“The
Queen’s Gambit,” directed
by Scott Frank, 2020
One
conventional view of this Netflix series is that it is the ‘Bobby
Fischer story’ in drag. Fischer was a chess
child prodigy from Chicago, won the U.S. championship at 14, became a
Grandmaster at 15 and was probably on the autism spectrum. He was initially brought up in poverty by a
single mother. His long lost father was
a Hungarian mathematician, which is relevant to something else.
Is the
film “The Queen’s Gambit,” and Beth Harmon, its ‘on-the-spectrum’ female
orphan, really about the male Bobby Fischer?
Or is the real attraction of this film about a woman succeeding in a male-dominated
game? I think it is quite obvious that
it is the latter. This is a transparent feminist
series.
There
have been a number of films about Fischer but none have attracted the attention
of this Netflix series, which had 62 million who glanced or watched it. Why? It
is no accident that it comes as part of a recent number of popular STEM films
about western women doing well in science and math – “Hidden Figures,” “Contagion,” “Radioactive” and "Ammonite" come to mind.
Beth Harmon
is brought up in the 1950s in an orphanage, outside the paradigm of a typical 1950s
U.S.
female. She doesn’t give a damn for convention, religion, nationalism, men or
pop culture. She has no father or mother,
and instead gets close to a fellow black orphan and the orphanage’s male
janitor, who teaches her chess. Instead
of getting married and having a baby like the girls in her high school, she goes
straight to tranquilizers, drink and chess.
She rejects the religion of the orphanage, which shows up later. She eventually gets adopted by a cold father
and a repressed housewife who yearns for the life of a pianist. This is the U.S. 1950s and these are all
familiar feminist themes.
Then she
starts her rise in the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of chess, which in
the U.S.
of the time is the passion of a small sub-culture of geeky, broke men. In Russia and central and eastern Europe on the other hand, it is a
national passion. She plays in Kentucky, Vegas, Mexico City,
Paris and eventually Moscow.
STEALING
FEMINISM
I
contend that this film and book steal real chess feminism from the USSR and Hungary, substituting a fictional
‘American’ heroine. These countries were
on the other side of a ‘curtain’ separating the bureaucratic workers’ states
from the U.S.
and so verboten. Yet at the time in the
‘50s-‘60s these places where actually advanced over the U.S. in feminism and chess. For instance, an ERA was passed in the Soviet Union in 1917 mandating formal equality between
the sexes. Daycare creches were developed
in workplaces and women given pregnancy leave.
They gained the right to vote, the right to own land, the right to
abortion, and the separation of church and state. Women were allowed in combat. Child
illegitimacy was abolished, homosexuality legalized and divorce made easy. Alexandra Kollontai became the first female
government official in any western government as Peoples Commissar of Social
Welfare. This was light years ahead of
the conditions for women in the U.S.
In the U.S. on the other hand the ERA has not been
passed to this day, while the women’s vote was attained after the USSR. Abortion was made legal only in 1973 and it is
now under threat again. U.S. women on
their own couldn’t get credit cards, sports training, certain jobs and other
property rights until the 1970s. In chess,
the U.S.
right now has only had 6 out of 119 female international masters and 1 out of
37 female grandmasters. This is why I
call this series an exercise in stealing feminism.
 |
Vera Menchik
|
RUSSIANS & SOVIETS
The
Washington Post on 11/28/20 figured out this film is not about Bobby Fischer but about
women and now other publications have chimed in. Since the Harmon story is fiction, who might
be the real Harmon? The Post wrote about Vera Menchik, a wealthy girl in
Russia
who after the Revolution and the break-up of her family, took up chess. In 1927 Menchik won the female World
Championship and became the first women to play in men’s tournaments. In 1929 she tied a male Polish grandmaster
and was the first strong female chess player in the world. She was followed by 3 more females, one Russian, Lyudmila Rudenko and two Soviet Georgians, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia
Chiburdanidze in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, the latter two Grandmasters.
HUNGARIANS
Of most
interest to me are two sisters from Hungary, who learned chess as child
prodigies similar to Harmon. This
happened in the 1970s and 1980s before the collapse of the deformed workers' state in Hungary - Susan
Polgar and Judit Polgár. Susan, like her
sister, was a child prodigy trained by their father, an educational
psychologist. In 1984 Susan at the age
of 15 became the top-ranked female player. At 17 she was the first woman to qualify for
the Men’s Zonal Championship in 1986. In 1991 she became the 3rd
women to become a Grandmaster.
Judit
was also a child prodigy playing at 10 (and Grandmaster at 15) and tied as
winner in the U.S.
Open Chess Championship in 1998, similar to Harmon. She was the first female player to defeat a
reigning world number one in a game, beating the Russian Garry Kasparov. This is reminiscent of the final scene in the “Queen’s
Gambit.” In her career she also
defeated Karpov, Spassky and others. The
outline of their two stories are similar to Harmon’s. The Polgárs were quite cute to boot.
 |
Judit Polgar
|
Some of
these events happened after the 1983 book was written, so they are not models
for the book. That is not the argument
being made here, though a comparison of the book and series by Slate call
the latter ‘an escapist fantasy,’ as the book has a much tougher tone.
WOULD
the REAL BETH HARMON PLEASE STAND UP?
These
Russians, Soviet Georgians and Hungarians are the real Beth Harmons. But would a large U.S. audience watch their stories
on Netflix? No. This mainstream, stylish film is in essence a
U.S.
nationalist and Jenny-Come-Lately feminist ideological project. As part of this
patriots are supposed to take pride in the victory that Beth has against the
implacable Russian Vasily Borgov in Moscow. At least the film shows that Harmon is more
irritated with her CIA handler than the Russians. The Russians mob her with praise, shake her
hand, compliment her and she eventually mingles with them in a park to play
chess. The more intellectual USSR
and eastern Europe took chess seriously as a common skill for all - and you can
see it here. Hungarians play chess in their geothermal baths. Cuba
participated in female chess and to this day, Cubans play chess in the parks.
The
slant behind this film is a bit like the State Department feminists who
supported Carter’s war against the Communist government in Afghanistan, in
alliance with Islamic fundamentalists. The
Americans claim to be the preeminent fighters for women in the world. Yet the U.S. feminists’ anti-Communism
outweighed their commitment to the rights of female Afghans. The Communist
government was teaching girls in schools and giving rights to adult women,
unlike the Islamists who wanted girls out of the schools and women back under the thumb.
Ignoring
the USSR, bureaucratic Hungary and eastern Europe is evidently the duty
of all U.S.
feminists, male and female - even on the issue of chess! So please note that the real Beth Harmon did
not live in Lexington, Kentucky or was a man in drag.
P.S. - The actress playing Beth Harmon also appeared in the series "The Peaky Blinders," reviewed below. Here she is talking to Polgar on Twitter about chess: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1341081066619035648?lang=en
P.P.S. - Harmon spent time with Judit Polgar in a Netflix-organized chat after the show came out, making the connection explicit.
The
Kulture Kommissar
12/1/2020
Other
prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: “Feminists and Feminists,” “Socialist
Feminism and the New Women’s Movement,” “Fortunes of Feminism,” “Marxism and
the Oppression of Women,” “Revolt.
Revolt She Said. Revolt Again,”
“The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born.”
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