This film season, we’ve seen a fair share of questionable protagonists. From P.T. Barnum in “The Greatest Showman” to the eccentric cult legend Tommy Wiseau in “The Disaster Artist,” there’s been plenty of debate about the characters and their real-life personas.
Perhaps the most egregious, and one who has received considerable press, is disgraced former figure skater Tonya Harding in the biopic “I, Tonya.” In Hollywood’s attempt to redeem and popularize infamous figures, audiences must take movies for what they are — movies.
The film is a fun romp with the same crass, damaged characters who channel the sensibility of a David O. Russell film with as much fantastical inaccuracy as a Mel Gibson one. It’s a glossy yet excessively sympathetic portrayal of Harding and the events leading up to the attack on Nancy Kerrigan in which Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, hired Shane Stant to attack Kerrigan with a police baton.
A significant part of the film is spent lamenting her more-than-turbulent childhood and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her boyfriend and later husband, Gillooly. However, these genuinely traumatic events are underscored by a montage of the couple beating each other to “Goodbye Stranger.”
Because of its comedic nature, the film is able to get away with plenty of inaccuracies and contradictory accusations. Told from the perspective of Harding herself, the audience is forced to take everything at face value. The redneck underdog who splits wood and fixes cars is surrounded by an ensemble of monsters who frequently seek to tear her down, on and off the ice. Harding’s now-estranged mother vehemently denies any accounts of abuse and insists her daughter has a victim complex, which the film indulges in throughout its entirety.
Even so, the film neglects to account for the real victim in all of this — Kerrigan. She was just 24 at the time of “the incident.” It’s expected that a film from Harding’s perspective would not explore Kerrigan’s drama.
The film’s portrayal of Kerrigan as a beloved ice princess is frankly offensive. Kerrigan, whose own blue-collar background is largely rewritten to foil Harding’s perception of herself as the underdog, is depicted as sniveling and petulant, specifically in her less-than-thrilled reaction to winning silver in the 1994 Winter Olympics. For viewers not old enough to remember the way Kerrigan was lauded by the media, they may take Harding’s interpretation of her rival at face value.
Kerrigan’s origins are just as humble as Harding’s, but lack the necessary trauma required for a Hollywood take. Her father was a welder and worked three jobs to support his daughter’s career, sometimes driving a Zamboni in exchange for her lessons. Kerrigan says she has not watched the film and told The Boston Globe she had no desire to. “At this point, it’s so much easier and better to just be . . . it’s not really part of my life,” she said. “As you say, I was the victim. Like, that’s my role in this whole thing. That’s it.”
Although it’s been over two decades since the attack, a film like “I, Tonya” just seems too fresh. Although Harding maintains that she knew nothing about the plot to attack Kerrigan, it’s difficult to buy Harding as a victim. Villains and antiheroes make for complex and intriguing characters, but when they are taken from historical ambiguity, the victims and the true nature of their offenses should be acknowledged for what they are.
Fellow skater Johnny Weir came to Kerrigan’s defense: “I don’t like that we’re almost accepting and glamorizing what Tonya Harding and her people conspired to do to a fellow athlete,” he said. “I don’t like that we’re kind of accepting that this happened and treating it like this circus freak show that was. It was two very real people’s lives.”
Ryan Murphy’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” is the latest to explore the complexity behind a recent crime. We will see whether it takes significant liberties, or if it documents the story in a nuanced way, delivering truth and accuracy to the victim and his still-present family — unlike what “I, Tonya” did to Kerrigan.
Kristen DiPietra is a senior double-majoring in English and human development.