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October 13

Obscure Simpsons joke

According to Bart the Genius#Cultural references, "Students at the gifted school have lunchboxes that feature images of the 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited and chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov." This video on YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReOQ300AcSU ) has a screenshot of the second lunchbox at 6:49. The portrait is obviously not that of Anatoly Karpov - who is it? Or did the animators just draw a generic "Russian" person? 81.100.21.31 (talk) 20:47, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They probably had no idea what he looked like. It was 1989. There wasn't an easy way to look up what people looked like.

Probably they remembered his name because they followed chess, but if they didn't, they would have pulled an almanac off the shelf and looked up the name of the current world champion (at time of publishing.)

Figuring out what he looked like would have been a project. Far more than the joke was worth. ApLundell (talk) 21:55, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Brings to mind this other Simpson's bit. Staecker (talk) 22:01, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Although the Karpov v Kasparov matches were big news in the 1980s in a way which is difficult to imagine now. [1] Alansplodge (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chess audiences in the 1980s were primed by the Fischer-Spassky match of 1972, which carried all sorts of sociopolitical interest beyond chess and likely made more fans of the game than anything before. The Kasparov-Karpov matches were widely criticized for being slow and tedious, and chess had faded to obscurity by the end of the decade, though films like Searching for Bobby Fischer created a brief revival. --Jayron 32 11:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? In what sense has chess "faded to obscurity"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:42, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a spectator sport, it doesn't get the TV viewership that it did. Of course, people play chess. The highest levels of the game are hard to find on network television in many places, however. Doesn't have the draw of, say, the World Cup or the Olympics. Unless of course, you are asserting that it does, which would be interesting, given that I have trouble finding chess on my television. But I don't know what its like where you live. --Jayron 32 01:25, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Fischer-Spassky match was such a big thing that filmed / edited versions of some of the matches were shown on ABC's Wide World of Sports. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:17, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was my point; that the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match represented the zenith of chess as a mass media event. Jack seems to be taking exception to that, that somehow chess is not more obscure in the media than it was in 1972. I have challenged him to provide sources to show that it is easier to find a chess match on TV than it was for someone to see Fischer-Spassky. --Jayron 32 15:37, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're over-arguing, strawmanistically speaking. I never made any of the statements you're attributing to me. I simply asked a question. It wasn't apparent to me that you were talking solely about chess as a spectator event. I see that now. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:15, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Magnus Carlsen was in a recent episode as well. Adam Bishop (talk)