MovieChat Forums > The Queen's Gambit (2020) Discussion > Was relived to see they didn’t lean to h...

Was relived to see they didn’t lean to hard into........

posted 4 years ago by Silverman (270)
17 replies | jump to latest

..... The feminism angle. To me, it seems it was part of the story, but only so much as a woman playing a male dominated game at a world class level was novel for the other characters. It wasn’t the crux of the story, and once she had established herself, the story moved past it.

I was also relieved to see they didn’t lean hard into the “evil soviet” angle, with her being drawn into espionage by cunning soviet malefactors, or the soviets trying to “rig” the game by messing about outside of the matches.

[–] Quasimodo (16388) 4 years ago

SPOILERS

Yes it was refreshing not to be beaten about the head with the "woke" bat. Both the book and the TV show were written by men so that might have had something to do with it.

Although the show was still written to pander to a female audience it seemed to me. It was a variation on the Cinderella story. Beth was cruelly rejected by both her biological and adoptive fathers and she was raised in an emotionally cold orphanage. But her female powers overcame the situation in the end but not without a great struggle.

Mr Shaibel recognised her true worth, befriended her and taught her chess. Many of the men she competed against in chess admired and even loved her and when she needed them most at the end they flocked to her aid. Because Beth was a Queen and the men were her true and loyal subjects.

I guess the writers of the TV show know how to give the customers what they want. Even so no complaints from me, I enjoyed it very much.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Interesting take. But to be honest I really think they rallied around to help her simply because they considered her one of their own. A former competitor, now colleague/friend who's on the biggest stage in Russia's Finals against Borgov. Boy or girl, I really don't think they would have acted differently.

I really really liked this show too. I don't remember the last time I did that but I may very well rewatch it soon !

[–] bounce (82) 4 years ago

My 2p...

Everyone that is "close" to her, and she to them... are broken. or at the very least struggling socially.

(by my perceptions anyway - YMMV!)

Schaibel and Beltik - social misfits generally (outside of chess certainly)
Birth mother - MH issues
Adopted mother - alcohol abuse, desperate
Both "fathers" - a***holes
Watts - so intense has no life outside chess - the only character he seems to know that is not a chess player is the French girl who herself appears an unfulfilled social butterfly
Townes - lost

Thanks for listening to my drivel!

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

Ok, here is my interpretation SPOILERS BELOW

So I think that Beth sees herself as very isolated. Her adoptive mother fixes this for a while but then after she dies Beth is isolated again. She feels abandoned by her biological and adoptive fathers. Mr Schaibel teaches her chess but their chess playing is stopped when her pill-taking is found out so she doesn't feel like she has built a real connection with him. So she goes off and lives her life and always feels isolated and like no one cares about her, and that is why she takes the pills and alcohol, to temporarily release her from her anxiety and anger at people abandoning her. Then, in the last episodes, she realises that all along, all these people have been rooting for her and supporting her where she couldn't see, eg Mr Schaibel instead of being mad that she didn't return the $10 has been keeping track of her progress all these years and kept the photo of the two of them, and her friend showing up at her house and lending her money. And the last step is that Townes shows up and says he wants to be her friend, and then her chess competitors from her early chess career call and have been working all night to come up with a winning strategy for her, and she realises she is not alone and that lots of people care about her, and that is what allows her to release herself from the anxiety and anger that caused her to need the pills/alcohol. So in the last match, she can see the moves in her head even though she hasn't taken any pills, because she no longer feels that anxiety of being alone.

[–] Quasimodo (16388) 4 years ago

Yeah that's all pretty good and accurately describes the way things happened. But how realistic is it ? Beth could be a difficult person to like at times even without the pills and alcohol. She wasn't exactly the most sociable or warm and cuddly person, just the opposite quite a bit of the time.

That's why I liked the scene with Benny Watts blowing her off after she gave the Christians their money back and then asked him for the money (way to make friends and influence people Beth !). " Don't call me again ! " he said. That's the sort of reaction I would expect someone like Beth to get more often than unqualified support.

But I still like my theory that Beth was a Queen. She is the Queen of ' The Queen's Gambit '.

