Running head: THE QUEENS NEXT MOVE WISE 1

The Queen’s Next Move

Conner Wise

1 February 2021

Mass Media Criticism

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The Queens Next Move

History was made earlier this year with the NCAA football organization having the first

women step onto the gridiron. Sarah Fuller, a 21-year-old goalkeeper for the Vanderbilt women’s

soccer team, had the opportunity to tackle two sports in her college career. Fuller received the

call and immediately contacted her parents asking them what she should do. Her parents were in

full support of it and later called back Coach Mason stating, “I’ll be there in 30 minutes” (NCAA

2020). On November 28th, Fuller stepped onto the field only having a couple days of practice

against the 2-5 Tennessee Volunteers (ESPN 2020). With two minutes left of the first quarter,

Fuller finally got a chance to show the world why she was on the field. After a short yard running

touchdown, fuller kicked the extra point dead center through the uprights leaving everybody

cheering in the stands. She later came on the field to kickoff, kicking it 27 yards.

While some recognized the historical event and congratulated her for the

accomplishments, not everyone was supportive. Within minutes of hearing about the “publicity

stunt” Vanderbilt was doing, the Twitter world does what it does best and scrutinized her for the

27-yard kickoff. Twitter feed was buzzing with insulting comments such as, “Can we get an Only

fans instead?” and “Someone better tackle the fk outta her. Make her realize it’s 2020, but you

shouldn’t be on the mfkn field.” (Emily Spada 2020). Insulting her purely based on the fact that

there was a girl on the football field. The stigma that society has on gender conformity in the

sports world has completely been obscured by social media. People will always find the

negatives out of a situation and do anything to keep women out of men sports. Fuller responded

to the slander with a very professional statement; “I know there are probably people out there

who are like 'She doesn't even play football,’” Fuller said. “But I was the right person for the
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job... I think I had all the right skills and everything to be myself, to represent my family well, to

represent the school well, and I think that was enough.” (Cash M. 2020).

Unfortunately, we can see that still to this day there is an opinionated viewpoint when it

comes to sports where women cannot participate in the same games that men do. While there is a

stigma for men being “better” at physical sports, where is the line drawn when the game is not

physical, but mental instead?

Historically, there has always been a stigma surrounding sports culture. Too often sports

are perceived as being male dominated leaving females unable to gain the same acceptance and

prestige as male athletes. Depending on the sport, women are seen as not strong enough or not

smart enough. Fuller’s story is just one in a long line of narratives of women being

underestimated in the sporting arena. Thus, this paper will dig into another example of an

overlooked woman in sports by examining the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit and how

women are looked at when getting involved in a male dominated game, chess.

Background (5)

History of the Queen’s Gambit

Based on a best-selling novel by Walter Tevis in 1983, The Queen’s Gambit takes place

in the 1950’s telling the story of a young prodigy named Beth Harmon in the game of chess.

Being raised in an orphanage, Harmon did not have the best memories growing up after her mom

died in a car crash at only the age of nine. Not having a parent figure in the picture, Harmon does

not have the best decision-making skills and falls into a deep hole with abusing prescription

drugs that the orphanage supplied to the kids to make them sleep. Soon enough, Beth figured out

that if you fought off the first 30 minutes after taking the tranquilizer, she could do some

interesting things in her head such as visualizing chess pieces and thinking out every move
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without even being next to a chess board. She was introduced to the game of chess by the janitor

at the facility who played by himself when he had some free time. Beth being the nosey person

she is, begged Mr. Shaibel (custodian) countless times to play and to teach her how to play,

while Mr. Shaibel consistently turned her down. He eventually lets her play one game and

realizes how talented she is at the game leading to them playing every day. Mr. Schaibel

introduces Beth to the high school chess club coach, and he offers her to start coming to the

practices at the high school. She takes this offer to get out of the orphanage facility and is

shocked by how bad these teens were. Little did she know that these players were actually some

of the best players in the state, she was just a lot better (White 2020).

Beth was in the orphanage until she was 14 where she was adopted by a housewife and

an abusive cheater. While Beth continues her chess drive, she realizes that the tranquilizers

played a significant role within her playing capability and that she thought she needed them to

win. Her foster mom gets sick and needs the exact tranquilizers that she was originally taking at

the orphanage. Beth’s drug addiction problem leads her down a few bad roads that she does not

know how to handle.

Gender and Chess

Regarding the gender role in the game of chess, men have dominantly been the better

players at the game with little to no women having an impact that Beth leaves. Ever since chess

officially became a competitive game, there was a time where there were no female winners at

these chess matches let alone any participants. A grandmaster title in the game of chess is

awarded to someone who is an expert at the game. It is the highest title you can receive above

world champion but to achieve this, you have to win multiple world championship tournaments

which is granted from the FIDE organization.

