Kinship via Hairstyle

I watched The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix). It’s pretty good. Netflix describes it as “cerebral”, which is generally code for “involves smart people doing things they don’t explain”. That’s true here too, but honestly I think it means something more like “sexual tension communicated via stylized posing”. Which is fine – the costumes and photography are both excellent and there are plenty of pretty people to pose.

I’m not sure the director knows what this series is about (even less sure after watching the BTS interviews) but it comes out well anyway. It’s a little heavy-handed on the addiction story, a little fuzzy on whether or not it’s about being femme, but mostly good. It would have been better if it didn’t equate chess with smartness, and if it cut out about 50% by time of the chess matches and jargon, but I still liked it a lot.

The aesthetic is rose-colored 60s, sort of like you might get from Wes Anderson. The are lots of sets that hit that mark and the lead is often matched (or contrasted) to them in very careful and interesting ways. Lots of the series is silent closeups of people’s eyes, particularly during the chess games.

There are lots of reads you could have on the shape of story. One I like conceptually is about the limits of cognitive and linguistic (or otherwise rules-based) communication ¹The limits of cognitive and linguistic communication is a topic I would like to write a Big Idea about. It’s related to the way I’m exploring the pieces of myself, it’s relevant to the issues I had with my last therapist, it’s part of what M is hoping to study, and it’s all but ignored in many places where it’s super important. It’s … Continue reading. The method the lead uses for chess – beyond being very talented – is to understand how other players are thinking, and to react to all the information they leak instead of just their chess moves. This mirrors the way they have to improvise their function in society, where their lack of experience and support often leaves them without the tools and options other people depend on. Often the protagonist is performing a role for a social interaction to disguise their lack of confidence and experience, and to keep space between themselves and their peers.

The main theme is clearly about the performance of femininity. It’s covered in the literal text of the movie and in most of the scenes where people interact with the lead about chess. This is one theme I’m not sure the director quite groked, but other people made up for it. The 60s setting lets us see the signals of feminity more clearly, more seperately from the actual protagonist, in part simply by being somewhat foreign to modern life. But it works. You see it turn on and off in the acting, and the script takes some care to contrast the performance of femme from the experience of being a woman.

Another read you might have is about the difference between compliance and submission ²Given all the tension-based sexuality in the show you could also read compliance and submission in a sort of BDSM context, but I don’t think that was intentional.. The protagonist is frequently required to comply – as a child, as a woman, as an orphan, as a poor person, as a caregiver – but only sometimes chooses to submit even when they comply. This one stands out to me because the line between compliance and submission is very clear to me in a way that it is not to most people, but it is subtle in the text of the movie. The protagonist doesn’t submit to most of the formal harassment in their lives, but does submit to the training they’ve had their while lives to be invisible, even when it conflicts with their immediate goals.

Anya Taylor-Joy does an excellent job. I’m 87% sure they were cast because they have big eyes and a high aspect ratio nose, to leave lots of room for makeup and fit the shape of frame, but it worked out well. They actually do seem to know what the series is about and they give a lot in those close ups. They also look great posing in fancy 60s clothes, which is a big part of the show.

So do, if you have the opportunity. It’s a show that people who feel abandoned and smart and socially observant but inexperienced would particularly connect to, but even if you’re none of those things it’s engaging and pretty and fun.

---

I did a work today. Just a couple of meetings and some email mostly. Plus the part where I got yelled at by IT ³They actually didn’t make me change anything, but they did make me justify minor changes to my PAM configuration before I even got to my first meeting. for adding 1 line of configuration to my laptop. I didn’t do any work other than deleting email – I made Outloom crash just moving messages – but it was still plenty. I only talked to a few people and did nothing that required focus, so I didn’t have to do much to invent an identity, but I will as time goes on. Tomorrow morning is a bigger meeting with people who will demand slightly more of me, but since I’m just back I should mostly be able to coast through that one too.

I can see immediately why I opted out of the daily meeting before – it’s mostly a bitch session about things we can’t change but are asked to be responsible for. I can understand why people want to vent, but I don’t need an hour of this every day. I’m gonna need to skip a bunch of them to stay sane, but I’ll have to figure out a better plan for skipping than I had last year, because that plan lead me to attend 0 meetings, and that’s not enough.

---

We advanced upstairs fabrics quite a bit this week. The bed has (loosely fit but sufficient) covers over all the foam, which I like a lot. I’ll like it better once we get the set of parts turned into a cohesive cover with nice square corners, but I’m glad we have thus intermediate version installed. It protects the foam and my feet and it’s a nice color. We also got another revision of the bathroom door up, with less frayed edges and cleaner lines. It’s not done yet either but it’s much closer and I’ve had good ideas about incremental improvements that we can do before the final version.

I had planned to dye my hair today, and to send some post-valentine packages, but I got triggered trimming my hair and so I spent that time trying to recover. There are lots of parts of hair that are hard for me, but cutting is worse than most, and downright intolerable now that my hair is an inch long. I had hoped that cleaning up the edges would make me feel better about it, even though it requires a minute or two of someone touching my head, but that’s not how it went.

I wish I could attribute this panic to some series of experiences, but I currently cannot, not even with recent insights into my early life. I know before kindergarten I had a sort of mullet, but I can’t remember ever doing anything about my hair. Probably I didn’t. Given how shitty my life was I have to assume my hair was in poor condition, but I don’t remember haircuts or maintenance of any kind. Maybe there wasn’t any.

After I was in school I had a simple, shorter haircut – one that Mother provided – which I vaguely suspect came because the school complained about my lack of hygiene. I have to imagine Mother wasn’t very careful, particularly that first time with my presumably matted hair, and so minor injury under tough conditions is a given. But I don’t have any scaring that would suggest she seriously cut me, and I can’t come up with any memory to explain why I need to dissociate to avoid being triggered when I get my hair cut.

ZiB

—
Sent from a phone.

• 

• 

• 

•