The Queen’s Gambit

Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig, 2019, Hulu.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, directed by Celine Sciamma, 2019, Hulu.
The Queen's Gambit, directed by Scott Frank, 2020, Netflix.
Mrs. America, created by Dahvi Waller, 2020, Hulu.
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, directed by Karim Aïnouz, 2019, Amazon Prime.

I'm very tired of people in movies telling me how hard it is to be a woman. I exist on the planet, I know. 

I'm trying to remember when this weariness and this disinterest began to descend. Certainly it was one of my favorite storylines as a teenager, whether it was coming in the form of Brian de Palma's adaptation of Carrie or in any of the Brontë sisters' novels. I needed, perhaps urgently, for the pain I felt internally to find external representation, and luckily I had much to choose from.

But now this insistence, isn't it hard isn't it hard, and all of the storylines that reinforce this message, they irk me. Perhaps the deep itch — somewhere I couldn't quite reach — began when Keira Knightley knocked out a menacing sailor in Pirates of the Caribbean with the pithy little comeback, “Like pain? Try wearing a corset.” But that was 2003, before that character — beautiful, strong but fragile, plucky but oppressed/traumatized through or because of her gender — would be in everything from arthouse to the superhero blockbusters.

So lately that itch has surfaced into something more like a full body rash. It emerged when I watched Greta Gerwig's Little Women in the same week as Karim Aïnouz's The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, both are about women's aspirations for art — in Little Women it's literature, in Invisible Life it's music — and how both are hindered unfairly from their goals because of their femaleness. Just in case you don't, you know, get it, each movie repeatedly explained to the audience the reason for their troubles (the female part) and how they would be liberated from those troubles (if they were treated like men), although Little Women was certainly working this angle harder than the more subtle Invisible Life. 

Kiera Knightly in The Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003.

There was a slow build of these stories, but we are now living through the crescendo. There is Mrs. America on FX. There is The Queen's Gambit on Netflix. There is The Great on Hulu. There is Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite in films. There is a whole fictionalized version of Hillary Clinton's life in a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld which is soon to be a series at Hulu. The narratives might be different — here a woman is trying to climb her way to the top of the chess hierarchy, here a woman is trying to climb her way to the top of the political hierarchy — but the structures of the story are similar, and in each one there is someone in historical garb — whether that be a petticoat or a cute little Chanel suit set — explaining to me, the audience, how difficult this ascent is. (Sometimes the woman dies, just to really get this point across.)

Some of these are good, some are not. Some are artful and some are not. And some are wildly successful and others are mostly ignored. But the more of them I watched, the more I wondered why we like this story, especially now. What is it about being a woman in today's society that makes us want to watch women fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago turn to the camera and tell us how hard it is to be them and therefore us. Because surely the identification is key to the enjoyment of this story. Because I am a woman, I am asked to relate, to see my story in these women's stories. To make sure this identification happens, the details of the oppression or the complications of the protagonist are all kind of sanded down so no quirks, no complexity will get in the way. Each woman will remain a flat, shiny surface so that I may merely see myself reflected back in her.

Telling these stories can in part be understood as an act of mourning. When the modern-day, ambitious woman looks around, she wants to see herself reflected not only in public life but in its historical record to help orient herself. Some of these people have been unfairly neglected — see the New York Times series on forgotten obituaries for people who made contributions in sports, medicine, politics, art, but because of their race, gender, or sexuality were not publicly mourned and their contributions accounted for and acknowledged upon their passing. And films like Hidden Figures, Harriet, and Radioactive can be understood as part of this project of correcting the written record, although they are tangential to the works considered here.

Carol Duarte in The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, 2019.

The fictional films, though, both imagine what could have been (a woman could have been a chess champion) and explain why it didn't happen (misogyny). This is also an act of mourning, of regretting what could have been, if only the work of women was taken seriously, or if only women were allowed to work in fields of their choosing. This also works as an explanation for the absence of high profile women chess champions now, as we did not have an inspiration to follow, as if one simply can never accomplish anything unless they first see it represented in a seven episode series on a streaming service.

Because each of these works is telling essentially the same story, even with the difference in genre and tone and historical epoch, they have very similar components. First there is the portrayal of the domestic space as a trap, one that will keep our protagonists from realizing their ambitions. In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, one sister in the family has already killed herself to avoid getting married, and now everyone is concerned the other one will leap into the sea as well. (Hélöise's ambitions are less clear. Simply to remain unmarried is enough, and it is expected the audience will already know why this would be important to her, as decades of feminist writing have hammered on this very idea, of the prison of the home and the freedom bestowed by work.) In Queen's Gambit, chess prodigy Beth's adoptive mother is in one such domestic prison when we meet her, financially and emotionally dependent on a distant, cold husband. She once personally showed much promise as a pianist, but she gave it up to start a family and now she lives in a haze of cheap beer and tranquilizers to manage her disappointment. In Mrs. America— which seems like it should be in the biopic category but deviates so wildly from the actual character of the women depicted that it seems to qualify as fiction for our purposes — our “Gloria Steinem” is rescued from motherhood by a very caring abortionist, who tells her that after her procedure she should “do whatever you want to do with your life.” It is a marriage and a pregnancy that destroys Euridice's dreams of becoming an important musician in Invisible Life.

