Reckoning With The Queen’s Gambit’s Flaws

It didn’t take long after The Queen’s Gambit was released in October 2020 for it to become highly popular. The buzz around the show, which follows fictional chess prodigy and orphan Beth Harmon as she navigates life as the first successful woman chess player in the 1960s, has naturally since died down. However, I still find myself wrestling with the miniseries on a regular basis. Namely, I’m stumped by my minimally wavering desire to love the series despite the red flags of its portrayal of women.

The issues are plenty and hard to ignore. For starters, the show’s two male directors decided to tell a fictional story about a first woman chess prodigy without including experiences of sexism. The only significant experience of sexism Beth faces is early in her chess career, when twin brothers Mike and Matt are minimally sexist toward Beth by questioning her ability to participate in a tournament. Yet the brothers soon become some of Beth’s closest, most trusted friends. In a New York Times article by Dylan Loeb McClain, grandmaster Judit Polgár says that the male chess players in the show were “too nice” to Beth, showing a good sportsmanship and respect that male players in the real chess world definitely lack. The series used an incident of minimal sexism to create a weak, heroic arc for two male characters and ultimately move away from exploring an issue that should be relevant to the protagonist.

The show climaxes with Beth having a big breakdown: Beth relapses to alcohol the night before a major match against rival and grandmaster Vasily Borgov. She then loses the match and, in her grief, isolates herself, whirling into a self-destructive spiral. In the depiction of this spiral, we follow an upbeat montage of Beth escaping her reality with excessive drinking. This breakdown is romanticized and sexualized in an unusual way; the mood of the montage, as maintained by the upbeat song “Venus” and Beth’s dancing, is fun and glamorous. This romanticized atmosphere is juxtaposed with Beth’s real struggle, especially in the key moments when she throws up in her trophy and knocks over a chess board. This establishes an image of Beth’s internal denial. However, in this same scene, Beth is positioned, clothed, and filmed in a sexualized way that lends no further purpose other than to please the male gaze. Beth is in her underwear, choreographed and placed to look attractive, and zoomed in on, solely to sexualize her minimally clothed state. While this romanticization may allow viewers to witness Beth’s substance addiction issues in a deeper way by exhibiting her denial, the sexualization of the scene was so unnecessary that it was discrediting.

Beth’s breakdown is ultimately ameliorated by the show explicitly using Jolene, Beth’s Black best friend, as a guardian angel stereotype. Jolene shows up just in time to save and repair Beth’s life, career, and relationships by giving her the money to compete in her most crucial tournament. The show’s writers seem aware enough of this stereotype to have Jolene literally state to Beth, “I’m not your guardian angel. I’m not here to save you.” Yet, that’s exactly what she does. We get minimal information about Jolene beyond the circumstances enabling her financial support of Beth. It’s harmful that Jolene’s character is a stereotype and is never truly developed in her own right.

All of these narrative choices hurt women and injure the show’s legitimacy. And yet, I still want to look fondly at the show. I love Beth’s character and her arc. I’m really impressed with how the story of her struggle with addiction and trauma is told. I found Beth to be a charming character and I completely see how empowering she can be. I love that she had a love interest, but the show still didn’t have an idealized, romantic ending. I love that she tended to resist and shatter the expectations of men and systems around her, like her insistence on fashionability despite criticism, her sheer self-confidence in early matches, and the perseverance to learn and play despite the limits of the orphanage, even though blatant acts of sexism weren’t depicted. I love that friendships and chosen family, namely Beth’s relationship with her adoptive mother and Jolene, were emphasized as a valid support system. I could never say enough about how beautiful the show was artistically; it’s a masterpiece from sets, to clothing, to hair, makeup, cinematography, sound design etc. But most of all, Beth was complex and flawed and lovable and strongly written.

Every viewer who realizes a piece of beloved media is flawed seems forced to view it as a failure. Perhaps my attempt to reconcile my continued enjoyment and reverence of this series with its major issues is my way of seeking permission to maintain an appreciation for the positive work that the show did without thinking of it as failed.

I want to say it’s not productive to write off a show that made some successes and some mistakes, but that’s very clearly a position of denial, and denial is a privilege. Ultimately, I know I cannot love the series without any caveats because I want to watch it without guilt. I can’t escape my reality as a woman by watching an erasive male portrayal of a woman, nor can I accept the perpetuation of harmful patterns like these in the media. Rather, when a show I like disappoints me or other people, I have a responsibility not to excuse it, but to discuss it, hold it accountable, and process its issues. It’s not beneficial to pretend that The Queen’s Gambit was feminist, but it is productive to face its issues and not shy from being critical.