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According to David Smerdon, an assistant professor of economics at the University of

Queensland, only 37 out of the 1,600 total grand masters are women leaving the proportion

extremely one-sided. Looking at some of the statistics throughout the game of chess, women

have always been perceived as inferior as they represent less than 5% of registered tournament

players worldwide (Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 38). Tying this back, a critical problem to think about is

whether males are better at the game or did women never have the opportunity to achieve these

accomplishments. A hypothesis was done by two psychology scientists who measured the

number of hours played, hours allocated towards the game of chess, hours participated in chess

tournaments, and time with personal trainers/coaches. The previous studied concluded that

women were less mono-thematically to devote all their time to a board game such as chess,

however this was proven wrong by Chabris and Glickman who came to the conclusion that both

males and females had an equivalent drop-out rate (Chabris Glickman 2006).

The stereotyping does not stop there however as there were many contributing factors to

why women might have a disadvantage to the game of chess. When no females were

participating in chess, researchers started studying the aggressiveness in men compared to

females. Looking at some of the terms in chess, there are certain words where the connotation

may seem a bit more aggressive such as attack, destroy, battle, and many more. These terms are

interpreted to put a bit of real-life war and competition into a simple board game to make it that

more competitive. In a 1996 study done by two neurologist, men and women’s aggressiveness

was studied by a series of test questions and compared to see which gender was predominately

more dominant and aggressive. Studies showed that men showed higher level of aggressiveness

by a vast amount leading to the conclusion that men are more willing to play offensively and

more willing to take risks leading to more victories compared to women.

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However, in one study done by a group of students in the chess club at University of

Connecticut, the results did not match up. Using an online database of 180,000 players,

researchers put males against females in a game without them knowing what gender they were

against. When the players did not know who they were playing, the results were completely

stagnant. When the players found out who they were going up against before the game, females

performed extraordinarily worse than when they did not know (Smerdon 2021). Even Nigel

Short, an English grandmaster stated that ‘Women just don’t have the killer instinct in them’

(Bettencourt & Miller 1996). As studies have shown that there is no psychological background

or evidence to prove that women have a disadvantage in the game of chess, the question still

lingers as to why the stigma on women being involved with the game of chess has not changed

over the last century.

Method

To look at this problem in a more broadened spectrum, we cannot just look at this from a

chess perspective, but sports in general. Like mentioned before with Sarah Fuller, the backlash

she got from making history in the NCAA (the sports world in general) was nothing that

represents equal opportunity, nor represents the movement of women empowerment over the last

two decades.

One way to examine stories such as Fullers or The Queen’s Gambit, is through Lacan’s

concept of Phallocentric Language which is the belief that all discourse is created to favor

masculine terms and social expression. Phallocentrism is the study of the dominant masculine

power and the lack of it shown through women (Rine 2010). Using this method, I will discuss

some of the key examples shown in The Queen’s Gambit where it is shown how women never

got the right opportunity that the men did in this TV series. I will also discuss the concept of the
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male gaze which is another ideology developed by film theorist Laura Mulvey and has been

prominent throughout media arts through the last few centuries. As stated in the Spectatorship,

Power, and Knowledge chapter of the Comm 308 reader written by Daniel Croucher, “The gaze

is not the act of looking itself, but the viewing relationship characteristic of a particular set of

social circumstances.” Using these two theories, I will break debrief The Queen’s Gambit and

how these two theories are still prominent in today’s media.

Analysis

With the Queen’s Gambit taking place in the 1950’s to the 1960’s, something that must

be taken into consideration is how the director, Scott Frank, wanted to portray the role of women

in the competitive gaming world. Sixty to seventy years ago is not the same world we are living

in today with women having a lot more say and more acceptable to voice their opinion in today’s

society then back then. That being said, let’s look at one of the first examples shown of Lacan’s

phallocentric premise in the second episode of the Netflix series.

In this episode, Beth Harmon just got adopted and has finally left the orphanage after six

years. Harmon finds an open tournament that is being held in her hometown that she really wants

to participate in. After finding the dates and times, Harmon goes up to the head desk managers at

the chess tournament and begins to fill out paperwork enrolling her into the tournament. Right

off the bat, the two male managers start to question her capability to do well in the tournament.

