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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The movie was great, and I personally don't think Tonya knew the guy was going to physically hurt Nancy Kerrigan. Harding had a crazy life and I find her sympathetic.[/quote]

The movie wants her to be portrayed as the victim. It was a movie that is not set in reality of the actual events. Plenty of people have crappy lives and would not contribute to the assault of another human being. Hollywood movies manipulate the facts, your brain while they take in the cash.[/quote]

I think how some people like you are so bizarrely emphatic even years later that nothing about her life and situation can generate empathy. I feel like its so like...it was such an encapsulation of how we (American's) view the world.

Nancy was this good traditional hardworking elegant girl, and got the whole country behind her. And Tonya was a tough, poor, arguably far more hardworking considering what she was overcoming, crass girl who never learned how to be a good person but who wanted a different life for herself and fell victim to the habits her crappy life instilled in her. Nancy was always going to be fine. In another life she may or may not have won the gold but no matter what she was going to be fine. Tonya needed that gold to escape, so she behaved badly. And was very very thoroughly punished for it. And still 30 years later people are unable to find empathy  (which is not the same as forgiveness or acceptance) for her. Its amazing to me. [/quote]

You don't get it.

There are many people with Tonya's background who deserve a leg up and all the sympathy in the world for how hard their childhoods are.

But if that person is suspected of having her partner go and beat up her opponent so she can gain an unfair advantage?  You actually think it's the obligation of the audience to sympathize with such a scumbag?  Are you obtuse?[/quote]

I totally get it. Pulling oneself out of that kind of situation is hard. Some people are able to do it and become Oprah and some people aren't. What would Nancy have been like if she'd grown up like Tonya? Would she have been the rare person who had the ability to get out of it relatively unscathed or would she have been a complicated person too? I didn't use the word sympathy BTW, you did, it means something different and more condescending than empathy.

I think we have an obligation as a society to try to create fewer Tonyas and in order to do that one needs to understand the Tonyas AND the ones who made it out, you need to understand both to understand why there will always be more Tonyas than Oprahs so we should try to help less kids be born into that fate that is so hard to scrape your way out of.  And try to give resources to those kids who are born there to help them if they show the fortitude to try to get out. Tonya showed that fortitude and was mocked by the media for a long time before that bat was swung.

AND FWIW I am not saying her punishment was unjust, I'm not saying it wasn't understandable to be disgusted with her in the moment. I'm saying that now, 30 years later, we have the ability to view her as a whole three dimensional person which is not something anyone bothered to do back then. Tonya wasn't able to overcome all the obstacles thrown at her. Would you have been? Would Nancy have been? Why do we hold poor people to a standard that we probably couldn't meet ourselves?[/quote]

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