“Bit Player:” desecrating the memory of Claude Shannon

I used to submit a lot of reviews to Amazon. Because Amazon is now operated by pigfucking NPCs, they’ve basically taken down most of my interesting and all of my negative reviews. I’ll be reposting them all here in some fashion; in part because they make up my notes on some of these books and movies, but also to gather Amazon good boy points; they should be paying me for providing them cover for all the fake reviews and removed negative reviews on their website.

I recently watched something on Amazon prime called “Bit Player” about the life of Claude Shannon. It was a desecration, and I won’t make it easier for people to watch it by linking to it. Shannon is portrayed as a doddering old imbecile; something that was never true, despite his tragic late life Alzheimer’s disease. This is what Shannon was like when he was old and had Alzheimer’s disease:

 

This is what he was portrayed as:

This turd of a fauxumentary is a strange mixture of interviews with a few people who knew Shannon, some completely irrelevant people, and a bunch of boring and cringey interludes where Shannon is portrayed by actors for … “reenactments.” Most of the footage of fictional Claude Shannon shows him at home being interviewed by a stunning and brave diverse female actress of color, who gives a convincing portrayal of someone who doesn’t actually exist, which as far as I can tell is the truest portrayal in the thing. These fictionalized conversations were supposed to have taken place in interviews at Claude Shannon’s house in the 1980s. Was it done by a “hidden figure?” If so, maybe the film maker should identify them! I’m pretty sure it wasn’t though; just as I am pretty sure Shannon would have kicked anyone asking such dumb questions out of his house no matter how stunning and brave.

As I said, Shannon is portrayed as a doddering boob; a sort of stereotypical absent minded professor: Mr Wizard with a couple of screws loose. While the poor guy basically died of losing his mind: he never acted this way, and the portrayal of him as such is profoundly disrespectful of a great man. I can’t even imagine the level of disrespect required to portray the man this way: imagine if Erwin Schroedinger were portrayed as a self-regarding, coughing, mystical-bohemian pervert who was also a doddering imbecile: that would be more accurate and slightly more respectful of Herr Dr. Professor Schroedinger’s legacy. 

A bunch of random, inarticulate academic irrelevancies and random gasbags are interviewed; presumably because they knew the filmmaker. There’s also Jimmy Soni, who I suppose qualifies as “random gasbag” though he at least wrote a book about Shannon. He did this despite being completely unqualified to do so, and despite having the fine literary qualities of the former McKinsey associate and Puffington Host hack that he actually is. He’s also an inarticulate plank of wood on camera. Well played, sir. They  got Rob Goodman who coauthored that atrocity with Soni, who is of similar timber, but he had the good taste to not be on camera as much. FWIIW their book was so bad, I actually couldn’t finish it. I’ll probably go back and slog through it: these people had no business writing what they did. They’re about as qualified to do so as I am to write a biography of Kautilya, which is to say, I could probably pull it off and fool a lot of people, because, like, wikipedia and I read his book or whatever, but I would be completely unqualified to do so. If you actually want to read a biography of Shannon; go read his Wiki page -it’s better.

They did manage to get Shannon’s actual daughter on film; this is a bit (you see what I did there) of a treat, as she (obviously) actually knew Shannon and kind of resembles him physically; arguably in manner as well. Somehow they avoided getting his son, who seems like a more  interesting person, but I guess he’s too white, male and talented or something. Or maybe he just thought the producers were arseholes, an obvious truism in hindsight. They  managed to talk to Kleinrock who knew Shannon, though he might as well not have been in the thing for all they got out of him: his main comment seemed to be that Shannon wasn’t excellent at arithmetic. Same story with Robert Gallager whose career was deeply intertwined with Shannon’s work, but whose comments can be summarized as “well he wasn’t a businessman.” Instead they let this nameless professorial ninny babble on most of the time:

How to make Shannon more boring? I know, we’ll get this squinty weird lady to talk about him

