"In that moment, people smiled at me; I knew I was loved at the moment."
In the framed shot that is both voyeuristic and subjective, Tonia smiled and looked directly at the audience outside the movie, and said these words slowly.
Her voice was low-pitched to please, but mixed with a little cosiness and arrogance, like a child who suffered prematurely from the suffering of the world, with a clown-like smile mixed with confusion and ridicule, tentatively reaching out to the world.
It seems that he is trying his best to dispel people's public opinion and hatred, emphasizing himself over and over again——
"I, Queen of Flowers"
The story of "I, Queen of Figures" is based on real events, the biggest scandal in American sports in the 1990s - figure skating genius Tonya Harding injured her opponent Nancy Kerrigan's knee.
When this incident is brought up to this day, the American people are still outraged.
But the film turns its focus away from the attack itself, and instead digs into and reveals Tonia's self-world , reflecting this bizarre society with a cold gouging humor.
This icy, dark humor runs through the entire film, stitched together with the ultimate satire.
The last second, Tonya's husband innocently looked directly at the camera and said, I have never hit her
The next second, it was followed by the picture of her husband dragging her head against the wall.
The last second, my mother said grimly to the camera, she was spoiled by me.
The next second, young Tonya was beaten up by her mother.
The essence of this humorous irony is sadness, a silent protest against violence.
The "violence" here is not only aimed at the physical violence, but also carries multiple metaphors and references throughout the soul of the film. The mother’s control and devaluation are the tyrannical violence of spiritual power and strong will; the husband’s domestic violence and the repeated demands for peace are the emotional violence of the relationship between the sexes; The collective unconscious violence of spectator psychology.
Tonya's life has been dragged and torn repeatedly in countless violence.
The film deconstructs Tonya's life by breaking the fourth wall, allowing the protagonist to form a two-way gaze with the outside world, and interspersed with the appearance of multi-perspective interviews.
Tonia's every move is a subversion and deconstruction of the defined female image.
Looking at the female figure skating athletes in the history of sports, they are either sweet and pure girls like Lipinski, or mature women like Nancy Kerrigan, elegant and charming like a white swan, which is in line with the long-standing public desire for public female images. Criterion, the public woman the public aspires to see.
And Tonya came from the bottom, wild, unrestrained, swearing, spreading her legs unscrupulously in public, such a vulgar person turned out to be the top woman in the world of figure skating, which disillusioned the expectations of the public. So when Tonya and Nancy clashed, the public unconditionally turned to Nancy, putting Tanya in the spotlight and ignoring the truth.
Her experience can almost be said to be from the original family to the social class, from the relationship between the sexes to the stereotyped definition of gender, to the hidden rules of the sports world and the public opinion of the modern media. It is a microcosm of all the injustices and indifferences that a modern woman will suffer.
And Tonya's life experience reflects the backside of the American dream, which is an insurmountable class barrier.
From the vulgar "red neck" (a derogatory term for white people in the slums in the United States) to the revered queen of tricks and sports mythology, Tanya's experience seems to be very consistent with people's fascination for the "American Dream".
But the unspoken rules of sports still expose her mercilessly: even if she is the most skilled one, it still cannot change the fact that she is from a ghetto. In her bones, the humbleness and vulgarity of the bottom society are cast, and figure skating only belongs to the world of those exquisite and elegant princes and princesses.
Although this country has repeatedly preached the exciting American dream of "everyone can be who they want to be", the fact is that Nancy, who came from a privileged woman, is the external representative of the image of the United States in the eyes of the elite. The so-called American Dream turned out to be just an ideological means of stabilizing society, behind which stood the class barriers that could never be broken.
Tonia's extreme thirst and lack of love comes from the indifference and control of her native family.
Abandoned by her father, and endlessly beaten and humiliated by her mother, Tonya has all her memories except skating for the first half of her life.
How much influence does the family of origin have on a person? So big that Tanya doesn't know anything about the world except figure skating, so big that she married the only man in the world who was willing to say she was beautiful at the age of fifteen in order to get rid of the hurt, so big that she even got raped by her husband every day. Bao is also willing to forgive, because she thinks this is love, no one has taught her to give her love, and her mother beats her every day, but she is still willing to pay her to learn figure skating, this is love, isn't it?
In the face of those violence, those controls, and those hurts, Tonya, who is extremely lacking in love, accepts everything.
She desperately pursued the career of figure skating, isn't it because it can get people's love?
Longing for the love of the world, but in the end it became the laughing stock of the world.
It might even be reminiscent of the late beauty Marilyn Monroe.
Seemingly incomparable, yet strikingly similar in some places.
Born in the dirtiest and most humble places, ascended to the highest and most glorious positions, possessed the most genius endowment and the loneliest heart, the same miserable childhood disturbed soul, is also regarded as a certain The pop culture symbols in the field have been praised by the stars, and they have been smashed to the altar by public opinion. How similar is the final outcome. Genius falls like a meteor and disappears, and beauty disappears into the world like a fable.
But in the final analysis, that genius who has attracted worldwide attention is just Tonia, a girl with broken dreams, and that stunning beauty is nothing but a lonely little girl Norma Jane.
They are just another sad soul trapped in the predicament of identity anxiety and lack of love.
Those souls are passing through the noisy crowd, penetrating into Tonya's body, becoming the blood that she spit out at the end of the film, who was knocked down after she became a boxer.
It was reduced to a sentence after spitting out blood—
"This is life, and this is the fucking truth."
And people, facing Tonia's dying breath, responded with the warmest and most joyous applause and cheers, just like the applause and cheers of people when she won the top honor.
this is life.
“I never imagined that someone would love me as much as anyone else, and my fantasy couldn’t stretch that far; I only imagined that people were watching me and calling my name.”
--Marilyn Monroe
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