Alan Turing: The Imitation Gay

It was impossible not to be moved by Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore's Oscar acceptance speech about his teen suicide attempt. However, The Imitation Game itself is a steaming pile of homophobic and misogynistic crap.

Wait, isn't the movie all "yayz for the gayz?" That's the bandwagon it tries to ride, but it does so by serving up a giant helping of last-century stereotypes that any Republican senator would find comforting. (It's also factually wrong in dozens of ways.) 

Above all, the Imitation Turing, though persecuted for his sexuality, demonstrates no sexuality at all in the movie. He's a celibate queer martyr. The most graphic scene isn't graphic at all. He merely talks about "paying another man to touch my penis." According to the movie, this handsome, athletic and charming man has to pony up cash just to get a hand job.

As Christian Caryl writes in the New York Review of Books, this movie "can't bring itself to show him kissing another man -- something he did frequently, and with gusto. And it most definitely doesn't show him cruising New York's gay bars, or popping off on a saucy vacation to one of the less reputable of the Greek islands" (as he did in 1953 after his hormone punishment ended).

The Hollywood Turing is just a collection of anti-gay clichés rolled into one -- a rich, precious and bitchy snot. He has no personal power, needing a good (straight) woman to take care of him and tattling to Winston Churchill when he doesn't get his way...

Mark Saltveit, Proud Queer Monthly.

Hahaha, I love this man.