissible, to put it plainly, for a composer, playwright, filmmaker or whomever to alter, tweak or fictionalize a story for artistic ends? Inevitably, the distortions will infuriate those who are in the know or were personally affected. -----
This question is not resolved, of course, in the article.
I mention this solely to point out that things may not be as clear-cut as the post below suggests.
--Dan
On Nov 20, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Dave Dyer <ddyer@real-me.net> wrote:
I just hope there's some party with legal standing to challenge them in court who does so.
#1) Hollywood movies are works of fiction. What part of "fiction" do you not understand?
#2) Dead people do not have standing to defend their reputations. They're rather hard to cross examine.
participants (3)
-
Dan Asimov -
Dave Dyer -
Henry Baker