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Sex Sells - the mantra of the 20th
century Sometimes sex needs a little help - which is where chess comes in:
If the chess/sex connection isn't selling products, then it's selling
films - or film stars:
Sybil Danning, once voted "Queen of the Action Flicks" by Playboy
magazine and "Sex Symbol of the Year" by film critic, Roger Ebert, and
star of such incredible films as Amazon Women on the Moon, Chained
Heat, Reform School Girls, and The Howling II claims to be
an avid chess player:
"Chess relaxes me, I love it!" The following
blurb from her
personal site describes her commitment to the game: "Sybil also gives
time to slightly more sedate pastimes of photography, drawings, cooking (she
is renowned for her spicy Austrian pork roast), jazz, and a mean game of
chess (Her tutor was Albert Goodin who beat Polish champ Samuel Rezewski
whose claim to fame was checkmating the 1961-63 World Champion, Mikhail
Botvinnik of the U.S.S.R.)" The most well-known (seductive)
cinema chess game took place in the 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair.
A 06:33 minute film by William Azaroff at
Atom Films called
Checkmating
self-describes itself as:
"A woman tests her dates over games of chess, with each contest taking on
the mood of the relationship. She's in full control, knowing exactly what
she wants in a man--until she finds it."
Another Altom Film offering is an 08:00 minute movie by
Luis Camara Silva called Endgame:
"The
mating habits of homo sapiens are explored when a friendly game of chess
between a man and a woman erupts into a battle of the sexes."
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| The above stills from a 1995 film starring
Lisa Boyle entitled I like to Play Games show a rather unsubtle
turn in the use of chess. The only real question that remains is which
picture lacks the most innuendo - the graphic scene on the left
or the metaphorical one on the right. |
Playboy magazine's Miss October, 1967, Reagan Wilson posed
with a chess board prop.
A gentleman named Benjamin Warren wrote a strange short play:
PROPHYLAXIS: A PLAY FOR THE LADIES [ON SEX AND CHESS]
CHARACTERS:
- Wilhelm Steinitz: the first World Chess Champion.
- Young Man: a non-descript young man.
YOUNG MAN:
"Mikhail Tal, World Champion 1960-1961, once said that “Just as
one’s imagination is stirred by a girl’s smile, so is one’s
imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess.” I find that
I’d much more often prefer to dream about chess, though, than to
dream about intimacy. Reading a refutation of the Latvian Gambit
just seems that little bit more productive to me than dreaming about
a girl’s smile. I know that I’m probably more likely to brush up
against the Latvian some day than I am to brush up against a girl.
Here, though, is where the lines blur: would I prefer to actually
have my “imagination stirred” by a flesh-and-blood girl, or would I
prefer to have it stirred by a game of chess? I’m not so sure
sometimes, and the lines can blur -- Chess? Sex? Perhaps a game of
chess against a girl? Chess, then sex? Sex, then chess? I certainly
haven’t yet figured out a way to enjoy both at the same time – the
world may never know the pleasures of check-mating."
Reflecting off The Thomas Crown Affair, writer Ann Regentin
in an article for Clean Sheets magazine, called
Making Moves: Erotic Chess, explained the eroticism in the
film and some of the effect the film itself had on her:
"This chess game in the 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair,
along with the kiss that follows, is one of the great seduction
scenes on film. The movie itself is about the collision between a
rich, spoiled bank robber and a beautiful, intelligent insurance
investigator, and is only otherwise memorable for some tricky
production techniques. But the chess game does its double duty
splendidly, providing both a metaphor for the battle of wits between
the two protagonists and a perfect arena for a long, slow
dance of mutual temptation. "
...
"My heart pounds and I fidget, waiting on tenterhooks for my
opponent to make his move and then sitting there staring at the
board for ages, trying to anticipate him. That's part of what makes
chess so erotic. In order to play well, you have to read your
opponent's mind, get into his head the way you do when you're in bed
and trying to figure out what will please this particular lover
best."
...
"This, I think, is where the heart of my attraction to chess lies. I
like the chase. I like to take and be taken. It's not a physical
thing, although I'm not averse to a good wrestling match, nor is it
quite BDSM, although I'm not averse to the judicious use of
restraint. What I like is to play with power. I like to win. I like
to mate someone or, failing that, tell him that if he moves I'll
stop and then make it impossible for him not to move. But I also
like to lose, especially when the game is very close. I like to
surrender, but only
after a good fight."
Random pictures found on the internet juxtapose the curvature of sexy women
with angularity of the chess board design - suggesting
sexual tension?
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Personalized and
custom pre-paid phone cards enable a client to embellish the cards
anyway they see fit. Like stamps, such cards have become collectible
items. Many feature not only chess, but chess presented in an erotic
fashion such as the two on the left.
One site, Schach Art,
even seems to specialize in erotic chess cards and erotic chess
calendars. |
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Besides phone cards, there are also suggestive chess-themed postcards
for the collectors.
Many people collect themed chess sets. This set, of a seeming high
quality, pits alabaster women against bronzed men...
Naked,
of course.
This set (of which this picture is the most tame!) is quite unique.
Fabricated from the fossil ivory of the tusks of the Russian wooly
mammoths found in Siberia by a company called
The Russian Mammoth Society, Ltd.,
this is one of about three dozen themed sets from that company. This
set is highly erotic, as the picture denotes. But the company
prides itself on it's historical accuracy. Even this set is based on
actual antique erotica. The white pieces are based on pictures found on
Greek vases, terracotta lamps, wine cups, etc. while the white pieces
were inspired by frecos, a sarcophagus, statuettes and sculptures found
in ancient Rome. This and other sets from this company can be found
here Another
set from The Russian Mammoth
Society, Ltd. is a Roman themed set called Love and Wine
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