Tonya Nancy And The American Scandal

In 1994, the brutal attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships sent shockwaves around America as the public struggled to understand the violence against America’s most beloved skater. Yet, in her article “Tonya, Nancy, and the Bodily Configuration of Social Class,” Sam Stoloff explains, “Harding was the stronger emotional pole in the drama, because, for the middle class, she represented the class Other” (Stoloff 228). This quote illustrates why the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan scandal reached such a broad audience around America, the nation of the middle class. While on the surface, the scandal may appear to represent nothing more than typical sports drama, the role of social status and gender in the Harding

and Kerrigan conflict is what prompted the widespread fascination surrounding the events that has continued to the present day. In light of this fascination, the Price of Gold documentary as part of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary series sought to re-examine the events surrounding the skating drama of the 1994 Olympics twenty years later. Throughout Price of Gold, the documentary chooses to analyze the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan drama through the lens of Harding’s class and how that tinted the figure skating community and the American public’s view against Harding; this slant against her affected Harding in everything from her rise to prominence in skating to her involvement in the conflict with Kerrigan to her fall from the world of skating.
How Price of Gold depicts the contrast between how Harding and Kerrigan each rose to skating prominence effectively sets the stage for their future skating and social class rivalry. At the outset of the documentary, present day interviews of Harding’s first coach Diane Rawlinson are used in conjunction with old homemade video of her early skating years depicting conversations with her mom and glimpses into her home in order to provide a strong illustration of how Harding’s perceived low rank did not align with her natural talent for skating. With the destitution and roughness of Harding’s upbringing clearly illustrated and established as the lens of the documentary, the documentary focus moves to how this affected Harding’s early career as the public began to compare her to her skating counterpart, Nancy Kerrigan. As Scott Hamilton, a former skater and famous skating analyst, discusses in an interview for the documentary, due to her unsophisticated nature which was illustrated by her unfeminine body and lack of elegance, Harding was simply not the poised ice princess image that the United States skating community desired. Price of Gold establishes that Harding’s rise to skating prominence was made in spite of opposition from both major media and the figure skating community due to her lower level of finesse and femininity. In direct contrast to Harding’s struggles, the documentary shrewdly depicts Kerrigan being praised while showing clips of her skating gracefully and classily as well as fulfilling various sponsorship opportunities as a result of her position as the elegant poster-child of figure skating. Through combining the primary lens of Harding’s class struggles and unfeminine nature with glimpses of Kerrigan’s high-class, elegant performances, Price of Gold establishes not only a sports rivalry but also a rivalry between two opposing ends of the class and gender spectrum.
As the documentary begins to focus on old media coverage to analyze the events following in the wake of the attack on Kerrigan at the 1994 United States National Figure Skating Championships, the lens again returns to Tonya’s social status.

Various old news clips are used to depict the methods employed by the media trying to elicit explosive responses from Harding in order to confirm her low-class, less dignified nature which would push the public to conclude she was involved in the violence against Kerrigan. In one particular instance, the media is shown purposefully setting off Harding’s truck alarm in order to force her to come rushing out to stop the tow truck which was called to take the truck away. Through instances such as these, Price of Gold efficiently establishes how the media exploited Harding’s tough nature in an attempt to incriminate Harding in American minds. On top of this, as Connie Chung, a CBS news reporter, explains in an interview for the documentary, the CBS news channel was exploiting the scandal in every way possible in order to boost the channel’s viewership for the 1994 Olympics. As the Price of Gold illustrates, media coverage such as this was a major contributor towards turning the masses of the American middle class against Harding, an unfeminine, lower-class citizen who didn’t fit in what appeared to be a unified, middle-class America and apparently was not above injuring her refined skating counterpart Kerrigan. Sam Stoloff explains this by noting, “Without formal markers of class distinction, the white population is seen as a vast undifferentiated social body called ‘the middle class’” (229). Stoloff then continues by saying, “Anything outside of this body is perceived to be a threat” (229). While the Price of Gold maintains ambiguity on whether or not Harding was in fact involved in the scheme against Kerrigan, the documentary is clear that Harding’s aggressive personality and unfeminine body which was exploited by the

media affected how the American public perceived Harding’s apparent involvement in the scandal.
As portrayed by Price of Gold, Harding’s performance at the 1994 Olympics annihilated any chance at her redemption from the events involving Kerrigan. Harding’s class was again portrayed as central to how the American public and the rest of the world perceived Harding’s dramatic performance at the Olympics regarding her shoelace. As both of Kerrigan’s coaches expressed in present day interviews for the documentary, they along with the rest of America and the skating community felt vindicated by the removal of the unsophisticated, ungraceful, unfeminine Harding from the U.S. Figure Skating Association. However, as Price of Gold illustrates through a present day interview with Harding, she had as a result of her social standing and gender become a victim of the American prejudice against anyone not fitting the traditional middle-class mold. In the words of Sam Stoloff, “Tonya Harding was the skeleton in the country’s closet” (226). As a result, despite whether or not Harding was in fact guilty, the American public was prepared to ostracize her and condemn her to a life of hardships and poverty as a result of losing her figure skating career. By allowing Harding to speak up for herself during present day interviews in Price of Gold, the documentary gave Harding the power to tell her story and express how her less refined nature caused her to be a victim of the entire ordeal just as much as Kerrigan was.
The choice to center Price of Gold on the issue of social class while leaving ambiguity on whether or not Harding was in fact guilty of assisting in the plot against Kerrigan allows the documentary to appear unbiased and primarily social class focused. As the documentary concludes, Kerrigan is once again displayed as the more refined character in the drama by her refusal to appear in the documentary, saying that she has moved on with her life. On the other hand, Harding is shown repeatedly trying to defend her innocence. While both women are portrayed as having moved on with their lives by having families and careers, the angle of social class is still clearly present in how each of the women handles the documentary. This continuing class discrepancy between the skaters emphasizes the significance of class on the perception of both Harding and Kerrigan throughout the scandal and the documentary. Price of Gold certainly adds a fresh, modern perspective on the Harding and Kerrigan conflict by allowing Harding’s side of the story to be publicized regarding how her class and gender affected the treatment she received during the scandal. 

In order to revise my paper, I chose to focus primarily on a few smaller areas of sentence structure along with major refinement of the conclusion in order to make it more polished and focused. For example, both you and my peer reviewer commented on the length and complexity of my thesis statement which led me to slightly revise it and split it using a semicolon. As well, I worked to incorporate another Stoloff quote into the second body paragraph to better explain the meaning of America as a middle class nation; again, something suggested by both you and my peer reviewer. The conclusion was my primary area of revision in order to ensure that was a continuation of my primary argument rather than something entirely new. I chose to focus on the chronological conclusion of the documentary and how that again showed the difference in class between Kerrigan and Harding. I found it difficult to make significant revisions, partially due to trying to clarify details without adding too much more length to the paper, but this aligned with your comment that my paper did not need serious restructuring.