Queens Gambit: Netflix’s revisionist history

There have been worse examples of the US changing historical facts to fit its aggrandising national narrative, but it’s hard not to wince at the latest one that’s surfaced. Georgian chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili — who made real history as the world’s first woman grandmaster — is suing Netflix over what she says is a defamatory portrayal of her in the series The Queen’s Gambit. She’s looking for $5m in damages.

The Los Angeles Times, revealing a subjective and strangely defensive solidarity with a US company with more than 209-million subscribers, describes this as "Gaprindashvili has waged an attack on Netflix". (Note the choice of words, to which we’ll return later.)

But what’s the contretemps all about? You’ll very likely remember the show, especially as it was just named the best limited or anthology series at the Emmy Awards show on Sunday. In total, it won 11 Emmys, including for directing, production design, period costumes and cinematography. You’ll also remember it because, partly thanks to the lockdown, it was one of the most-watched original shows in Netflix’s history.

The show itself is about Beth Harmon, a young American chess prodigy who vanquishes a bunch of scary Russians at chess, with a subplot about the fight for gender equality.

Gaprindashvili’s case revolves around a scene towards the end of the final episode, in which she is name-checked in the narration of a match between Harmon and a fictional Russian grandmaster, Viktor Laev, at the Moscow Invitational tournament.

The LA Times quotes the scene: "‘Elizabeth Harmon’s not at all an important player by their standards,’ the commentator remarks in the show. ‘The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex. And even that’s not unique in Russia. There’s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she’s the female world champion and has never faced men. My guess is Laev was expecting an easy win, and not at all the 27-move thrashing Beth Harmon just gave him.’"

Awkwardly for Netflix, its attempt to make a show about an American hero in the struggle for women to be treated equally involves eliding an actual woman champion from history.

As the lawsuit puts it: "In a story that was supposed to inspire women by showing a young woman competing with men at the highest levels of world chess, Netflix humiliated the one real woman trailblazer who had actually faced and defeated men on the world stage in the same era."

In Gaprindashvili’s view, the assertion that she "never faced men" is "manifestly false, as well as being grossly sexist and belittling".

The LA Times writes: "The lawsuit states that Gaprindashvili ‘had competed against at least 59 male chess players (28 of them simultaneously in one game), including at least 10 grandmasters of that time’ by 1968 — the year in which the final episode of The Queen’s Gambit takes place."

In California in 1977, her performance at the Lone Pine tournament "made her the first woman to perform at a high enough level to earn the title of international grandmaster … granted to her in 1978".

It’s worth noting that the Netflix writers weren’t just erasing history; they were also changing the actual book the series is based on, Walter Tevis’s excellent 1983 novel. The original passage reads: "There was Nona Gaprindashvili, not up to the level of this tournament, but a player who had met all these Russian grandmasters many times before."

But apparently there are no historical texts that can’t be changed in the pursuit of a dominant national narrative.

There are many examples of Americans rewriting history in films so as to make it all about them. There’s U-571 (2000), to pick just one, which tells the story of a band of brave Americans who capture a German submarine in World War 2 in an attempt to get the Enigma cipher machine. A heart-warming story of courage (I assume — I haven’t actually watched it), except entirely made up. The real history involved the capture of U-110 by the British, before the US had even entered the war.

The creative reshaping of history to make heroes of Americans incensed Tony Blair, with the then UK prime minister calling it "an affront to real sailors".

In its quest to do a less bloody version of Rocky IV, where the punch-drunk hero manages to beat the villainous Ivan Drago on his own turf in Moscow, Netflix has also decided to apparently change Gaprindashvili’s nationality. The lawsuit asserts that, "piling on additional insult to injury, Netflix described Gaprindashvili as Russian, despite knowing that she was Georgian, and that Georgians had suffered under Russian domination when part of the Soviet Union, and had been bullied and invaded by Russia thereafter".

I know what you’re thinking. At least Netflix got her name right — unlike Joe Biden with the Australian prime minister. While announcing a multibillion-dollar nuclear-powered submarine technology deal with the UK and Australia, Biden put the awks into the Aukus partnership by referring to Scott Morrison as "that fella down under".

I was reminded of The Queen’s Gambit’s rewriting of history so as to better serve the good ol’ America-as-superpower grand narrative when I read this sentence in a news story: "We apologise, and we will endeavour to learn from this horrible mistake."

The examples stretch from reported facts to creative fictions, but they all show a disturbingly crass propensity to dispense with historical accuracy in the service of ideology

The ANC apologising for its new range of party clothing? The DA, finally realising that getting a bunch of wooden kids to wave flags in a video is very Kim Jong-un-lite?

No, it’s a little more serious than that — it’s Gen Frank McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command, saying sorry for accidentally killing seven children and three adults in an overeager drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 29.

I’m not sure what other words he could have used, but describing this as a mistake, horrible or not, is strangely anodyne, and seems to strip active agency from those who did the killing.

Other phrases echo this. An Associated Press report has the general saying that the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an "earnest belief" — based on a standard of "reasonable certainty" — that it posed an imminent threat to US forces at Kabul airport.

Earnest, reasonable, a mistake. If that’s not an attempt to rewrite how history is actually going to record these killings, I don’t know what is.

The Pentagon did attempt an even more forceful rewriting of history before media organisations uncovered the truth, with officials initially claiming that the strike had been conducted correctly, despite 10 civilians (including seven children, let’s not forget) being killed.

Journalists eventually discovered that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at a US humanitarian organisation, and showed that there was no evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

These examples stretch from reported facts to creative fictions, but they all show a disturbingly crass propensity to dispense with historical accuracy in the service of ideology. And reading about this would all be an amusing exercise in smugness, were it not that we’re seeing the same pattern playing out with political parties contesting our ever-looming local government elections.

When countries and organisations are vying for power, history tends to become collateral damage.