One of the managers, Matt, asks Harmon, “What’s your rating?” Harmon responds with, “I don’t

have a rating.” In the field of chess, if you are going to participate in a tournament, you need a

rating to see where you will start off and who you will first play (Bettencourt 1996). Matt later

goes on about how they do not have a women’s section which Harmon does not care about, so

she doesn’t respond. Harmon not responding to this narky remark Leads Matt to state, “I’ll put
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you in the beginners’’ not thinking she is qualified enough to play with the men. Harmon finally

sticks up for herself lashing back stating in an angry voice, “I’m not a beginner.” Harmon and

Matt go back and forth arguing eventually leading to Harmon asking about being put into the

open (the bigger reward bracket) instead of being in the general bracket due to unrated rank.

There is no rule saying that she cannot enroll into the open but the two men working the desk are

trying their best to not allow her into the open stating things such as, “There are three guys in

there with ratings over 1800, they will eat you alive.” Harmon does not respond again and puts

her money down for the open tournament (Frank, 2020, 33:23 to 34:10).

To start off with this scene, this is one of the first scenes where Harmon shows some self-

improvement and character development since being in the orphanage, so it is quite nice to see

her stand up for herself and being confident in her chess capability. Looking at the stereotyping

in this scene is something that cannot go unnoticed though. It is very obvious that the two male

desk workers do not want a woman in the open let alone in the tournament. Lacan’s phallocentric

ideas are very prominent here as there is obvious judgement in the relationship between the men

and women here. This is a very important scene as well because of Harmons current situation.

She has never been given the opportunity to play the game she loves, and when she finally gets

the opportunity, she is not getting the respect that she deserved when she could easily beat

everyone in the competition. Abigail Rine (2010) explains women often face solid sexual

boundaries or “glass ceilings” in how they are valued. Rine states, “‘Woman’ is always

associated with passivity, functioning as the paralyzed other that orients the active, masculine

self. Cixous asserts an urgent need for writers and theorists to undermine the amalgamation of

logocentrism and phallo-centrism, a system that sustains itself through the subordination of the

feminine” (Rine 3).

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What Rine is trying to say here is the word women already has a connotation to it

depending on what the context of the situation is. Having a conversation regarding women and

men being involved in the same category, people have already formed an idea about this

subconsciously, yet it does not ever come up in the conversation because of the norms we live in

today’s society. Back in the 1950’s, a man telling a woman to stay home and basically be a

housewife would not be an odd thing to hear. Throughout time, this social norm has been

frowned upon and now looked at in a sexist way which is why this subconscious way of thinking

is still in the back of our heads, just not conversed about unless bringing up one of the many

negative, passive conflicts that our society deals with today.

The Gaze

While the phallocentric approach to the Queen’s Gambit is very noticeable in certain

scenes, something that may go unnoticed to someone who just enjoys watching a TV series is

how the male gaze is shown. When looking at media arts throughout time, there is a very

common trait that seems to stay and does not get noticed a lot and that is the male gaze. The

male gaze has been shown in every century from paintings to now television shows and movies.

Women’s status as being sexualized beings or maternal figures goes along with Lacan’s

phallocentric premise, but this is more visual. Think about old 1700 paintings of women. If you

look at multiple paintings, the women are always undressed and being looked at more as objects

rather than human beings. This is purely for the male’s view and not for both genders. Looking

at current media such as Tv shows and movies, we can see this occurring often with iconic shots

such a Marilyn Monroe’s famous dress scene or even Playboy Bunny’s magazines. The one

common trait they share is sexualizing every scenario.

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The one key difference in the male gaze however is the different types of viewing

relationships. As Croucher and Cronn-Mills discuss, the individual term of “the gaze” gets

broken down into three different sections. The first term that is mentioned is scopophilia. This

term refers to the pleasure in looking at something. The second term that is mentioned is

exhibitionism which is the pleasure of being looked at. The last term is the term that I will focus

mainly on and that is voyeurism. Voyeurism is the pleasure in looking at something while not

being seen which has a negative connotation attached to it.

The Gaze is subtle, and it often is not obvious to the audience until you realize it’s

present in almost all forms of popular media. It can only be a camera angle in a subtle way which

leads me to the connection between the gaze and the Queen’s Gambit. While watching this

series, there is always an iconic shot right before Harmon sits down for a match. The camera

angles always start underneath the table viewing the legs of Harmon panning all the way up to

her face. Harmon tends to wear dresses that show off her legs and get more conservative as they

get to the midsection of the body which was a very common way to dress in this time period.

However, this is filmed for the males’ eyes and done on purpose. Legs have always been a

sexualized body part in every extraditing media source and is still prominent in today’s media.

The viewing of Harmons legs cues the audience to know she is about to begin a chess match, yet

I do not like how they set this up. The directors and producers could have cued this any other

way, instead they chose to shoot the legs because they knew this was going to be a film targeted

at women rather than men, so they needed to bring the male viewers up somehow.

