The Queen’s Gambit and Trauma in Checkmate
The series expertly utilizes the concept of trauma, unusually spotlighting the possibilities, and even beauty, in resolving one’s demons.
Photo Courtesy of Netflix
Chess isn’t a classic sport. There’s none of the sweaty jerseys or Friday night lights. But watch Elizabeth “Beth” Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) at work over a board—her large eyes drinking in the pieces and her opponent; her hands thoughtfully clasped together—and you’ll feel a palpable heat in the air. It’s enough to make her chess rival pull at his collar. The viewer squirms.
The Queen’s Gambit deserves every kudos for crafting this type of tension for a game such as chess. In turning chess, a battle of wits, inside out, the thrill of the match becomes accessible. Clever editing cracks the door open for the viewer. Bishops and castles and queens scurry around the chessboard in lightning succession; the audience situated from Harmon’s point of view benefits: we feel in control, invincible. We’re in the game. We’re ready to win.
But the editing alone doesn’t account for The Queen’s Gambit’s ability to make chess thrilling or laden with emotion. Instead, the character-directed approach of the series cinches this: Beth Harmon’s characterization actualizes the show’s potential. Her backstory as crafted (by screenwriter Scott Frank and originally by book’s author, Walter Tevis) elevates a tale about just chess to a warm-blooded tale of a life mediated through chess—but lived well beyond it. If The Queen’s Gambit qualifies as a sport story, then I’d argue one step further: at the core, it functions as a trauma redemption story.
Like many stories about prodigies, the series issues numerous warnings about genius. Many of these, while true, can feel like overworn cliches: the curse of being singularly gifted, the pitfalls of obsession, the risk of hopelessness after world domination too young. But The Queen’s Gambit was more clever; it braids together the stories of Beth’s chess obsession and her unresolved post-traumatic stress—with each aspect of her psyche feeding the other. With this move, the series’s creative promise widens beyond bromide. From the opening sequence, we know Beth’s must have seen something horrible; the questions of her mother’s sanity and death come early. But rather than succumb to the cheap masturbatory qualities of a sob story, The Queen’s Gambit pushes the opportunities within trauma to their fullest creative and narrative potentials.
Sedative pills operate as a key tool for flipping Beth’s internal world outward. Her dependency on benzos to play chess in her head through projections of the game on the ceiling serves a twofold purpose: one part pragmatism, the other thematic. For one, the pills allow a simple way for the audience into the mind of Beth Harmon without the access seeming unearned. Unlike Sherlock’s flirtations with a “mind palace,” where the viewer accepts the title character’s genius mostly through cultural familiarity with Sherlock’s story, The Queen’s Gambit doesn’t take lazy shortcuts. The visual narrative devices are justified: Harmon’s severe trauma is known and her steps to curb it—excessive drug use—feel understandable. As her addiction solidifies, the consistency of this visual method makes sense: the frame hardens with the character’s choices.