Critical Lens

The Imitation Game Through the Perspective of Lennard Davis

 

In the modern world, there are numerous aspects of our everyday lives that are concrete, or “set in stone”.  In other words, it is believed that there is only one way to go about certain things, and if such a manner of thinking is not adopted, there is something very wrong.  The idea that encompasses the aforementioned practice is that of normalcy – a concept which has truly made its presence known in our society.  Lennard J. Davis discusses this very concept in his piece “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century”.  In his text, Davis confronts the idea of “the norm” in our modern society and explores it from multiple angles.  Of such angles, one of the most important is that which involves disability.  In the case of Davis, the term disability encompasses several concepts ranging from actual physical disabilities to homosexuality and low economic status.  Davis claims that the attribution of “the norm” to such “disabilities” is detrimental to those who bear them because they are completely stripped of any dignity they may have and thus deemed useless outcasts.  The movie The Imitation Game deals heavily with the idea of code-breaking in a world war 2 setting, and this entire story is from the perspective of Alan Turing, a gay man who is undeniably intellectually gifted.  Much of what the primary protagonist identifies with would be scorned upon during this time period, and yet he does not conform to “the norm”.  Similarly, Turing’s wife deviates from “the norm” by working in a man’s field despite the scorn and doubt she receives from those who surround her.  Davis would very much encourage these practices, as he is a firm believer that normalcy is disruptive and harmful to those who identify with disabilities which deviate from the standard.

As previously mentioned, The Imitation Game is a film largely based around the life of Alan Turing, a man of great intellectual capability.  At the start of the film, it is clear that Turing is a very self-centered, arrogant man who prefers to keep to himself.  The American government puts a team together to break coded German messages (in the time of WWII), and despite not liking Turing’s personality, officials add him to the team solely based off of his extraordinary ability to think.  At a point in the movie, a woman by the name of Joan Clarke is added to the team, and she and Turing eventually fall in love and marry.  Between flashbacks from Turing’s childhood interactions and his actions in the present, it eventually becomes clear that he is gay – a concept completely unaccepted during this time period.  Thus, he is a gay man attempting to hide his homosexuality by marrying a woman.  Lennard Davis, with his perspective on normalcy, would most certainly scorn this practice.  In his text “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century”, he states, “The next step in conceiving of the population as norm and non-norm is for the state to attempt to norm to nonstandard – the aim of eugenics.  Of course such an activity is profoundly paradoxical since the inviolable rule of statistics is that all phenomena will always conform to a bell curve” (Davis 14).  Essentially, there is no use in attempting to correct a deviation from the standard as deviations will always be present according to the laws of statistics.  The bell-shaped curve itself indicates that a range of values exists in any particular situation, and while there is a large concentration on the median part of the curve, outliers always exist on the opposite ends.  This is, after all, what gives the bell curve its shape.  Thus, Davis states that a deviation from the norm is inevitable and attempting to correct this deviation is essentially useless.  By marrying a woman, Alan Turing is attempting to correct his deviation from the percieved societal norm (his homosexuality), and Davis would by no means support this.  Marrying a woman doesn’t change the fact that Turing is a homosexual man and therefore does not “correct” his deviation from the norm, making the action utterly useless.

Later in the film, Turing makes a complete 180 degree turn on his mindset, coming to terms with his homosexuality.  In one scene of the film, Turing pulls his soon-to-be wife to the side and says, “We can’t be engaged anymore, your parents need to take you back…I’m – I’m a homosexual.”  In addition to revealing to Joan that he is gay, Turing also names the code-breaking machine he creates after his long time childhood crush: Christopher.  Both acts demonstrate how Turing eventually comes to terms with his identity, as Davis would describe it.  Davis claims at one point in his text that “…one can say that the notion of fingerprinting pushes forward the idea that the human body is standardized and contains a serial number, as it were, embedded in its corporeality…Thus the body has an identity that coincides with its essence and cannot be altered by moral, artistic, or human will” (Davis 15).  Essentially, the intricacy of the fingerprint is representative of the idea that every individual has an identity specific to them.  Just like no two people on earth have the same fingerprint, no two people on earth have the same exact identity.  Davis also claims that changing one’s identity would be the equivalent of changing one’s fingerprint – simply impossible.  Alan Turing’s homosexuality is therefore a part of his identity that simply cannot be alterred or removed.  Davis would very much support Turing’s eventual acceptance of his true self.

The Imitation Game had an enormous focus on Alan Turing, but it also emphasized the struggle that his wife, Joan Clarke faced.  During the time of WWII, which is the time period in which the film took place, women were by no means expected to hold positions of power and/or high status, and yet Clarke rose from unfavorable circumstances to become a member of the group that eventually broke the German Enigma codes.  By the end of the film, it was clear that Clarke wasn’t just a “member” of the group that broke Enigma – she was a star player.  Without her intellectual contributions to the group and her emotional contributions to her husband, there is no denying that enigma wouldn’t have been cracked.  As Turing himself states, “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”  But who is to determine what can be imagined of an individual?  How is society able to make the assumption that a person is incapable of something simply because of their gender?  In the case of normalcy, who is to determine what “the norm” is?  Davis states in his text: “If a trait, say intelligence, is considered by its average, then the majority of people would determine what intelligence should be – and intelligence would be defined by the mediocre middle” (Davis 16).  If the intellectual capacity that one has is determined by people of average intellectual capacity, there is a clear limit on the capabilities of that one individual.  Who is to decide what intelligence is, and who gave anyone such an authority?  Joan Clarke is a woman working in a man’s field, and she faces adversity simply because those around her do not support the status she attempts to achieve while being a woman.  Following Davis’ perspective, if the general public (composed of a great majority of average people) ultimately determines the capabilities of a woman simply because of her gender, there is a clear limit being placed on her potential.  The fact that Joan Clarke faces this adversity and still rises to the top is quite incredible, and Davis would very much support such a feat.  The capabilities of an individual cannot be determined by a group of people, but rather by that individual themselves, and this is exactly what Clarke does.

The Imitation Game is an incredible film as it is, and viewing it through the lens put forth by Davis in his text “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century”, only serves to enrich it.  Both Alan Turing and his wife Joan Clarke face adversity in their respective circumstances; however, both are able to rise to the top and ultimately overcome such circumstances.  Turing was a gay man in an environment that was very hostile towards homosexuality, yet he decided to accept his identity rather than keep faking his happiness in his heterosexual marriage.  Joan Clarke was a woman who wanted to work in what was considered a man’s field at the time, and despite all odds she achieved exactly this.  Ultimately, Lennard Davis would be very commending of the film, as it serves to emphasize that normalcy is not defined by what society deems standard, and that any deviation from such a standard should not be scorned, but rather accepted as an extension of “the norm”.

 

Work Cited

 

1. “The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century.” The Disability Studies Reader, by Lennard J. Davis, Routledge, 2010.

 

1. “The Imitation Game = Descifrando Enigma.”