I, Tonya: Relative Truths, Cycles of Abuse, and the Things We Burn For

1. Tonya Who?

Oh boy, I, Tonya…

So it’s been brought to my attention that literally every other human in the world knew about Tonya Harding previous to this movie, and everyone had their opinions set in stone. Strong opinions about this Olympic figure skater.

But I learned all this after the fact. So many that colored my view of this movie. Am I gonna try to take sides on the entire debate one way or the other? Fuck no. The movie certainly doesn’t try to tell you what’s true. It’s extremely straightforward about that fact. Hell, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) turns toward the camera near the end of the movie and directly says as much: “there’s no such thing as truth! I mean, it’s bullshit! Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.”

Somehow it’s less important what exactly happened. Did Tonya fire a gun at Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan)? Does it entirely matter? This story is about the cycles of abuse, it’s about passion and trauma and misogyny and the media and the nature of truth, and class, and yes, it’s about Tonya Harding, one of the most recognizable names of the 90s. I actually found there to be quite a bit of overlap in the themes of Lady Bird and I, Tonya, which was not what I was initially expecting. They both grapple with fighting against abuse, moving forward in spite of all of the things working against you, while taking very different approaches in their cinematographic, screenwriting, and acting choices.

So the movie starts with some quick quips from the main cast, as if they were being interviewed in real time. Across the screen, we get a sense for the aesthetic of the movie: “Based on irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly.” We see Tonya; Jeff; Lavona, Tonya’s mother (Allison Janney); Diane, Tonya’s coach (Julianne Nicholson); and Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser), Tonya’s ex-bodyguard and the guy who orchestrated the entire… Incident (which we’ll get to later). Each of them offers their own little tidbits of Tonya and her life. Her mother, obviously, thinks she’s an ungrateful brat despite her having done, in her mind, so much for Tonya. Diane has a more tempered response – she obviously carries a great deal of respect for Tonya, while understanding the wide separation between those who love or hate Tonya. Shawn makes up another story about how Tonya and Jeff wanted to kill Nancy, and shows, well, his own delusions. Jeff talks about how hated he was for his part in the whole affair, and, frighteningly enough, comes across as almost sympathetic, or at the very least charismatic. Is it truly hard to see why he got away with so much of what he did for so long?

And then, Tonya herself. Unapologetic for her background, for being herself, for living her truest life. She carries a weight in her words, a wistfulness for a time gone by, but at the same time, a defiance, a fire burning in the back of her eyes. So the Figure Skating Association banned her. So what? She knows she’s talented as hell. What does she need other peoples’ approval for now when they wouldn’t even offer it to begin with just because she didn’t fit their narrow definition of what was right, what was proper, what was “pretty” or “talented” and so on? Fuck their narrow views. She landed the triple axel, one of the most difficult moves in figure skating, despite every headwind working against her. She made it past abuse, physical and emotional, from her mother and her ex husband.

Hell, her mother doesn’t even recognize the nature of what she did! She’s unapologetic as well. When thinking over what she did, she mentions, oh, “I hit her ONE TIME. With a hairbrush.” Which she says right before we flash between scenes of Tonya having the chair kicked out from under her, being told she’s bad at what she does, that Tonya just needed… encouragement! Via verbal abuse, hate, endless criticism. It seems that this is just what Tonya’s mother thinks is the right thing to do. She advises Tonya to spit in the milk of someone who criticized Tonya. She treats mostly everyone with disdain, and yet she thinks she’s doing something right. She thinks her hate is justified out of some perverted sense of “support” or “help.”

So Tonya starts skating as young as the age of four. And wins! Yet always there on the sideline is her mother, pouring alcohol into her coffee, shouting obscenities at her daughter. And on the ice Tonya remains as the years pass by. It’s even at an ice rink that Tonya first meets Jeff, her first date ever and, soon afterwards, her first husband. It starts out full of love and care and admiration, with Jeff telling Tonya he loves her, and getting her things, and generally treating her with respect. Quite swiftly, however, “he started hitting [her] a couple of months in.” How does Tonya rationalize this? “My mom hits me, she loves me! And I thought it was my fault! That’s just what I knew.”

Abuse begets abuse. Excuses explain away that pain, that trauma. Jeff throws out apologies, promises to never act that way again, to be better, and doesn’t – once! – seem to show it. Frankly, it seems to get worse and worse throughout the movie.

