ilovetonyaharding

[ilovetonyaharding]

But women, go to any checkout aisle of any grocery store, and you'll see people plastering names and accusations on women in the media that just by reading them, you know they're untrue. It's just people gravitating toward a story and things tend to snowball. In Tonya's case, like many stories, they let it evolve into this monster

Paul Walter Hauser for Refinery29 (Shawn Eckhardt, I Tonya, 2017)

[ilovetonyaharding]

I definitely recommend this movie as Harding goes against normal pop-culture narratives in a way that Harding is not scared to be her unapologetic self. She is fiery and is not afraid to voice her opinion, fight back or throw a skate if she has to. Harding is definitely a feminist icon and the media’s unfair treatment and portrayal of Harding needed to allow for her side of the story should be heard (even if you do think she had something to do with it AND even if you do think she’s an unreliable narrator) I really enjoyed how Harding’s life was directed in a way of a documentary and had Robbie talk to the camera as though it was a one on one interview looking directly into the camera (as seen in these GIFS) kind of like a personal one on one confession. As we all know, people were watching then, and I think Robbie as well as the directors know people are watching now. This film is worth the watch!

[ilovetonyaharding]

Today, copies of these magazines are still available on eBay as a collectable and a memory of the frenzy for capitalization and profit (Nicolaou, 2018). I posted e a couple links of current clips of magazines for sale just before this post so feel free to have a look! Considering how they're still available for purchase shows how the tabloids transformed news into profitable entertainment and how it's STILL affecting consumerism today. The question raised by Doidge (2019) still remains and I will pose it once more: “Does the media reinforce a good vs. evil narrative that reduces strong female athletes into caricatures of themselves” (Doidge, 2019, para 7)? (YES!!!) Its just sad how media depicted them as “rivals” just to push their agenda while Tonya said they were friends.....hmm...

[ilovetonyaharding]

What are peoples roles?

Consumers of course. Consumers have a purely instrumental market-focused relationship to the cultural institution and its products (Giulianotti, 2016). These companies like Champions on Ice or Stars on Ice have one thing in mind: How can we achieve the most wealth? Sport becomes a commodity when either consumers are willing to pay to play or watch it or if it has a potential exchange value. These sports commodities can be classified as player products, spectator products, or associated products (Giulianotti, 2016). Especially when considering they had to compete with other companies, it makes it seem like what happened to Nancy Kerrigan was a good thing. I actually found a vintage 1996 -1997 Stars On Ice Souvenir T-Shirt on Etsy but sadly its sold out. You can check it out for reference —> https://www.etsy.com/listing/708801113/vintage-1996-1997-stars-on-ice-souvenir

[ilovetonyaharding]

During the 1990s, this was essentially America’s first pop-culture sporting story on television (Wilner, 2013). It was a juicy story that had controversial people become household names. It was something that people ate up and because of consumption, TV networks couldn’t profit more from skating. There became this economic importance of skating globally within the 1990s. It was a scene of competitive success, and capitalism and consumerism. Wilner (2013) from CTVNews explained that even during the off-years from the Olympics, large arenas wanted two major tours: Stars On Ice and Champions On Ice (Wilner, 2013). They visited major countries like Canada and the United States and even toured across Europe, Asia, and other continents where skating wasn’t a primary sport (Wilner, 2013). 3-decade owner of Champions On Ice, Tom Collins explained that business quadrupled when that incident happened. It put skating in the stratosphere; you couldn't sell enough tickets” (Wilner, 2013, para 17). He continued, "I think the main thing that happened was any time vast wealth comes into anything, it tends to change it. It changes the image, the mission, what people's roles are and what they should be doing” (Wilner, 2013, para. 25).

[ilovetonyaharding]

I think it was easier to put Tonya as the villain because she just wasn't the image that the figure skating world wanted.

