Judit Polgar said that the two most unrealistic things about the show were 1) Beth's substance abuse problems would've made it absolutely impossible to compete at that level no matter what her natural talent, and 2) the sexism was WAY more common and blatant in real life
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When Polgar was coming up irl the sexist men did not self-censor, at all -- the show is actually back-dating a 21st century idea of "political correctness" into the 20th The gatekeeping wasn't implicit or covert, it was overt and it was meanhttps://www.ibtimes.com/queens-gambit-deja-vu-hungary-chess-champ-polgar-3099903 …
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Then-world champion Garry Kasparov called Polgar a "circus puppet" and said women were better off having families than trying careers they couldn't psychologically handle like competitive chess (Kasparov ended up apologizing, and is one of the consultants on the show)
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Hell here's UK grandmaster Nigel Short saying the same thing in the distant era of 2015https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046374/Women-aren-t-smart-play-chess-game-requires-logical-thinking-says-British-grandmaster.html …
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Re: the story making Beth an addict It's blatantly unrealistic, and because it's unrealistic I think it is worth analyzing to a degree why it's there and whether it's gendered That to make her genius interesting Beth has to be really clearly badly damaged in some way
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I mean it's certainly not that there haven't been plenty of chess greats who were all kinds of messed up in their personal lives But the drinking and pill popping absolutely doesn't make sense (it's like portraying an NBA champion who gets drunk and hung over before a game)
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I don't recall the drinking before the game except the one game where she clearly blew it. But the thing about the tranquilizers holding self doubt at bay so she can focus on the game does seem a bit far fetched. ...
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What's weird is that they could easily have made them uppers and it would've fit period stereotypes and everything There were all these jokes from the '50s and '60s about how dexedrine ("dexys", "purple hearts", "French blues") were the wildly overprescribed "housewife's helper"
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But they wouldn't have given speed to orphan kids ... giving orphans tranquilizers like they were vitamin supplements is certainly realistic for the 50s ...
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Replying to @BruceMcF @arthur_affect and
... but the tranquilizers holding down her left brain self criticism so her right brain thinking can run untrammeled is awfully poppy psychology. At least it is held up as an impediment to being world champion level, but I reckon that'd also apply to KY state championship level.
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Yeah that's literally the bullshit cliché of what someone says to try to convince you they drive better when they're drunk or stoned
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At least Kasparov & Pandolfini picked games that were a bit like she had lived several years in a chess openings book while not being allowed to play ... though Benny Watts pointed out missing the best move in her state champ game, so maybe that was the tranqs.
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