And then Tonya brings up Nancy’s leg injury at the hands of some bumbling hitmen, and through her comments on the reaction to said event, brings to light something profoundly sad about the entire situation. Nancy Kerrigan should never have been injured. It was a horrible occurrence and the people behind it, rightfully, should and largely did face justice. But no one wants to talk about what Tonya faced. The years and years of emotional and physical abuse, the fear, the pain, the deep-seated hurt that transforms a person, ESPECIALLY someone who goes through that at such a young age. Tonya keeps thinking she deserves to be hit! That it’s somehow her fault, or that it shows love, or that it’s just the way the world works. Abuse rewires your brain, and Tonya, facing it from so many sides, shows this. She is deeply caught up in this cycle of abuse, and yet still has the strength to fight against it. Her story is a tragic one, but it is also one that is full of power and strength, and the power of our passions to carry us through the heavy shit. That passion might be figure skating. It might be an education, or performance, or making a difference in the here and now. Hell, it might be writing thousand word long rants about film. But when you find that – when you find what makes you burn – it drags you along. It fuels you. It feels like something inside yourself that you can’t avoid letting out, something that you need to do.

Back, however, to Tonya and her mother. Lavona notices her daughter’s bruises at the hands of Jeff, and seemingly tries to suggest that Tonya can do better, while also refusing to accept that her beating her husband was equally as abusive and makes her declaration about Jeff rather hypocritical. Lavona is seemingly so blind to what she has done, or has rationalized it away so well, that she comments “you’re a dumb piece of shit who thinks she deserves to get hit,” which both the viewer and Tonya respond to with, “I wonder where I got that idea…” Abuse. Trickles. Down. It slithers through every crevice. It changes you. It makes you believe things about yourself that just aren’t true. It makes you develop defense mechanisms that linger afterwards.

But Tonya seems free on the ice. She is right where she wants to be. She immediately comes across as, well, “different” from the other skaters. She dresses in a more modern outfit, purple with silver accents, and skating to none other than ZZ Top’s “Sleeping Bag.” Unconventional, compared to the song that immediately preceded Tonya’s performance – Vivaldi’s Summer. And what does she get for skating a wonderful routine? Bad scores and a talking down to from the judges, for failing at her “presentation.”

Her thoughts on the matter? “Suck my dick!”

So yeah. Tonya was far from the model of what was considered a “proper” skater.

After this performance, she gets to return home to her mother berating her, guilting her for taking every penny that she makes, saying she’s sorry and getting hit for it, having every little action of hers be misread and insulted and used for the excuse for escalation. Her mother starts throwing plates, food, punches, and, eventually – a knife, which lodges itself in Tonya’s arm. The scene freezes. They both look at the knife, an act that cannot be taken back, cannot be explained away, cannot be undone. It is the last straw, and they both know it. Tonya walks out, gets a place with Jeff. Out of the arms of one abuser, into the arms of another. And once again – it works out for a little while! Jeff even goes so far as to tell Tonya hey, you’re not stupid, look, you could get a GED, you can do it. This from the same man who alternately bashes her head into mirrors and slaps her across the face.

Cut once again to Tonya and Jeff’s wedding. Tonya, in the interview-like aside, seems incredibly remorseful about the whole affair, which, given what we know, makes a lot of sense. Her mother sulks outside the main hall, offering more judgment for her daughter, and nothing much beneficial.

We go, next, to the 1991 Nationals, after all the supporting characters describe to us how incredible and historical the triple axel is. As she enters the ice, a man behind her chants how much she sucks at her – which is later revealed to be part of the machinations of Lavona, trying to “help” her daughter, or whatever her rationale of the day is.

And then we join Tonya out on the ice. And holy shit, does she own the scene. The camera follows her every direction, as she first lifts her hand to the sky and the camera along with it. The moment feels eerily silent, with only her accompanying music to guide us and some light commentary. We approach the moment of Tonya attempting the triple axel. Time seems to freeze for a brief moment. There is a breath. And then… she does it! After flashing over the faces of our supporting characters, we hear Tonya’s inner monologue during the triple axel as it plays out in slow motion, as she excitedly recalls this moment of her life, giving a huge “fuck you” to everyone who ever doubted her ability. We exit the slow-mo, where Tonya finishes her routine to “Feels Like the First Time” by Foreigner plays in the background. Flowers tumble to the ice. She gets perfect scores for her skate. She finally got recognition for being one of the greatest figure skaters of all time, at the very least at that point in history. We flash back to “present” Tonya, beaming as bright as she was that day, tears nearly welling up in her eyes, describing how much she felt loved, respected, and admired at that moment, that finally others saw all the work she had done. And then, after a tearful breath, she grabs her water, remarking how no one really asks her about that any more. It’s heart-wrenching. Her passion for skating culminated in one glorious, beautiful, shimmering moment – only to have all of that erased in the eyes of history by an incident that – it seems more and more – wasn’t even Tonya’s fault, and was the fault of her abusers.

