With the infamous “incident” plaguing the 1994 Winter Olympics occurring before I was born coupled with my unfamiliarity with the world of figure skating, I had never thought of Tonya Harding as anything but the caricaturistic portrayal depicted in pitiless media outlets: barbaric, blonde, basher of competitors’ kneecaps. The worldwide mania caused by Harding’s husband hiring an assailant to bludgeon skating rival Nancy Kerrigan has been so thoroughly dissected and discussed throughout the 1990s and is incessantly reflected upon today. Why then, with the incident so fresh in a majority of the country’s memory, would a biopic on Harding be green-lit and go on to become a critically acclaimed success selling out theaters nationwide and picking up three Oscar nominations in the process?
The result, I, Tonya, provides an answer that is stark and simple: America always needs someone to love and America always needs someone to hate.
I, Tonya never forgets to bat a self-referential wink at the audience’s willing participation in watching a film about Tonya Harding and avoids subjectively evoking sympathy for the notorious protagonist. Directed with the intensity of a high-speed car chase by Craig Gillespie, the film is interspersed with mockumentary interviews of participants involved with the incident. The film argues that all motives leading up to Kerrigan’s assault did not take place in a few weeks of planning or even throughout Harding’s training for the 1994 Olympics. Rather, the moment Tonya began skating at four years old, the absence of a stable father figure, and the verbal and physical abuse she was subjected to by her alcoholic mother and then by her husband, are treated as events of equal contribution to her eventual status as the most hated woman in America.
Responsible for I, Tonya never veering off into a campy Lifetime biopic is the supremely committed cast that treats their characters’ motivations as decisions being made by disturbed individuals rather than as “white trash” members of society. Margot Robbie, known for her portrayal as Leonardo DiCaprio’s prissy wife in The Wolf of Wall Street and the baseball bat wielding Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, acts with a ferocity that matches Gillespie’s direction. Each ice skating routine and Joker-esque smile she hides behind is silently begging “Like me” and “Help me” simultaneously. A powerful moment, directed in a single shot, shows Robbie as Harding preparing for a competition as she is holding back tears to apply makeup. As she smudges disproportionate slabs of rouge on her cheeks and lipstick that misses her lips, we realize the ramifications of an absent matriarchal stability. Witnessing such vulnerable moments has the audience seethe alongside Tonya when a judge tells her that committees avoid awarding her first place since America’s sweethearts are not from Harding’s social class (despite her being one of the most skilled figure skaters in the world). There’s a subversive pleasure watching Robbie in a frizzy ponytail and an imbecilic skating ensemble scream at the judges to perform an obscene sexual act before storming off to chain smoke in the empty arena corridors.
Allison Janney will rightfully receive an Oscar for playing LaVona Harding, Tonya’s foul-mouthed mother who believes the abuse she administered gave Harding the strength to become a world renowned figure skater. Raw and affronting, the scenes of domestic abuse towards Harding by LaVona and Harding’s husband Jeff Gillooly (played menacingly by Sebastian Stan) are seemingly over-exaggerated due to the sheer barbarism and stinging, expletive laden insults. Just as painful are the moments when Harding embraces her mother after a bloody knife brawl or locks lips with her husband as the police, who were called to intervene, drive away.
This brings us to the controversy surrounding the film I, Tonya itself: Are we supposed to feel sorry for Harding and share in her rage? Yes and no. While I’m sure Nancy Kerrigan is somewhere befuddled at the film’s success, no moment suggests Kerrigan had it coming or that Harding’s association with the incident is blameless. Conversely, the film shows how Harding herself was not privy to the plans of maiming Kerrigan. It was performed by an assailant hired by her husband and husband’s friend. Harding was kept in the dark; she was under the impression that a faux death threat was to be sent to Kerrigan, the same way she frequently received them. Far from commendable, Harding’s punishment is in response to a crime she did not orchestrate. Harding pled guilty to conspiring to hinder prosecution of the attackers, served three years probation, performed 500 hours of community service, paid a $160,000 fine, and was barred from competing in professional skating competitions forever.
The film concludes with a voiceover of Harding saying that after the incident, she was the most popular person in the world behind Bill Clinton. The only difference was is that she was profoundly hated and Clinton, throughout his scandal, maintained a high approval rating. And here is where the disparity lies: the misogyny, conspiracy theories, and sexism unearthed through Harding’s social class was brought into sharp focus in an American society where one’s economic status reigns and the prospect of two female rivals beating each other up is favored over the verified facts. America’s hunger for gritty Jerry Springer-dramas being played out in the public sphere predates the predictable rise of reality television. Furthermore, it cannot go unnoticed how there were many in the world of figure skating aware of Harding’s abuse but turned a blind eye to it, believing it to be in accordance with a lower socioeconomic lifestyle. “Look, Nancy gets hit one time and the whole world shits… For me it was an all-the-time occurrence,” Harding says defending herself.
I, Tonya is an effective meditation on class in America and the double standard that exists blatantly between the two genders and more subtly between females of different social classes. Two months after Kerrigan’s injury, Kerrigan hosted Saturday Night Live in which Harding was the basis for each joke in the opening monologue. “I was loved for a minute, then I was hated,” Robbie as Harding articulates directly into the camera; “Then, I was just a punchline.” An action–be it repellent, revered, devious, or devout–has as much to do with the action itself as with the social standing of the performer, if not deceptively more.
–Salvatore Casto
The Junction Journal 