[math-fun] Man/Math-hating at Netflix.com reaches new high/low?
Quoting from https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/ : *> Alice Harmon* is the biological mother to Beth Harmon <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Beth_Harmon>
and the divorced wife of Paul <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Paul>. She received her PhD in mathematics from Cornell University, with the dissertation *> Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations*. She lived with her daughter in a trailer in Wakefield, Kentucky, until her vehicular suicide on 24th of July, 1957, leaving Beth orphaned.
Though not much is known about Paul, including whether or not he is actually the father of Beth? The title "Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations" sounds interesting, but snippets of Alice's dialogue in flashback suggest foul play on behalf of University Math Professors. Obviously Alice suffered from some sort of Trauma. Could Beth, in fact, be the illegitimate child of an over-enthusiastic Cornell dissertation advisor? Allegedly the TV-Adaptation was made from a book, but I am too busy reading hate mail and Bunraku plays to check and see if the source text has more details on Alice's conditions leading to suicide by vehicular accident. Be careful when driving, avoid inclement weather! --Brad
I am bewildered at the characterization of a TV series in which it's possible that a single male character does a bad thing as man-hating, much less as setting some sort of record in man-hating. Utopias can be boring, so almost all fictional stories contain some characters who act badly. Sometimes some of those characters are male. The source is a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. He seems to have a knack for writing novels that make good movies; The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Hustler, and The Color of Money are also based on his novels. Andy On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 6:26 AM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Quoting from https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/ :
*> Alice Harmon* is the biological mother to Beth Harmon <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Beth_Harmon>
and the divorced wife of Paul <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Paul>. She received her PhD in mathematics from Cornell University, with the dissertation *> Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations*. She lived with her daughter in a trailer in Wakefield, Kentucky, until her vehicular suicide on 24th of July, 1957, leaving Beth orphaned.
Though not much is known about Paul, including whether or not he is actually the father of Beth? The title "Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations" sounds interesting, but snippets of Alice's dialogue in flashback suggest foul play on behalf of University Math Professors. Obviously Alice suffered from some sort of Trauma. Could Beth, in fact, be the illegitimate child of an over-enthusiastic Cornell dissertation advisor?
Allegedly the TV-Adaptation was made from a book, but I am too busy reading hate mail and Bunraku plays to check and see if the source text has more details on Alice's conditions leading to suicide by vehicular accident.
Be careful when driving, avoid inclement weather!
--Brad _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com
The show was fun, whatever, but actually there were two, (or three?) husband characters and they were all portrayed as failures. (So were the moms though, I guess.) If you count the lead's sexual interests, that is three or four more, with two of them, at least, portrayed as sexual failures, and her love interest is portrayed as possibly homosexual? The one scene, which wasn't even fully explained, but was the most probably offensive, Alice burns a bunch of stuff from her trailer, then the shot focuses to the Cornell PhD dissertation. Social drama aside, here's what I'm really getting at, which is more relevant to mailing list context: Assumed male professors in Cornell Math department should take the blame for Alice's mental breakdown and subsequent suicide? Or, assumed Male professors in Cornell Math department should take praise for their part in creating a female winner-monster? Either way, now I definitely do not want to be a Cornell Maths professor. Good thing I don't have the option. Since the knife-wielding New Yorker chess master is such an improbable character, I guess, as a male, I should just look up to the aging janitor? At least he's a better example than the lead of "I'm thinking of ending things" (don't watch this one!), but either way, the Janitors die alone. As far as feminist movies go, maybe try "Hidden Figures" for more reality and less bad behavior? Thank you Dave Dyer for clarifying the issue about adaptation from page to screen! That is a major important detail to try and understand the underlying motives! --Brad On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 1:03 PM Andy Latto <andy.latto@pobox.com> wrote:
I am bewildered at the characterization of a TV series in which it's possible that a single male character does a bad thing as man-hating, much less as setting some sort of record in man-hating. Utopias can be boring, so almost all fictional stories contain some characters who act badly. Sometimes some of those characters are male.
The source is a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. He seems to have a knack for writing novels that make good movies; The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Hustler, and The Color of Money are also based on his novels.
Andy
On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 6:26 AM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Quoting from https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/ :
*> Alice Harmon* is the biological mother to Beth Harmon <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Beth_Harmon>
and the divorced wife of Paul <https://the-queens-gambit.fandom.com/wiki/Paul>. She received her PhD in mathematics from Cornell University, with the dissertation *> Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations*. She lived with her daughter in a trailer in Wakefield, Kentucky, until her vehicular suicide on 24th of July, 1957, leaving Beth orphaned.
Though not much is known about Paul, including whether or not he is actually the father of Beth? The title "Monomial Representations and Symmetric Presentations" sounds interesting, but snippets of Alice's dialogue in flashback suggest foul play on behalf of University Math Professors. Obviously Alice suffered from some sort of Trauma. Could Beth, in fact, be the illegitimate child of an over-enthusiastic Cornell dissertation advisor?
Allegedly the TV-Adaptation was made from a book, but I am too busy reading hate mail and Bunraku plays to check and see if the source text has more details on Alice's conditions leading to suicide by vehicular accident.
Be careful when driving, avoid inclement weather!
--Brad _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
-- Andy.Latto@pobox.com _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
participants (2)
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Andy Latto -
Brad Klee