The abusers, who, when she was at her peak, dragged her back down. The ex-husband who ignored her restraining order over and over again until she had a moment of weakness and took him back, immediately after… he stalks her and screams “fuck you” at her. It’s the curse of abuse, that cycle that keeps pulling you back in. In many cases, the abuser has legitimate love for the abused in some way. And it’s this that both allows the abuser to somehow justify their own actions as either “mistakes” or “done out of love,” and that keeps the abused continuously second guessing themselves, coming back over and over, continuously forgiving their abuser. But just because there’s love doesn’t mean that abuse can’t happen – far from it. But it certainly fucks with the heads of the abused. I think most people – and especially those who get caught in the cycle of abuse – are the kind of people that want to see the best in everyone. This is far from a weakness but it absolutely lends itself to being used, capitalized on, and twisted. It’s an admirable quality, but a vulnerable one.

When Tonya takes back her abuser into her life, the rest of her life goes to hell. She skates worse, she drinks all the time, she neglects her training, etc. She falls straight back down. And then, all of a sudden, the bubble bursts again, and she finds herself outright divorcing her husband after she’s thrown to the floor by him and calls the cops on him multiple times. And this is accentuated by the camera moving out of the house with one fluid motion, showing Jeff living alone, with “Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp playing in the background.

But Abuse. Keeps. Dragging. You. Back. In. Until you claw your way out.

Jeff arrives at Tonya’s house, teary eyed and asking to simply return something, seemingly heartbroken… before literally kicking down Tonya’s door and pointing a gun at her, calling her any number of misogynistic names and threatening both her life and, then, his own. Jeff is unhinged. Jeff is obsessed with Tonya, and needs control over her. It’s twisted as hell. He even fires a gun at her when she tries to escape, and then tells her about how it’s actually her fault, how she made him do this, how he just wants them to be in love, alternating between beating the shit out of her and trying to kiss her, threatening her life and “needing” her.

Here I want to discuss something interesting that this movie does with its scenes of abuse. Frequently, Tonya will turn toward the camera and make a comment to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. This might come across as a quirk, just some clever thing the screenwriter included to give us some insight, but I want to just throw out here that what this shows is not just some quirk, it’s showing us Tonya’s use of dissociation to escape that abuse, how she is not totally present in those moments, knowing what’s going on but not remaining there. It’s horrific, it’s common, and it seems clear as crystal, in my opinion, that that’s what’s going on here.

Back to the movie, though!

Next, the cops pull over the car! And maybe, for a split second, some viewers think, hey, great, Tonya is gonna be saved, taken away from Jeff. But no. Despite the bleeding wound on her face, despite the booze and guns in Jeff’s car, the authorities leave Tonya with Jeff. Doesn’t matter how subtle or obvious the abuse is, it seems to go unnoticed in this film. “Jeff can talk his way out of anything.”

So we find Tonya working at a diner, her Olympic dreams dashed after failing the triple axel in 1992, where she’s approached by her old skating coach from her childhood who takes her on with few demands or expectations. You really get a strong sense for the sense of love that this coach has for Tonya, probably seeing the great drive and passion in Tonya’s heart – and the amazing talent that just needed to be cultivated. Despite the lack of a “wholesome American family,” which the judges demand from Tonya. And the question at the heart of this entire movie is made explicit: “why can’t it just be about the skating?”

And what else is made explicit is the nature of the abuse from Lavona and, simultaneously, how she explains it away to herself. She takes solace in “making [Tonya] a champion,” making her sound like she gave some great gift to Tonya in this whole process instead of a lifetime of trauma that she had to constantly fight against. She thinks she actually did something good, when what she did was demolish the life of another human being. We get the impression that Lavona’s mother was “nice” but that that didn’t do shit for her in the long run, and that she resents her place in life, and has nothing but bitterness for any possible reason that she found herself there.

So here we go again, by the way! Tonya gets back together with Jeff so as to give the impression of a wholesome American family to those damn judges who demanded it. Here. We. Go. Again. Back and forth, back and forth, like two stars tumbling toward each other, bound to collide and reform and collide again.

But before we even have that chance…

2. The… Incident.

And so we reach the second half of the film.

After Tonya receives a death threat from some anonymous source, we see Shawn and Jeff plotting something in a strip club, trying to figure out how to send some threatening letters to scare off Nancy Kerrigan and fuck with her head. What started as a sloppy way to threaten someone – itself a horrendous thing – became an assault due to the delusions of grandeur in the mind of Shawn. Shawn’s two hitmen arrive at the training area of Nancy Kerrigan, thinking that you can’t be identified if you don’t show your eyes to the people you pass by, talking about mind reading and some other nonsense. The hitman, Shane, walks in, does the deed, and then desperately tries to escape. Upon seeing the door is chained shut, he bashes his head through the glass, runs over an old man, and escapes. Before being picked up soon after for being a complete idiot about the whole process. And then the other pieces all fall into place. Shawn sent the letters in the first place. Somehow, his whole family are full of enablers.

