Could it be that chess has cultural prestige precisely because it has no practical domestic application?
symptom of childhood trauma. According to this logic, it’s when Beth realises that her chess genius is not contingent on her drug use – rather, her two habits merely originated about the same time – that she is able to ascend into “pure” genius and beat the Russians.
This puritanical construal is clear in the heavy-handed symbolism of the final episode – the big reveal is that, even after Beth flushes her meds down the toilet, she can still see the giant chessboard on the ceiling. Now that she has her supportive troupe of male chess groupies on the phone and her one Black friend’s tuition money, it turns out Beth never needed drugs! She had what it took inside her all along.
This ending seems weak to me for two reasons. First, I reckon the drugs did have something to do with Beth’s chess hallucinations and her related talent. Even if she were inherently brilliant at chess, it seems weirdly naive to suggest that her development is not tied to her drug use. This is not to say that drugs transform Beth into a genius: rather, Beth’s relationship to drugs tethers her to a mental landscape of infinite possibility, in which the alienation she feels in everyday life can be transmuted into the exercise of her own agency.
Second, despite what most critics have pinpointed as the series’ eventual nod to the superiority of the collective over the lone victor, this isn’t really a show about the US embracing Communist modes of intellectual solidarity. In the final episode, Beth gives up literal drugs and realises that the best drug of all is nationalist solidarity: she agrees to the help of her male compatriot brains trust.
However, Beth has spent the entire series without consistent support from American men. They help her from time to time, only to abandon her repeatedly when she is too “messy”, or when she won’t marry them. Beth’s most loyal supporter has been her adoptive mother, who by this point in the show is dead.
The premise sold to us in this episode is that the female genius does not need drugs; she just needs the support of a band of male geniuses. But if I learnt anything from my visit to the Apple store, it’s that I don’t need the “help” of male “geniuses”. And neither does Beth Harmon.