We all need someone to hate....I, TONYA

They say there's always two sides of the story. And we all want someone to adore and someone to hate. Have you ever wonder how would feel to be a public figure and be in the spotlight? Adore by millions or hated for others, feeling loved and judge at every second. It's so tempting to feel attracted to that idea of being popular and accepted in a big scale, where every single action will be seen by everybody and your life won't be missed but will make every second count. The fantasy of a glamours life. Have people devoted to you, supporting you for what you do and love to do, which is what you do the best. Public life is that, no more privacy and every opportunity will make an excuse to feed that hungry for gossips and headlines where ordinary lives are forgotten to focus in others more interesting that will serve to keep the chain of attention and need of that desire and fulfill other's  fantasies. But because your life has become a product to sale, they will turn it into what the costumers need. If they are looking for someone to inspire them they will make you a hero but if they need a distraction, someone to take all their frustrations and anger, a villain will be born. Her name Tonya Harding. Her story: "I, Tonya" (2017), a powerful movie that follows her life through her uprising as a stellar ice skater and the well known incident that changed her life. Al this with a very comedic tone that flows around as a mockumentary to center on the facts and her life letting you be the judge of what really happened and realize how sometimes we are just poppets of destiny and we get caught in circumstances where the next move will define the rest of our lives as if all our past, present and future holds on to one moment. And then we get to play this character for the rest of our lives.

Terrifically performed by actress Margot Robbie, Tonya is a young woman that was born and raised in poverty by her mother, a very strict woman that will push her to hr limits so she can be the best at ice skating, but will always throw it to her face as a remembrance of what she has been doing for it, not letting her growing up as a normal kid but always over protecting her and keep her self esteem  down reflecting all the frustrations and anxiety of her own in her child unable to show any sign of affection to her, which turned into shaping a woman that won't know how to control her temper and will find ice skating as her only passion and way to escape, just because that's the only thing she knows and knows is well enough to feel she is good at something, reason why she will fight to become one of the best at it so she can get a ticket to qualify for the Olympics even her mother will do whatever is in her hands to bring her down and prove her wrong. Until she gets to meet a young man, Jeff,  that is fascinated by her when he stops by an sees her practicing. Asking her out will be the way to approach her as she seems not interested on him, but she's still young and idealistic and has never been asked on a date, so at her first date she has her mother joining them, and of course she won't like the guy because he is a no one. But Tonya liked him and will start dating. Reason why he will notice the bad influence her mother is to her and that the only way to make her going to the Olympics will be taking her out of her mother's house, and so they get married. But this is just the beginning of a very  dysfunctional relationship because he might look like a sweet, caring man but he has also an anger management problem.

But as many love stories, at the beginning everything is cottons and rainbows until reality hits and soon they'll find themselves fighting over their future because he wants to control her and be her first priority making it for her as a sweater change for one one controlling figure to other. But actually being by herself, away from all those influences on her, works just fine for her as she starts to be focused and performing better than never getting perfect scores and breaking records all the way in, until time to qualify for the Olympics comes and she faces a big obstacle that didn't see coming: the judges doesn't like her. Why? she's doing great and she's definitely one of the best of the country. Well that's for sure but she is the ugly duck of the competition. The rebel heart of the team. She's not representing the American dream or sweethearts that the world wants to see.What?? Shocking, right?!. You don't need to be the best but to fulfill a character, an idea, become a product that everyone will buy s you can get sponsored and prove the world how good you are at something. Sadly she's been forced to find a solution to this. She can't stop now when been this far. So she tries to approach her mom with no success reason why ends back with Jeff to prove she's a lovely wife and what they have is the perfect picture of an american family. And the trick works and her relationship with Jeff improves now that she knows him better and knows how to keep it calm and make that marriage work. But this is more a team work than a marriage, and he still cares for her but needs to control the situation reason why when at the Olympics her friend and team mate Nancy Kerrigan performs better, he comes up with a plan to persuade her: send her treating letters so she could quit the competition. But when you going to do something bad to someone, things might work against you and because all this people are just ordinary people with no education and just dreams and ideas of success, for Jeff things get out of control once he counts on his all time friend to help him sending this letters, situation that ends in the very well known incident where someone breaks Nancy's knee.

This event changed her life, her career and ended in court where a judge forbid her to perform or compete ice skating again. She has no education. All her life was invested in ice skating because she loves it and that was her ticket to by a life, be someone, be accepted and loved. And she tasted that glory and want it back but now is taken from her. She will end as her mother working as a waitress. With no future and knowing to do nothing her life means nothing for now. All the news and media turned her into the bad girl, a spoiled athlete that once couldn't perform as expected became crazy and attacked her friend and team mate, in a very violent way. While she knew about her husband plan, sh never wanted or expected to ended this way, hurting someone. No one did. But other took that decision from her and ruin her career. Not guilty, not a victim, Just someone fighting for a dream and while trying to hit back to life when, again, this one got tough to her, she played with fire and got burned because others sent her to the fire. First by being raised for someone that was not ready to be a mom, and decided to be a mom to fulfill her own needs and use it to take out all her frustrations in life. Parenting is about letting your children to make their own decisions and forge them to be able to make the best ones. Helping them to avoid the same mistakes that your parents did to you, not taking it against them for what they made you go through.To feed them with the courage and strength to fight and pursue their dreams. Celebrate their victories, not use them against them to prove them wrong. Show them how to love and be loved instead of go through life seeking this as a need to full fill a career. When we look out for acceptance and love from the crowds and the public eye, how does that speaks in terms of what we were missing back home?

Two other great performances come in form of the mother, performed by the always funny Allison Janney and Jeff, the husband, played by actor Sebastian Stan proving his potential as a serious actor in need of that exposure, taking us to their story to shake us with the bare reality of it while being entertained and touched making us wonder why for some reason we always forget all the things he hate the most from home so we end trapped in these relationships that reflects all those things that for so many years hurt us. It's like we are attracted to that, unconsciously,  until we realize it and might be too late. And that need of falling in love and being loved by someone as in the movies has turned into so many bad decisions that won't end well because we don't realize how bringing someone into our lives can change it, for better or worse. But at the end all this decision are all up on us. We can fix it. We can make it better ad right. But what happen when you in the public eye? The spotlight won't let you out. Everybody will have access to your privacy and your life and career are put in others hands. The future of it will depend on their likes or rejection. How many times all this people that has experienced a public life, has suffered the consequences of being shaped by the needs of us, a society, hungry for someone to devote or destroy. Putting all the pieces together to make someone's life as a fairy tale or as a horror movie, all because that is what we need and what we want to see of them. We need those stories to distract us from our reality and make us feel better, because sometimes we get inspired and sometimes knowing we can do better than them is better than looking into our own problems and fix them. What that says of us as a society? Consumers of stories of success and failure to make it through a life that we are afraid of call ordinary. Why can we celebrate an underdog success instead of use it to expose our own mistakes and flaws for lack of knowledge or culture ? Why we love to be one sided and only hear the part of a story that better fit us rather than the whole picture? Is this a reflection of the reality we live in or a denial about it? Why are trying to be the best at something, (profession, sport)  but at being ourselves? Why?