Tonya Harding (by Sufjan Stevens)

This is a crushing song. God, I love Sufjan Stevens.

Apparently, its release at the same time as "I, Tonya"—which looks pretty fucking good—is somewhat coincidental. He submitted it for the film (it was not used) but he's been trying to write a song about Harding since 1991.

Sufjan Stevens Pens A Quiet Song For 'Feisty, Fierce' Figure Skater Tonya Harding

"Tonya shines bright in the pantheon of American history simply because she never stopped trying her hardest," Stevens writes.

I think it's a great example of finding beauty in ugliness—or setting aside someone's ugliness to remember what it was about them that was beautiful. It just takes a certain way of looking at the world.

Stevens is a genius.

 

The Ringer, which can tend to be overly critical, is lukewarm about the movie.

‘I, Tonya,’ Like Tonya Harding, Is All a Bit Much

 

Give it 2 hubcaps out of 4.

 

There was that 3-year stretch or so where she was sexy as hell, warts and all.

 

Why in the world would not want this to be your song that played over the closing credits?

Charlotte Wilder wrote a nice short little thing about this yesterday.

Sufjan Stevens set his new song about Tonya Harding perfectly to her 1991 routine and and it's haunting

 

I like being far removed from the days when I might think, even for a second, about Stupid Tonya Harding.

 

*Why?! Why?!*

 

Remember when the Tonya Harding thing was the weirdest most outrageous thing we could think would ever happen? I miss those days.

 

Then OJ happened a few months later.

I don’t remember which happened first, Tonya Harding or Lorena Bobbitt, but those are the first two stories of the weird sort I remember.

 

I do think the Tonya Harding thing, OJ and others (Kardashian Inc.) really started us down the road we're at now - where being notorious became marketable and to some degree "celebrated" by mass media. The movie "To Die For" came out in 1995 and it was based on a true story about Pamela Smart and directed by Gus Van Sant - really recommend the movie. Kidman blew me away with her performance.
What once was only deemed fit for the National Enquirer started to appear on Time, People and regular TV news shows because it showed there was wide public interest and ratings.

 

I blame science for that too. Yes, SCIENCE!

The whole data crunching ratings and analysis techniques amped up, finding interest and correlating that to moneymaking potential.

Add the technical ease of video instead of film, and a propensity of people to take clips of their cooters and dicks and interaction thereof (add mouth too), stir that with the Internet, and boom goes the dynamite.

Goddamn scientists are ruining the world.

Now for a music break - for some reason called the 12 inch extended version: