My Reply To A Friend's Criticism Of "The Imitation Game"

"Song of Songs"

Not Just A Dirty Book

http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=21&Issue=5&ArticleID=6

"The Imitation Game" And The Nature Of Science, Epistemology And Right Thinking
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-imitation-game-and-nature-of.html

Dear Chuck,

Thanks for your email.

You express the conundrum beautifully.

In broad outline, there are two filmatic approaches to biography.

One is to create a documentary.

The other is to create a drama (or comedy) based on the subject's life.

By definition, a documentary obliges documentation, crossing "t's" and dotting "i's." 

That said, directors inevitably pick and choose those biographical data that represent the subject in a "chosen" light. 

Predictably, one can "cherry pick" information so that the subject is represented -- in a completely fact-checkable way! -- as a demon when overall s/he was a saint... or as a saint when overall s/he was a demon. (What elements would you include -- and exclude -- in dramatizing your own life?)

"The Thinking Housewife" -- a conservative Catholic blogger with a gift for specious misrepresentation manages to dredge Lincoln's biography in support of her own thinly-veiled white supremacy. http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2014/08/the-racist-views-of-abraham-lincoln/

On the other hand, a drama (or comedy) is, by definition, not bound by factuality.

I understand -- and even feel -- the urge for tit-tat veracity in historical drama.

But I see this verisimiltudinous urge as a reflection of northern Europe's fondness for literalism - and with no happier outcome in art than religion.

I have long held that the split between Catholicism and Protestantism (essentially a North-South schism) originated as a conflict between tramontane literalism/rigidity and the essential indulgence and carnival festivity of the Roman spirit. 

From antiquity onward, Rome has always insisted that The Ideal be held high for admiration, contemplation, edification and inspiration. 

But since humans are "fallen" creatures, Rome has also insisted (as a practical matter) that we must continually "wink" at human foible and homo sapiens' built-in tendency for monkey business. 

Ongoing moral failure is intrinsic to human nature, and rigid denial of this fact results in the damaging perfectionism of neo-Pharisaism.

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/08/yeshua-excoriates-fellow-pharisees-woe.html

"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Matthew: Chapter 18

21 At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?”

22 Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+18&version=MSG

***

Consider

The dispute over Johann Tetzel's sale of indulgences missed the point.

At bottom, Tetzel's commerce was not about the sacrilege of "selling the sacred" but rather nascent Protestantism's denial of the need to esteem indulgence -- and its fraternal twin, mercy -- as more important, uplifting and curative than the anal-retentive urge to punish, contemn and - with appalling frequency -- damn. 

From The Inquisition through the Jewish seizure of Palestine and the outrage of ISIS, the relentless passion for sitting in absolute judgment has been the essential shame of the Abrahamic religions.

As fate-synchronicity-providence would have it, I posted on this topic earlier today: 

Abraham Lincoln And Pope Francis Agree On The Relative Roles Of Mercy And Justice

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/abraham-lincoln-and-pope-francis-agree.html

"The Literal" misses the point just as merely chemo-physical explanation of human coitus misses the point of love-making. 

Indeed, the scientific literature devoted to the material structures and chemo-physical operation of genitalia cannot even refer to love-making, for love-making removes us from "the literal-objective" and catapults us into "the poetic-subjective." 

Yes, it is crucial to keep "the chemo-physical mechanisms" in working order but utilitarian functionality is a springboard, not the goal.

We always manifest the "physical" -- and we always manifest the "meta-physical" -- and in this coupled manifestation, it is helpful to recall that "meta" means "beyond."

The same bifurcation between "the literal-objective" and "the poetic-subjective" is not only true for scientific literature but sacred scripture as well. 

Nowhere does Christian scripture say: "The Bible must be taken literally" and, not surprisingly, no one takes Jesus at his word when he recommends plucking out one's own eyes and cutting off one's own hands in order to prevent the degradation associated with vicious behavior ("vicious" deriving from the word "vice").

Mistakes In Scripture: When The Bible Gets The Bible Wrong

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/mistakes-in-scripture-when-bible-gets.html

The bible is an "object" which, like the physical objectivity of genitalia, is to be used as an objective springboard so that each "human subject" can interpret Life, not randomly but "seeing" how the physical optimizes the metaphysical. 

For some, the bible will be used ascetic ends in hopes of mystical experience or divine revelation. 

For others, the bible will inspire music, song, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, theater and all manner of "good loving." 

Nor is biblical inspiration limited to lofty scriptural themes but, appropriately, enables the same sensual-sexual flights of fantasy that the bible exhibits in The Song of Songs. 

Song of Solomon, Chapter 1 

1 The Song—best of all songs—Solomon’s song!

The Woman

2-3 Kiss me—full on the mouth!
    Yes! For your love is better than wine,
    headier than your aromatic oils.
The syllables of your name murmur like a meadow brook.
    No wonder everyone loves to say your name!

4 Take me away with you! Let’s run off together!
    An elopement with my King-Lover!
We’ll celebrate, we’ll sing,
    we’ll make great music.
Yes! For your love is better than vintage wine.
    Everyone loves you—of course! And why not?

5-6 I am weathered but still elegant,
    oh, dear sisters in Jerusalem,
Weather-darkened like Kedar desert tents,
    time-softened like Solomon’s Temple hangings.
Don’t look down on me because I’m dark,
    darkened by the sun’s harsh rays.
My brothers ridiculed me and sent me to work in the fields.
    They made me care for the face of the earth,
    but I had no time to care for my own face.

7 Tell me where you’re working
    —I love you so much—
Tell me where you’re tending your flocks,
    where you let them rest at noontime.
Why should I be the one left out,
    outside the orbit of your tender care?

That's just the beginning. For "the rest of the story..." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Songs%201&version=MSG

There is only one way to deal with the absurd fallacy of literalism --- a fallacy that would have us conceive God as a bean-counting bookkeeper rather than a consummate artist --- and that is to remind literalists that one day they will see the error of their ways and "eat their hearts out."  

But getting back to "The Imitation Game..."

Turing's life - like all human lives - is about "the physical-factual" as well as "the metaphysical-transcendent." 

In my view it is appropriate to explore the metaphysical aspects of Turing's life even if it means bending the physical facts. Or adding fictions! 

After all, drama is fictional... and documentaries factual.

Metaphysically, Turing's work transformed epistemology by demonstrating that statistical probability was, in many ways, a better approach to the sanctum of General Truth than the anecdotal particularity that previously prevented humans from thinking about the overarching "play" of massive number systems. (At bedrock, American conservatives are stuck in anecdotal "proof" and to keep their anachronistic dream alive they shun statistics. We see these conjoined tendencies most flamboyantly in conservatives who deny global warming.)

Physically, Turing's life revealed the barbarism of exclusionary heterosexuality which considered it both proper and virtuous to impose injurious (and frequently lethal) punishment upon "deviants."

At this precise junction of "the physical" and "the metaphysical," "The Imitation Game" crystallizes the epochal importance of Turing "the statistician" and Turing the "deviant" since a central component of statistics is the measure of "standard deviations from the mean" where the "mean" can be considered "normal," but where predictably standard deviations from the mean are also both natural and significant even though eventually they lead to a threshold beyond which further deviation is intrinsically destructive.

The goal is not to proscribe deviation since deviation is a large part of The Natural Order. (Homosexual behavior has been observed in over 1500 species and is well documented in 500. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals I myself have been "humped" by sexually excited dogs.)

The goal is to put "off limits" -- and preferably prevent -- those deviations that are so extreme as to result in a "change of state" just as qualitative "changes of state" are imparted to H2O as it morphs from solid to liquid to gas when subjected to fixed quantitative changes in ambient temperature. 

I think it was necessary for "The Imitation Game" to play loose with the physical facts of Turing's life in order to focus these larger physical and metaphysical truths.

In the end, there are two broad responses to "The Imitation Game."

One is to take the movie at face value and come away both entertained and appreciating how this singular (deviant?) genius was linchpin to minimizing Nazi destruction (and possibly preventing Nazi victory), coupled with a clear sense that until very recently homosexuals were, by "universal" agreement, deserving targets of hatred, vilification and physical attack both by individual barbarians and by institutional barbarism.

The other response to "The Imitation Game" is exhibited in our own correspondence where -- if it were widely agreed that "The Imitation Game" was a faithful representation of Turing's life -- we would not have undertaken out ongoing collateral investigation wich imparts much deeper understanding of the man and his "issues," an understanding which ripples out to affect more people more deeply than merely factual dramatization.

The profoundest truths are paradoxical.

We get at truth more readily by myth than by history.

Which is to say that in filmatic biography, Truth is (often) better served by fiction.

***

"There should be no question in anyone's mind that Turing's work was the biggest factor in Hut 8's success. In the early days he was the only cryptographer who thought the problem worth tackling and not only was he primarily responsible for the main theoretical work within the Hut but he also shared with Welchman and Keen the chief credit for the invention of the Bombe. It is always difficult to say that anyone is absolutely indispensable but if anyone was indispensable to Hut 8 it was Turing. The pioneer's work always tends to be forgotten when experience and routine later make everything seem easy and many of us in Hut 8 felt that the magnitude of Turing's contribution was never fully realised by the outside world".^[78]

—Hugh Alexander

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