Thursday, 27 November 2014

Potterisation II - cliché becomes history

 Some people have said they can notice the inaccurate language and anachronisms while still enjoying films like, for example, "The Imitation Game". I can to some extent but I get annoyed because the language is just a symptom of the Potterisation syndrome. This goes deeper and involves over-simplification, sentimentalising, stereotyping and making crude.

 In this film it leads to a falsification of an important part of British and computer science history and, as several articles have pointed out, does not do justice either to a great mathematician or, indeed, to the whole Bletchley team.

Potterisation - The Imitation Game

 Why did "The Imitation Game" make me cross? I was looking forward to it and I find Cumberbatch a compelling actor. It was the American English that (no - correction) which (BrE) alerted me to what I will call the (Harry) Potterisation of British culture.

One of the Turing character's first lines is: "I could really use (something) right now." Oh no, here we go. Soon we have schoolboys at Sherborne School in the 1920s talking American English: "We are the smartest students in the math(s) class." (Ok, they drew the line at calling it "math" there and throughout.) But soon we have Keira Knightly's character saying: "I'm not going to be home all day fixing (yes, fixing!) your lamb"!

The saddest thing is (is) that most people loved it and didn't even notice that the characters spoke in a modern, americanised way in the 1920s-1950s setting. Globalisation seems to mean americanisation, starting with English-speaking countries. Vive la French attitude to culture and language: they may hold out longer.