Lawrence Hall, HSG
Is Mr. Potato Head
a War Criminal?
Possibly because of the quarantine and a popular film (with
the obligatory spunky teen girl beating stuffy males at their own game), chess enjoys
a wave of popularity just now. Chess is one of the oldest games in the world,
and while its moves are simple and a game may begin within minutes of hearing
of chess for the first time, a player’s development in understanding the layered
and spiraling complexities is infinite in its possibilities. This is why both
Young Sheldons and fuzzy-study-istas learn from it. Chess enriches and sharpens
the mind without identification with any one culture, religion, language, or
ideology.
Even as prisoners in a gulag who are deprived of all
resources will scratch scripture verses on cell walls the night before they
meet eternity before a firing squad, they will also draw a grid on a floor or
table and identify random bits of rubbish as kings and queens and other figures
for an intellectual game that with a casual sweep of the hand can be returned
to the debris from whence it came if the okhrannik comes snooping by.
Thus, chess is a game which promotes the intelligence of
the individual while requiring some degree of cooperation. Cults and gangs,
however, don’t tolerate individuals living their own lives and thinking for
themselves. They require not cooperation but obedience. Self-absorbed subcultures
that find menace in a Barbie doll or oppression in Goodnight, Moon (The Secret Message of "Goodnight Moon": Oppression
of Children | Independent Women's Forum (iwf.org)) will disapprove
of chess just as soon as they are told that it exists.
First of all, there are the king and queen. If that’s not
heteronormative oppression, then what is? We continue with the bishop, who
centers on Christianity, and then the knight, who normalizes the secular
hierarchy of male-dominated power. The origin of the rook is debated, but of
course as a castle or tower joins with the knight as a symbol of the nobility
oppressing the proletariat, and, like, stuff. The sides, regardless of color,
are identified as black and white, so to Miz Grundy division is built in.
The queen is the most powerful piece, which is an
argument for feminism, but, hey, white always begins first, so the racism is
obviously there.
Themed chessboards often present the chessmen – eek! –
chesspersons as presidents, generals, soldiers, and other famous characters.
There is even a Gone with the Wind chessboard, and we darned sure know
who the queen is on that one.
Even so, the figure of the king, even if he (eek, again)
is General Patton or Fidel Castro, is still referred to as the king. One can
imagine the ideological schizophrenia when a chess player under Stalin or Hitler
referred to a piece as a king or queen or bishop.
We can’t imagine, however, that chess will escape the suspicious
eye of the censor who takes orders from a consonant. The sort of decayed
mentality that finds sexism in Mr. Potato Head and racism in Dr. Seuss is capable
of grave offenses against the sacredness of the individual and of civilization
itself.
We could ask Mr. Potato Head about that.
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