The Queen’s Gambit is a limited series that primarily takes place in the 1960’s and 1970’s during the Cold War. The setting of this story is in the United States, where a young girl named Beth Harmon in an orphanage learns to play chess and eventually turns it into a career for herself. Although the main obstacle she faces ends up being a problem with alcohol addiction. One of the other challenges she has to overcome is the fact that she is a woman in a sport/game that is dominated by males. Being a prodigy, she starts getting recognition right away. At first, after learning how to play chess from the janitor of her orphanage, she is surprised that when she tries to enroll in a chess tournament no one takes her seriously. To me this story represents an obstacle that a lot of woman have had to go through in their careers. Men don’t take her seriously and this makes it very hard for her to get her foot in the door. I think that this is seen even in today’s society especially in the work force. It is hard for women to be taken as seriously as men in many industries just because they are females. This to me is an example of “othering” as Hegel describes in his literature. Not only do women have struggle to get their foot in the door, they also many times struggle to get equal pay and many other equalities within their work force.
As Beth climbs up the chess world, she starts defeating her competitors with ease. As the season progresses she ends up traveling to Russia for the world championships. Mind you, this is during the Cold War so tension between the United States and Russia is at an all-time high. One of the things that stuck out to me is the reception she gets from some of the Russian chess players. I find it interesting that the Russian players seem to be more accepting of her as a woman. I think that this might be differences in culture, or maybe just because she has made a name for herself at this point in the story. After seeing this mini-series, the obstacles that Beth Harmon had to go through because of the fact that she was a woman really stuck out to me, and I think had a lot to do with her addiction to alcohol that eventually becomes her biggest obstacle she has to deal with.