Tonya and Jeff seem to have some idea of how this happened to Nancy, that they have some culpability in the whole affair.

The FBI gets involved. They learn a bunch, largely by Shawn talking to literally every single person who would listen. Anywhere. In bars. At urinals. In restaurants. Etc. etc. etc.

It unravels yet again when Jeff hits Tonya one more time. It all breaks again. She decides, no, it needs to happen. She needs to admit to the FBI what happened, and Jeff’s culpability in that. And what do they do? THEY SEND THE TRANSCRIPTS TO JEFF. Her abuser. The man she’s feared for so long. Turns out trusting the authorities was a damn mistake, yet again.

But she gets out, again. Leaves. Attempts to move on. Trying again. Failing again. Failing better, to put on my pretentiosity hat for a second and quote some Beckett at y’all.

She’s back, skating amazingly once again, as Jeff, Shane, and the other conspirators are dragged to court where they all get jail time. We see Lavona loving the media attention.

What immediately follows are the heaviest moments of the film, moments I’m sure would have felt far more directed had I known about and had opinions about the Tonya Harding affair previous to this movie. Present-Tonya looks at the camera and talks about how much she loved the media attention at first, the love, the admiration… which so quickly transitioned into hate, and trauma, and turmoil. How tabloid culture tore her up all over again. She looks directly at the camera with a frown, saying “it was like being abused all over again… only this time it was by you… all of you… you’re all my attackers too.” People so deeply wanted to have a villain, someone to hate, that they forced Tonya into that role, refused to look at the facts, the background, or any sort of extenuating circumstances surrounding her. Even her mother comes to her house, seeming to be trying to reconcile or… something… before revealing she’s merely looking for some money from one of the tabloids, to get a line from Tonya that they can publish. The moment of redemption or reconciliation or whatever is all a lie. Abusers can change. Despite their abuse, often that love is hard to erase, that trust, that intimacy we shared with them. But they don’t always. Many times, they don’t. And they use that against the abused, over and over, to try and rope them back in. It’s never that simple.

We move, yet again, relentlessly onwards. Tonya looks into the camera as she applies her make-up before her 1994 Olympic performance. She wipes away tears, trying her best to force a smile onto her face and failing, over and over. She is strong, but that doesn’t mean she is without feeling. Everything is pushing down on her. Everything is crumbling, all that she’s spent her entire god damn life working toward, because of a couple of inept and abusive idiots.

And her performance is… well, lackluster. Her laces won’t tie properly, she can’t skate correctly, and she approaches the judges table, tearfully letting them know her skates are broken. She gets 8^th place, seems pretty okay with that, and has far more to say about Nancy’s resentful look regarding a silver medal than her own performance or all that the media had to say about it. How Nancy seemed ingrateful, looking like she “stepped in poop” because she got second place in the damn Olympics!

With the end of the Olympics, we see Tonya’s trial for her role in the attack on Nancy. She sits there calmly as the judge reads the multiple fines that she owes, the community service, etc. It’s the ban from all figure skating activities that gets her to raise her head, weakly saying no, begging the judge to let her skate, that that’s all she knows, that she just wants jail time, that they got almost 2 years whereas banning her from skating is a life sentence, takes away everything she’s ever known and worked for. It’s her passion. It’s her fire. And it’s being forcefully extinguished by this judge, by this decision. It’s desperation. When you have that fire you need to pursue it. And Jesus, this movie makes you feel for Tonya’s pain here, and I don’t care if you think she’s culpable or not. Her best life was wrenched out of her hands, while the guys who planned the damn thing got off relatively scot-free. The deck was always stacked against her, and eventually it came tumbling down. It’s a horrifying thought.

But Tonya keeps moving. It’s what keeps her alive. She starts a short career in boxing, interspersed with shots of her fighting right alongside shots of her skating from earlier. She has kept moving her whole life. It’s what got her through class struggle. It’s what got her through abuse. It’s what made her the best at what she did for a time. It’s what we should remember her for, someone who dared to dream bigger, who fought for every inch of what she earned.

And there, we end the movie. There’s a bunch of short tidbits of “where are they now” at the end, but the one that stuck out to me the most was Tonya wanting people to know that “she’s a good mother.” She managed to claw her way out of trauma, of abuse, and make a life for herself.

Hell, we deserve to know at least that about her.

Tonya Harding isn’t a perfect person. None of us are, for fuck’s sake. But she followed her heart, and she dominated her field, she excelled at her passion, and she lived her best life.

Most of us couldn’t say that.

And she deserves to have her story told.

She deserves to be known as the first American woman to successfully land a triple axel in competition.

She deserves to be heard.