The feeling you have for the man after getting to know him through the duration of the film is really exacerbated by the frustration and anger, not just at the injustice served him, but also at the fact that, why don’t I know this story? It seems unbelievable that someone who is a war hero, someone who is the father of the modern computer age — and a gay icon — could remain in such relative obscurity to the scale of his achievements in his brief time on this planet. One of the main reasons I was really attracted to playing him was to try and bring his story to as wide an audience as possible. It still seems unfathomable to me that Turing is not on bank notes; that he’s not on the front cover of a textbook. I’m serious. I mean, Newton and Darwin are on bank notes for Christ’s sake. This man, as acknowledged by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and other titans of the digital age… was the forefather of modern computing. He was an extraordinarily important man. I just think he should be celebrated as a social-cultural hero as well as someone of extraordinary importance in the scientific and modern worlds.”
— Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrays Turing in The Imitation Game, discusses the suffering endured by the computer pioneer who was ultimately chemically castrated for his homosexuality, during an interview with Deadline
Desert Boy
What is the gay fascination with Benedict Cumberbatch? He seems to the “it” factor gay men are attracted to more than other actors.
Austin77
@Desert Boy:
I’m actually not attracted to him, but he does seem like an extremely capable actor.
And he’s right about Turing, though Turing is hardly the only case. There are plenty of women who get lost in the shuffle too, as well as minorities. In computing alone, there are scores. Like, Ada Lovelace wrote what is universally recognized as the first computer program in the 1800s. Grace Hopper wrote the first ever compiler and even reportedly coined the term “debugging”.
History tends to be taught through a lens of important-heterosexual-white-men.
jmmartin
Why not? Mexico has put Frida Kahlo on its $500 peso notes (worth about $38). She was bisexual.
odawg
@Desert Boy: I absolutely agree! He seems like he is so full of himself. I’m especially annoyed that he is being presented by the media as some spokesperson for gay men. He’s straight and only played a gay man in a movie.
jtroi
Benedict, you are awfully late to the party. The world has long recognized the importance of Turing’s work, both historically and scientifically. And it’s certainly not because Steve Jobs, or any other “titan of the digital age”, told us so.
AtticusBennett
@jtroi: long recognized? he didn’t even get an official “pardon” until 2013, and i still meet people who’ve not only never heard of him, they’re utterly unaware of his contributions to saving the world and how the world in king repaid him.
mokuhulu
How about adding Turing because his efforts saved countless lives? How about adding him because he could be considered the father of modern computer analysis? How about doing it because, even after he saved British asses, he was vilified and tormented because of his sexuality? No?, They’ll do it just because he was gay.
MarionPaige
Benedict Cumberbatch is presumably being paid to pimp his movie about Turing.
Alan Turing was a tortured British Queen who killed himself – so, of course the media would latch onto such a story. Mainstream media loves The Gays as long as they die horrible deaths.
What is “interesting” about the Turing story is he is famous for decrypting messages the Germans created with the Enigma machine. Can anyone name who created the enigma machine? Seems like fame should be on the guy who created the machine, not on some British Queen six degrees removed.
Gays in the military and working for the defense department in the US have that whole little messy assortment of British gays (and gay spies) to thank for the continuing hysteria about gays and security clearances in the US.