The Oscars, Gay Rights, lack of Sex and “The Imitation Game”
In the campaign for this year's Oscars, a vote for "The Imitation Game" is a vote for gay rights and justice. At least, that's how its backers are framing it.
The film is about Alan Turing, a British man who cracked a Nazi code during World War II and was later prosecuted because of a relationship he had with another man. It’s up for eight awards at Sunday's Oscars, including Best Picture.
As Charlie Rose said on "CBS This Morning" last month, if you poll 100 people in Hollywood about who's the most effective at getting their film's an Oscar win, it's Harvey Weinstein, whose company produced the film. And he's making a political argument for why the Academy should consider "The Imitation Game."
A Weinstein Company video about the film posted online last month ties it closely to the gay-rights movement, with black-and-white photos of Turing interspersed with color photos of gay-rights demonstrations today.
And then there's the quotes used by people like Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin ("Alan Turing is a hero to the LGBT community"), GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis ("'The Imitation Game' is an important film that preserves LGBT history"), Michael Kors and Anderson Cooper.
Griffin was also quoted in a full-page ad placed in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times asking the Academy to honor Turing and for the 49,000 other men who were prosecuted for their same-sex relationships to be officially pardoned, as Turing was in 2013.
"Honor the man. Honor the film," reads a Los Angeles billboard.
Turing's sexuality isn't as central to the film as it is to the film's Oscar's campaign. But in a political Oscars that boasts Best Picture nominees like "American Sniper" and "Selma," the campaign fits right in.
Hunter Schwarz covers the intersection of politics and pop culture for the Washington Post
The words below art of Oscar-nominated director Morten Tyldum says none were necessary as Alan Turing’s life and relationships were ‘all about secrecy’
He may have edged out more experienced film-makers such as David Fincher and Clint Eastwood for a best director nomination at this year’s Oscars, but The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum is still being forced to defend his film against accusations that it underplayed Alan Turing’s homosexuality.
Ahead of tonight’s Oscar ceremony, Tyldum has finally spoken out on the subject in a recently published interview with Variety. The Norwegian director denied that the biopic of the pioneering British codebreaker and computer scientist soft-pedaled the issue because of a fear of limiting the film’s box office, currently at $160m (£103m) worldwide.
“It was not because we were afraid it would offend anybody,” Tyldum said. “If I … had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that he’s heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it — just to prove that he’s gay?”
“I’m not shying away from it. His whole relationship, how he falls in love and the importance of him being a gay man, was all about secrecy.”
Tyldum admits that Turing was engaged in affairs during the period covered in the film but believed that it wasn’t relevant to include any other references to this.
He had some sexual partners, but it was few and far between. The only reason to have a sex scene in the film would be to satisfy critics who feels that every gay character needs to have a gay sex scene.”
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