Looking at Vanity Fairs article on Anya Taylor – Joy after The Queen’s Gambit aired,

some of the statements that Joy comes out with also seconds this idea. In the interview between

Anya and Vanity Fair, some questions were asked to Anya about how she was sexualized in this
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series with something that is not usually thought of visually appealing which is chess. Anya

stated that on set her and some other employees used to state, “Were bringing sexy back to

chess” (Hoby 94). This series was a great hit involving women being involved with something

that might not be considered sexual, but the directors and producers made it this way to get

viewers in and it worked. In the same article, Hoby also brings up that chess sets sales went up

125% weeks after the show first premiered. While it is good to see that this can have a positive

impact on getting more women involved with chess, the sexualization of the character Beth

Harmon was what made people want to get more involved. Beth is proposed to be a very

attractive female in this series and the producers and directors used this to bring views in.

Digging deeper into this, Anya also stated, “The American movie industry has been undergoing

an overdue reckoning with racism and misogyny” (Hoby 94). Even the way that Anya learned

how to hold the chess pieces was supposed to make the audience feel a physical attraction

towards her. Anya goes on stating, “The way Beth summarily fishes a clacking piece up into her

palm with an elegant twist of the wrist becomes something of a signature – a satisfying, haptic

flourish” (Hoby 94). The way camera angles in the cinematic world portray a character have

everything to do with what kind of appeal they are trying to portray for that character and in this

case, it is obvious that they want Harmon to look appealing.

While the camera angles shooting Harmon is a great example of the male gaze, I want to

focus on a specific scene with Beth Harmon and her competitor, Townes. In season one episode

three, “Doubled Pawns”, there is a scene where Beth is viewing the arena she is playing in just

getting a feel for her surroundings. She sees Townes, who she is familiar with, and he begins

following her around talking to her. They are both staying in the same hotel and Beth is starting

to win a lot of matches, leading to Townes asking Harmon if she would be okay with him doing
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a photo shoot of her for the national chess magazine. Beth being only 17 in this scene, you can

tell that she is not very comfortable in the scenario. Even though Harmon has had her fair share

of news media covering her, Townes does not give up eventually leading him to ask her to come

up to his room and Harmon agrees not thinking too much of it. Townes states, “I have a camera

in my room” which flusters Harmon where he quickly changes the subject by saying, “Chess

boards too.” Harmon lightens up about the situation and they go to his room. As soon as they

walk in, Townes starts taking pictures of Harmon without her noticing.

Looking at the layout of the room, Townes has the chess board on the bed for a specific

reason and has a very bad and eerie look to it. Townes asks Harmon to get near the chess board

and start posing by it. Harmon gets on the ground near the chess board for a specific reason and

the camera angles during this scene is where everything comes together for the audience. It is

clear at this point that Townes is trying to have a sexual relationship with Harmon, yet she is not

for it as of right now. Townes gets closer to her and states “You’ve grown up Harmon, you’ve

even gotten good-looking.” This statement sums up the entire scene and shows what he is trying

to do. (Frank, 2020, 25:28 to 28:58).

The camera angles during this scene captures a lot of emotion and tension as well. Not

only is this capturing the male gaze of the audience, but it also shows the male gaze for Townes.

He cannot keep his eyes off of Harmon and is portraying her more of a sexualized body rather

than one of the best chess players in the world. While there is a romantic theme to this scene, it

makes the audience (at least me) very uncomfortable due to the age of Beth Harmon and

Townes. There is a 5-year age gap between the two and knowing Harmon, she is not focused on

relationships right now. The male gaze here allows the audience to feel uncomfortable for the

women’s standpoint because women can relate to this. From a male perspective, this may just
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seem like he is trying to flirt with her but there is more context to this given situation that puts it

under the male’s gaze category.

Conclusion

After reading Anya’s viewpoint of her own character (Beth Harmon) in the vanity Fair

magazine, it is clear to me that the portrayal of her character was supposed to draw in males to

watch her. This is the deep-rooted problem with American films today; the pleasure of watching

no longer coincides with the actual story plot of the film but is how women are looked at in film

purely for the male’s pleasure watching. While the whole plot of this TV series is to show that no

matter what gender you are, there is always room for competition, the way this show was

visually filmed completely undermines the theme and message they were trying to get across.

The focal point should have been more neutralized, dialogue should have carried this message,

but because of the way people like to watch television, they had to sexualize a woman to get

more views. The famous phrase “sex sells” is still prominent in today’s cinematic industry and

will only get worse because of people’s ignorance on the subject. To change this manner is still a

questionable decision to make because of how invested people are into TV now. People need to

be educated on the manner or the king will always have the power, unless the queens next move

breaks social norms.

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