Fifty years after Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on ‘Camp’”, camp has become a signifier for all things exaggerated, tacky or slightly off. From Ed Wood to John Waters, camp has evolved into a narrative genre unto itself. It even has its own section on Netflix. Yet it remains a prickly concept. As Sontag wrote, “I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it.” I feel the same way about The Price of Gold, a feature-length episode of the television documentary series 30 for 30, about the 1994 scandal surrounding Olympic skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. A comprehensive retelling of events, The Price of Gold is as compelling as it is campy.
Tonya Harding was one of the best skaters in the nation but she wasn’t the typical ice princess. She was a frizzy-haired girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Her rival was Nancy Kerrigan, an American darling with sleek hair, designer costumes and a stable family. On January 6th 1994, Kerrigan left the rink and got whacked on the leg. The perpetrator turned out to be a friend of Harding’s husband. The media descended on Harding, who continued on to the Olympics and left a trail of sensation in her wake.
If, as Sontag wrote, “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural,” competitive ice-skating meets the requirement. There is nothing natural about a woman in a tutu spinning in circles on frozen water. It’s a sport with a degree of stylization that borders on the absurd. The hairdos are poofy and the costumes are more suited to a beauty pageant than a high-stakes sports arena. Camp is also about androgynous bodies and Tonya and Nancy’s athletic figures go against traditional ideals: feminine beauty combined with killer muscles, bedazzled dresses over quads that could cut a brick.
Director Nanette Burstein delves into Harding’s backstory and exposes all the right juicy bits. Harding’s father lost his job and young Tonya often skated without food in her stomach. Harding’s mother was an alcoholic and beat her daughter whenever her routines were less than perfect. According to Harding, “She told me I was fat and ugly and that I’d grow up to be a waitress.” When her mother appears in archival footage, she looks like a long lost Beale of Grey Gardens. With a fake fur coat and a parakeet on her shoulder, she is a real life Mommie Dearest, blurring the line between tough love and child abuse.
If camp loves anything, it’s hot-tempered women. Whether it’s a diva’s tantrum or a drag queen’s catwalk, camp lives in transgressions of femininity. Tonya Harding defies feminine civility with her aggressive, unapologetic manner. When her lace breaks at the Olympics, she bursts into tears. “It was a mess, a complete mess,” she says. She suffers a pitiful loss and blames the lace. In the end, Harding’s tragic flaw is her inability to take responsibility. Rather the smear her, The Price of Gold suggests that we all have a little Tonya Harding inside us. We do things without thinking and when we don’t feel good about it, we make excuses.
Apart from the human drama, the fashions in The Price of Gold are a joy to behold. We get neon Scrunchies, side ponytails and nylon zip-ups à la MC Hammer. During the footage of Harding and Kerrigan’s skating, we get to see the advertising that circles the rink. Ads for Reese’s, VISA and Little Caesar’s appear like a time capsule into Clinton-era consumer culture.
The Price of Gold is a campy gem but it’s also a smart critique of professional ice skating. Burstein depicts it as a snob sport and exposes the way its judges care as much about image as they do about ability. Burstein thoughtfully shows the media’s blatant exploitation of events. The scandal was a dream for CBS. They made a TV movie and covered it nonstop because the more they covered, the better the viewership would be for the Olympics. As Harding declares to the camera, “The media doesn’t care about anything except themselves and their paycheck.”
The attack on Nancy Kerrigan happened in Detroit, 20 minutes from my home in the suburbs. I was too busy playing Ninja Turtles to register what happened, but discovering the story now, I am as entranced as the public was 21 years ago. The Price of Gold touches on the single-mindedness of the star athlete, the cyclical nature of violence and the mass media’s translation of news events into hot button headlines. The Vaults of Streaming Hell are dark place but sometimes a piece of gold emerges from the rubble.