- Her mother was the Lady of the Lake.
- Beth survived the car wreck without a scratch. " It was a miracle."
- People kept helping her and loving her in spite of how she behaved. Because " She was something ". Or she was remarkable, or extraordinary.
- Jolene her Fairy Godsister turned up just when Beth needed her most to save her from alcoholism, crucially take her back to the Orphanage and stump up the $3,000 for her Russia trip.
- The Russian fans reached out to touch her as though she had super powers or something.
- At the end when she beat Borgov he tells her to take his King because it was hers. It was her game.
- Then she refused to go along with what the US Government wanted her to do and instead went to the old chess players ( her subjects ) and allowed them to adore her.

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

I need a grinning emoji here. It was 0% realistic. I love your interpretations, they are wonderful. Very writerly! I bet you are correct about all of that.

[–] Quasimodo (16388) 4 years ago

You are too kind. It's a pity the show's writers aren't here to confirm or deny. But it's fun to speculate and with TQG there is a lot of material to work with. Brilliant writers on this show.

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

Agree, the writers are terrific. You have good writing insights! You might enjoy this guy's blog, and he has a book too (which I bought, has really increased my enjoyment of tv watching. It sort of "made everything new" to see it through the writers' lens and now I am re-watching old shows and seeing all sorts of things I didn't see before, which is really fun.)

http://www.secretsofstory.com/2017/07/interweaving-irreconcilable-theme.html

I think irreconcilable themes are more for long-running tv shows, whereas TQG was more like a really long movie. In movies, you are allowed to reconcile your theme at the end (ie let the hero fix their problem; if this were a tv series that was planned to go indefinitely, she would have to go back to drinking and taking tranquilizers next season and essentially wrestle with the same problem forever). Anyway, in one of the entries on the left, he links to one of his posts that says, "Build a theme tree" which is what I think your insights relate to.

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

I do think there is a gender angle in there.

MORE SPOILERS

I think Beth has seen men as being abandoners who are not worth anything, because of how both her fathers behaved. The other women in her life do not correct this attitude because they have been abandoned too, eg her mother and adoptive mother (even her childhood friend who is being wooed by a white, married lawyer and is a bit cynical about it). I think when she realises how Mr Schaibel and the chess guys have been willing to support her in the background, she realises that the way she has been interpreting things was incorrect. (Even the thing with Benny, where Chloe says Benny is in love with himself, but later on, he tells her that the reason he declined to come to Russia with her is that she didn't want to be with him, and he is the one who gathers all the other chess guys to come up with a strategy for her. So her conclusion that Benny doesn't care about other people was erroneous).

I didn't think the guys thought of themselves as her subjects (although the adulation of all the other chess players talking about how she was the best chess player they had ever seen was a bit much, I thought. But, I'll allow it since she's the protagonist, ok). I thought that it was that she realised they were her friends, and they were helping her just as they would help a male chess player.

The thing at the end where she plays with the old man, I thought was essentially her honoring Mr Schaibel.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I agree with you. It really wasn't too moralizing and everything was not clean cut, good or bad. Like sometimes I was on Beth's side, other times I thought she was being a bitch and kind of hated her. I think it showed the complexity of people, relationships and life in general. It was fun to be walking on that tightrope as a spectator.

[–] Iffy762 (1334) 4 years ago

I thought there were some feminist aspects but it didn't overwhelm the story the way it does in some shows. Also, I felt that the story was not as anti-man or as "women are better than men" as some shows are.

SPOILERS

When she is winning games in Russia, her fan crowd starts very small but is all women. And with each game, it gets a little bigger, but still women. These are all Russians, so they shouldn't naturally be her fans because her goal is to beat their national champion. So I think the implication there is that because she is a woman and they are all women, that they feel a kinship with her and that is why they support her. And then when the crowd reaches a certain size, there are men in it, I guess because she is just so good, and also because the way she treats the other players is very respectful.

[–] Forky (1739) 4 years ago

i would lean into her pretty hard

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 4 years ago

lol

😎

[–] Forky (1739) 4 years ago

smart!

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 4 years ago

😎

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 4 years ago

I agree.

😎

[–] Ranb (11294) 5 months ago

Beth does object somewhat to the Life magazine article in that they emphasized the fact she was a girl. She wants to be known as a chess master, not a girl chess master.