Last weekend I decided to read The Queen's Gambit. Yes, the book that got turned into an inaccurate miniseries by Netshits.
People praise the show for encouraging women to play chess.
Here is the thing. We do have female chess players. Since 1941, we have female Grand Masters. My tiny ass country even has three sisters who are renowned champions and the youngest one is the head coach of the national men's team now.
The idea that women/minorities/gays need fictional characters like them to prove they can do THINGS is ridiculous and so condescending. The actual, real life people did the things. Take it or leave it, they are the way they are, if you need some prettified, perfect parable character who throws sassy one-liners to get into a thing then you were never passionate about it in the first place.
Specifically, in The Queen's Gambit novel the main character, Beth does just that. She isn't doing it because someone told her she can. She gets no support that way, people either don't care or just say "ah, this is your thing, have fun".
Which is why I'm annoyed by this show in specific.
It also makes it obvious she is not great at many other things and somehow idiotic people still YAS KWEEN the character. She is an alcoholic drug addict, who only cares as long as other people serve a purpose in her chess playing.
I think what slew me the most about the show was that for 90% of the series she really couldn't play chess at a grandmaster level unless she was coked to the gills on downers. Yeah, that's the kind of representation I would want if I were trying to YAS KWEEN it up over a fictional character.
In the book she could play chess, what she was really bad at was winding down and actually sleeping. For a lot of the story she took her pills to be able to fall asleep.
Another thing that makes today's idiots go YAS KWEEN is Beth being supposedly independent, when in fact she judges people's usefulness based on if they can help her chess be better.
She literally stops caring the moment she is better than the other person. Harry Beltik moves into her house after her adoptive mother dies and they have sex... until she realises she outgrew him in chess. She gets pissed at Benny when she realises his life is not just chess, but he also plays poker to pay his bills.
In a way I get why this appeals to shitty people.
Sounds like a majority of "strong, independent women" in the world today that also bag on how how "oppressed" they are by the "patriarchy" and how evil men are.
Thing is, Beth is not evil or calculating. She is just so single-mindedly into chess she literally has no life outside it. She never studied a trade or got a degree, never had other hobbies, never developed relationships, never learnt any life skills outside chess.
But she is also not a happy character, I think. She is not supposed to be seen as a role model.
It's the non-romantic version of how girls see Batman's Joker. You are supposed to think he is fucked.
I was about to say this.