I could grouse endlessly about the narrative in this thing, how nobody putting this thing together has the slightest clue about important results in information theory or the historical trajectory of Shannon’s work and life. There are tons of people still around who could have made interesting comments about the life of Claude Shannon. You could have let Kleinrock or Gallager talk, but you probably would have had to ask them intelligent questions. There is Ed Thorp  the guy who actually did the roulette thing with Shannon; he’s around and loves to talk. Or maybe the dude who invented smalltalk, who was a Shannon grad student; or his brother (same) who invented computer graphics. Heck Shannon’s wife must have been alive for at least the beginning of the production. Instead they got fucking Nima (for the love of God Nima, get a haircut; it’s not Rodericks Chamber days any more), who gabbles on uselessly about black holes which have absolutely nothing to do with anything Claude Shannon worked on or had anything to do with. Shannon was the anti-black hole scientist: despite the nonsense popular with cosmological and noodle theory dingbats, pretty much all of black hole physics is worthless quasi-theological gibberish. Information theory is both incredibly useful and true. Everything Shannon worked on had applications in the actual world: quite unlike black hole contemporary “physics” douchebags who will never be held to account for their numerous sins.

Finally there is the title. “Bit player?” Shannon is the most important applied mathematician and inventor of the late 20th and early 21st century. Nobody else comes close. What would they call a documentary on Maxwell? “Waves haggis-man?” What would their clever title for Newton be? “Calculus apple-noggin sperdo?” Napoleon’s documentary is “big hat frog midget.”  How about calling your documentary of Freud “Pervert Schlomo” while you’re at it. What fucking pinhead planet are you from calling a documentary of Shannon “Bit player?” Die in a fire, you fucking philistines!

What I imagine happened here: the creators of this atrocity probably started out with good intentions. They knew a biography of this important and popularly underappreciated man was on the way, and so putting together an actual documentary would be a logical thing to do. They probably got the sparse interviews from the appropriate people credulous enough to speak with them (daughter, last grad student, ex-wife from the early 40s, etc), rather than showing them the business end of a boot, which was what the filmmakers deserved. But at the end of it, since they didn’t know what kind of useful questions to ask, they only had 10 minutes worth of interviews. So, they interview some academic irrelevancies they know or can get on film on the topic, let them carry it. Still only 30 minutes of footage (by this point, mostly irrelevant babbling by dimwits). Rent checks are coming due. Your friends are asking you when the Shannon bio will be out. So you hire a couple of actors to portray Shannon to fill in the blanks. Maybe a dimwitted cousin animator to knit it together.Then you call back some gaseous professor to speak more words because none of it makes any sense.

I mean, I get it; people have kids to feed, ex-wives to pay off. Mistakes were made. I can forgive a man for making a shitty documentary -most of them are. I can even forgive him for un-personing all the painfully white and male characters in Shannon’s painfully white and male  life. If you’re a white and male filmmaker in NYC, your friends might call you a racist for including too many white and male  …. and even protestant …. people in a documentary on an almost preternaturally white and male genius. That’s just how the world works these days of the decaying empire. Got to shove in as many diverse stunning and brave females as you possibly can, and point out that Shannon’s wife was better at math (well arithmetic anyway) than Shannon was. However, I can’t forgive his nastiness in his portrayal of Shannon, nor his desecration of Shannon’s memory.  Rather than a doddering old fool in the mould of Mr Wizard he was portrayed as, he was a literal wizard in human flesh. He was a powerful intellect and a no-nonsense man; a playful but fierce Merlin. Look at his  eyes man: he could probably light fires with the power of his mind.

Professor Shannon disapproves of this from beyond the grave

This film is nothing more than a desecration; worse than knocking over statues of great men or spray painting a religious edifice. The men who are responsible for this atrocity should never work in this domain again. Really, they should be tarred and feathered; shunned by all right-thinking people. 

 

Here, have you some actual Claude Elwood Shannon: