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

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