Cate Blanchett in Mrs. America, 2020.

There is often a moment when someone will say directly the theme of the story, giving it a kind of tagline or thesis statement. Queen's Gambit is full of them. There's the headline of the Life magazine story about our young chess prodigy: “But what if that boy were a girl?” which seems to come directly out of the pitch for the show at Netflix. “You know about Bobby Fischer, right? Well....” But there's also Beth's insistence that her gender shouldn't matter, only her skill at chess, and another character warning her that “Men are gonna come along and wanna teach you things... you go on ahead and do just what in the hell you feel like.” Marianne, a painter of portraits in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, speaks the tagline of her film as she explains why she was kept from inheriting all of the knowledge and schooling provided to male artists: “Why not?” “Because I'm a woman.” In Ammonite, the director Francis Lee relies on visuals rather than language — there is the moment when the fossils discovered by Kate Winslet's character Mary Anning are shruggingly credited to the work of a male scientist, there is the lingering image of an insect — so colorful and free — trapped in a glass jar. 

And each of the works are filled with disappointing patriarchs. The missing father is a trope throughout each work to represent the lack of inheritance. Each woman or girl would like to build for herself a public life, to find meaningful work and contribute to society, but she finds herself without a model or a guide. This is provided to sons by fathers but denied to daughters. In Little Women the father is absent for most of it and useless when present. Beth is abandoned by both her biological father and her adoptive father in Queen's Gambit. Héloïse's father is missing from Portrait, and she is left only with a mother who has aligned herself with men so cannot understand her daughter's plight.

But false fathers also disappoint. Men have knowledge, they are carriers of tradition, and yet they withhold because they see these women not as colleagues or potential heirs but as either prey or threats. An early chess instructor gifts Beth with a doll instead of a chess set, another tells her “girls do not play chess.” The politician George McGovern disappoints Gloria Steinem and the other feminists by not taking their desires seriously, nor allowing them into his inner circle. (There is a woman receiving McGovern's tutelage, but she is of course an enemy to the feminist cause.) They are rejected by their fathers again and again, they are assessed and rejected as suitable heirs for the inheritance granted freely to their male competitors and colleagues, and they must fight off unwanted advances and unwanted marriage proposals to stay true to themselves.

Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit, 2020.

So far, so good. Yes, all of these things have been true for women. Unhappy housewives were lobotomized, slutty girls were imprisoned, women were murdered by loved ones or trapped in loveless marriages or died in childbirth, women had their work dismissed or credited to a man instead. A friend of mine is working in a traditional art form, one that requires years of instruction and tutelage. The man she went to for knowledge and access, the one who should have recognized her as an heir and fitting repository for the wisdom he had to pass down, instead put his hand on her crotch after she repeatedly rejected his advances. And now she must decide whether she perseveres in an artform she loves with all of her might and allows herself to continue to be preyed upon or whether she gives up to protect herself. Nor are women seen by men regularly as holders of that same kind of wisdom or knowledge — our crones have few male acolytes. Right now, there's a meme on Twitter as people post the “four books that started you on your current intellectual journey,” and both women and men are posting almost only books by men. Life on the planet is difficult for women. So why shouldn't art reflect this reality?

Instead, I find myself responding to these characters and stories in the same way that I responded to Barbara Ehrenreich's tweet that her daughter — who is a cop and a military expert — would make a great president. Brooks had written an op-ed for The Washington Post saying that what was needed in the new Biden administration was a woman in charge of the Department of Defense. Not any specific women, just a woman, as if that would automatically create change or make the world a safer place to live in. This is a boring point to worry over, and certainly it is boring to have to argue against this impulse again and again. 

But I finally realized what I found distasteful about all of these stories imagining women occupying space in public life and in the historical record: All of these characters seem to be on their way to a job interview. They are exceptionally pretty, exceptionally kind, exceptionally well dressed, exceptionally well behaved except for when they have one or two very relatable flaws. They are more empathetic and caring than the men they emulate, and they are ready for their selfies. They also fit into what Angela McRobbie has identified as the “perfection/imperfection/resilience” story arc of feminist women's media, stories of women proving their worth by being perfect, having relatable flaws that they embrace as part of their journey of self-discovery (usually something like a crooked tooth or a reliance on a socially acceptable substance and not like a hygiene issue), and creating resilience out of their hardship but excelling in the meritocracy through their excellence.

