Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen on Nostr: There's a certain movie that I have *hated* without having ever seen it. That does ...

There's a certain movie that I have *hated* without having ever seen it. That does happen sometimes, and if it's *Christians* who hate the movie they haven't seen they might go so far as to try to get the movie censored or suppressed. But I try to be more sensible about my hatreds, which is roughly equivalent to saying "I hope one day I don't hate anything", because the only sensible long-term solution for hatreds is to heal them.

The movie I'm thinking of is *Searching for Bobby Fischer*, which I remember vividly from its advertising campaign, featuring Joe Mantegna as the father of young (supposed) #chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, played by child actor Max Pomeranc, and "discovered" by Ben Kingsley playing the real-life chess player and writer Bruce Pandolfini. Now...it occurs to me that Bruce Pandolfini, who has a decent reputation as a chess coach but is definitely not among the great grandmasters of chess, really ought to count himself lucky that he got played in a movie by the same actor who played *Shostakovich* once.

Now I happen to know that Josh Waitzkin did not stay in chess very long. He got burned out, like a lot of "prodigies", and decided to do something else with his life other than play chess. Maybe he could have been some major talent if he'd been trained up properly, or if he'd been more determined, or whatever—I don't know that.

I object to the idea that the kid should ever have been plucked directly from childhood and told: "this is your destiny! America needs you to play great chess!" which seems to be, at the very least, the premise of the movie that was made about him.