Margot Robbie for Refinery29 (2017)

[ilovetonyaharding]

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, figure skating was considered to be an elitist show sport and considering young women and girls were primary viewers, Harding was not the role model wanted to be seen, Kerrigan was (Duggan, 2021). Let's face it. Nancy Kerrigan was G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S. A Time Magazine article back from 1994 recognized her as “blessed with long, slender limbs and a natural elegance” (Duggan, 2021). She made PEOPLE magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” and even got custom made costumes from Vera Wang (Duggan, 2021).  (This is ironic because the media made her out to seem high class but she came from a blue-collared socioeconomic background just like Harding ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) However, the press illustrated the exact way Harding and Kerrigan were portrayed in sport to outside of sport in regards to “The Incident”. Nancy was the tragic victim, America’s sweetheart and it made you feel bad for her, all while Tonya is depicted as evil and the bad guy. It was bad enough that Harding was a menace to traditional femininity and classism in the world of figure skating, but she would always be known as the  “scrappy girl from the trailer parks” (Rothman, 2017, para 4).

[ilovetonyaharding]

Nancy and I were friends, okay? We were roommates sometimes on the road. But the press wanted Nancy to be a princess and me to be a pile of crap to sell papers. I mean, what kind of frigging person bashes in their friend’s knee? Who would do that to a friend? This is bulls-t.

Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding (Film: I, Tonya, 2017)

[ilovetonyaharding]

As stated in Sport, the Media and Popular Culture, a chapter from Boyle & Haynes’ book, Power Play: Sport, the Media and Popular Culture (2009), “There is an important role media sports stars play in sustaining aspects of the mythical dimension of sport in society and creating both heroes and villains whose appeal extends beyond the confines of the sports field” (Boyle & Haynes, 2009, pg 14).

[ilovetonyaharding]

On January 6, 1994, Harding’s “rival” Nancy Kerrigan was struck just above the knee with a baton by after practice at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit. Who did this? Who was the perpetrator? It was a plan masterminded by Jeff Gilooly, Harding’s now ex-husband, and his friend, Shawn Eckhardt. The assault led to the surge of tabloid reports and television programs. The more information that came out about the attack on Nancy, Jeff’s connection and Tonya’s potential involvement, the more the media flocked Harding and infiltrated the world of figure skating, placing it smack-dab in the middle of mainstream media (Nicolaou, 2018).

[ilovetonyaharding]

In this scene, Tonya confronted the judges after a poor score during a competition. We can clearly see here that the judge admitted they account for presentation. However, Tonya is wearing a pink frilly dress and her makeup done (common traditional femininity in the world of ice skating!!!) and if they were willing to cough up $5000 for a costume maybe she wouldn’t have to come up with something handmade. These judges do not like Harding because she is not an all American good girl who embodies elegance and class (like Nancy Kerrigan). Instead she is brash and rebellious which threatens the hegemonic practices of traditional skating practices.

[ilovetonyaharding]

Harding grew up in a physically and emotionally abusive household, hunted and shot rabbits with her dad for fun as a child, could work under the hood of a car, and smoked cigarettes. She wore costumes that were handmade, wore with dark nail polish and skated to ZZ Top’s Sleeping Bag. All these factors became disadvantages. Lower scores and medals were denied because of her familial background. At this time during the 1980s, there was push for a return to “family values” that tried to suppress the feminist movement two decades prior (Hess, 2018). As we can see, this mediated discourse from a nationalistic agenda reproduced, naturalized and constructed values and attitudes that circulate within wider society that reached the sporting world (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Sexism and classism were ready to bite down on Harding for being an outcast from traditional femininity which crushed her ability to showcase her talent.

[ilovetonyaharding]

LaVona: “She’s twelve and can land a f-king triple. She doesn’t fit in, she stands out”

Coach Diane Rawlinson: “She stands out because she looks like she chops wood every morning”

[ilovetonyaharding]

Harding didn't grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth coming from a poor household. Unbeknownst to her, she would never get an opportunity to remove herself from the blue-collared working-class upbringing. Her mother, LaVona, had to become a full-time waitress to pay for Harding’s coaching, and it was hard enough to give Harding the image of what a pristine figure skater should look like. When every girl at the ice rink had a fur coat, coach Diane Rawlinson told LaVona that it's not just about figure skating, but that the judges want the skaters to be “rich, prissy a-holes”. Those words came out of LaVona, but nonetheless, Rawlinson makes a point that the children should be “well-rounded” and is a question of fitting in embodying wealth and high socioeconomic status. Her father had to make one out of rabbit fur.

[ilovetonyaharding]

It’s a sport where the friggin' judges want you to be this old-timey version of what a woman is supposed to be.”

Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding (Film: I, Tonya, 2017)