This is most clearly seen in Queen's Gambit, where Beth is perfect. She is a chess prodigy, naturally excellent as she effortlessly beats a room full of boys in a simultaneous exhibition. It's important that she is able to do so without sacrificing her femininity. She dresses very well, and despite having no mother to pass on information on how to run a house she is apparently a natural also at gardening, housekeeping, interior design. People remark repeatedly that she is an “intuitive” player, not a cerebral one, and that she plays emotionally. This is all language generally reserved to insult women, but here it is used as a secret weapon. Her flaws are very relatable to a contemporary audience: she drinks too much (very wine mom) but shows up hungover to her chess tournament with dewy skin and perfect hair. She has an addiction to tranquilizers, but it was imposed upon her by authority figures at the orphanage where she spent some time. She is a little slutty, but only enough to make it part of her allure. And the hardship she endured is all part of her resilience. Her chess knowledge is not just granted to her, she had to fight for it, meaning her victory is more authentic than it is for others. 

But it's also worth noting the way her story deviates from the story of Bobby Fischer, who does not exist in the Queen's Gambit Cold War universe. Beth can be a chess champion and overcome her addictions to find success sober. Bobby of course was psychologically fragile, racist, and an asshole. (It would be interesting for someone to illuminate the differences between the Walter Tevis novel the Netflix adaptation is based on, as Beth has been sanded, her hard edges worn down and her story managed to fit the standard feminist aspirational narrative.) Who would you rather have your daughter looking up to? The hard working, beautiful, recovered addict Beth, or the reclusive, eccentric, conspiracy theory-spewing Bobby? 

Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit, 2020.

The answer in Queen's Gambit is obvious. Every woman who looks at Beth looks at her as if she were extremely important. There's a bit of awe, the show really wants you to know how important role models are, how important it is to construct a fantasy of the woman who triumphs. Her victory is not just hers alone. We are meant to identify with it, it is success for all of us. 

This perfection imperfection resilience story pervades these works. Only Kate Winslet's Mary is allowed to be unpleasant, grumpy and unbeautiful. The others must be better than their male peers. In Portrait of a Lady, Héloïse is naturally kind to her servant, all hierarchies between them are erased. When the servant becomes pregnant, Héloïse and Marianne immediately try to assist her in ending her pregnancy. There is a sisterly solidarity here, everyone acknowledging the trap of domestic life and the importance of freeing this poor woman from her fate. The servant is of course very grateful and takes her acceptance by her employers as natural and not exceptional or overbearing. This also recurs in Gerwig's Little Women, where the family servant is also treated as a member of the family and seemingly takes care of them because she loves them and not because she is paid to do so. Little Women also took all of the hardship out of poverty, turning it instead into an aesthetic, a kind of cottagecore extravaganza. So again, despite being told they are poor but not seeing any real consequences of that supposed poverty on the screen, the March family can be aspirational, a tale of resilience, something “important” for your daughters to watch as Jo struggles to have her writing taken seriously by the grumpy disappointing patriarch editor. 

Adèle Haenel, Noémie Merlant, and Luàna Bajrami in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019.

What does it mean to identify with these characters? To find their struggles the same as my own? To see beautiful, hardworking women competently overcome their difficulties to win at the meritocracy and think, ah yes, me too. Of course, these works are enjoyable and light entertainments, with few of them presented as profound, with maybe the exception of Portrait. But the reason they are so easily and unquestionably absorbed is that they follow the dominant story feminism has pushed for decades (to the detriment of any wilder or more radical visions of life, gender, or meaning): the world is against you because you are a woman, but you'll prove them wrong, just by being yourself, you'll see. Life is presented as a mountain to scale, a competition to win, and one must be on your best behavior to achieve your position at the top. And if you are unable to achieve success, it will be because of misogyny, not any structural barriers like a decaying social welfare system or our decrepit institutions. 

These works bring to mind Hamilton and the huge impact it has had on popular culture. With its colorblind casting and fantasies of inclusion in the American dream, its influence can be seen in everything from Democratic campaign ads to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But at least Hamilton had within it an unintentional radical idea with its reimagining of the founding fathers as black and brown men: it doesn't matter who wields the power. Change the race or sex or religion, and the end result will still be the abuse of that power. Even if Alexander Hamilton had been Puerto Rican like the actor who played him, he still would have helped to create a nation of greed, oppression, and empire. Here these stories take it a step weirder: we would have had a better world if only women had been allowed to run it. 

Detail of Marianne’s painting in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019.