The Queen's Gambit. Un perfect match tra immaginario ludico e calcoli algebrici = The Queen's Gambit. A perfect matching between game imagery and algebraic strategies

Abstract

The streaming video platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, continue to grow up the original content titles, proposing changes and variation without being choked by the production costs. Something that would have been impossible in the past decade. Today, the platforms can provoke such broad interest exploiting in one shot a double effect of revenue maximizing and effort minimizing: a combination of executives' intuition and analytics suggestion about the best-watching movie or series. The Queen's Gambit, produced by Netflix last year, ranked everywhere at first position in the first month, is not unfamiliar to this classification. In this work we try to deconstruct the main features that have achieved worldwide prominence: the script's ability to maintain an equilibrium between originality and curiosity, weirdness and popular attitudes (at worst addictions) with which the general audience could recognize themselves or the neighbor. We focus the attention on the more interesting contribution of the subject, a mixture between logic of chess strategies and imagination of the player. Not only this pattern opens the path of the success but becomes the central point of main topics' attraction around the story (the changing of the fashion, the brand female evolution, the prodigy addiction, the friction between instinct and education).