maxthewonderpup, “Landing A Triple Axel During Warmup” (US Nationals, 1992)

I’m running late for my performance, lost in a maze of dark tunnels beneath the stands. I’m scheduled to appear in less than five minutes. Eventually I feel the cold air of the rink and go towards it. I’m just about there when I see Tonya Harding, circa 1992. She’s sitting alone on a bench crying. “Hey what is it,” I ask. She tells me her lace is too short and she’s going to miss her program. I sit next to her. “No, wait, don’t worry,” I say. I unthread the lace from one of my skates. She grabs it from me unceremoniously. I rub her back as she prepares her skate. “Oh that feels good, you’re sweet,” she says, and before standing up she kisses me, a little more than tenderly.

I woke up from this dream one morning, for whatever reason: the Lillehammer Olympics happened a long time ago and I only vaguely remember seeing Tonya’s shoelace disaster. I was with a friend in a busy pub in central London. I’d heard about the whole Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan drama, unavoidably, and so had everyone else, which is why all these drinkers in London had their eyes trained to the television during a figure skating competition. As I recall, there were a few contemptuous groans when Tonya gave up and started crying.

genuinecap, “Tonya Harding Broken Shoelace: US Version” (Olympics, 1994)

That was the last performance of Tonya’s skating career. I never really gave her much thought after that, and I certainly didn’t expect to see her again in a banal erotic dream of my own making.

At first Google, I landed at tonyaharding.com and discovered I’m not the only one whose dreams have been visited by Tonya Harding. Her website includes a “fantasy page” where over 1650 people have posted descriptions of their Tonya fantasies. Example, from “55 year-old male,” pseudonym EchoFlash51:

“Before I know it, my lips meet Tonya’s. Our tongues dance together for what seems like an eternity… as if from a previous life they are reunited. Running my hand through her hair, holding her head in my hand, as we kiss deeply…”

Easy EchoFlash51, you’re treading on my subconscious… Most fantasies are a good deal less innocent. They include a lot of “trembling,” “gasping,” and “exploding.” Tonya is a mocking sadist or a vulnerable girl in need of comfort, and her “powerful thighs” play a part in almost every story. The site is endorsed by Tonya herself with an inept thanks-to-fans video recorded in 1999.

tonyaharding.com, “Thank You Message To All My Fans” (1999)

As far as I can tell, 1999 is the year when Tonya began to yield to the caricature created of her. Fine, I’ll be the trailer trash girl. Tell me your sexual fantasies… Her site even includes a link to the honeymoon sex tape she’d once tried so hard to suppress. In fact, in the years following her ban from figure skating, you see Tonya becoming evermore “herself,” or at least that person she was always accused of trying to conceal: the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking bad girl poisoned by the bitter resentments of poverty and an abusive childhood, the white trash chancer only truly at home in a pick-up truck or motel room with thugs and reprobates. Those run-ins with the law, for example — car accidents, drunk driving charges, unpaid rent — and those tumultuous relationships with dubious men: one boyfriend named Darren Silver went to the police with charges that Tonya had attacked him with a hubcap; the judge sentenced her to three days in jail and ten days of community service for domestic violence.

Then there are the bleak and desperate public appearances such as this community hall pro-wrestling event. The audio track is a mess, but you can hear Tonya — confederation t-shirt and all — call herself “a red-neck ho.”

communistcothern, “Boss Campbell v Tonya!” (Harrison, Arkansas, 2007)

Nancy Kerrigan has fulfilled her side of the equation as well, by remaining the goody two-skate ice princess. Since leaving competition, she’s created a foundation to raise awareness for the vision impaired, performed in ice shows, written a couple books, commentated countless skating events, and been inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame. In 2008, she was guest of honor at the Ice Theatre of New York benefit gala. And none of this has stopped her from creating a happy home for her husband and three kids. She’s become rich too. While Tonya was collecting her fistful of petty cash down at the wrestling ring in Arkansas, Nancy was recording a series of figure skating tips sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, Torpicin, looking like she’d just emerged from twelve years in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

torpicin, “Scratch Spin Tips From Nancy Kerrigan” (2007)

Judging from the YouTube comments, most people see the starkly divided fates of the two skaters as poetic justice: the good one prospered, the bad one suffered, divine order upheld. But look a little more closely at the whole story and you see the narrative requires a more nuanced moral accounting. True, the media and the public have been largely confirmed in their judgments, and the cartoon characters of Tonya and Nancy have been born out in reality, but let’s not forget the miraculous power of naming. We become ourselves under the gaze of others, as adjectives are affixed to the way we look and the things we do and say. Irresistibly, little by little, we play the role that is assigned to us, public figures most of all.

I suspect Tonya Harding would never really have been allowed to become America’s ice princess anyway, even if she had kept her head together and skated consistently after winning the 1991 US Nationals. You hear commentators talking constantly, and by moments almost apologetically, about the power of her body, understanding implicitly that in women’s figure skating overt athleticism is off-putting. What’s more, they’d always find her lacking in the artistic department.

yodabeesh, “Tonya Harding’s Career Highlight” (LP, US Nationals, 1991)

She’s the first American woman to land two triple axels in a single competition, yeah that’s great, but she’ll never conform to the delicate femininity advocated by the sport, still haunted no doubt by its days as a diversion for young ladies of the wealthy classes. How can you be an ice princess with blocky thighs and a manly butt?

Give us non-threatening Nancy Kerrigan, who talks with the tentativeness and innocence of a ten-year old, whose athleticism is concealed in a nice, slender body. With Nancy, the favored adjectives were “elegant,” “pure,” “graceful,” “weightless.” You can be sure the 55 year-old masturbators are not conjuring up Nancy Kerrigan in her chaste Vera Wang dresses.

Vera Wang, “Designing & Donating Nancy Kerrigan’s Skating Costumes” (1994)

I didn’t know that figure skating was a means of social ascension for Nancy just as it was for Tonya. She didn’t have an alcoholic mother, six-times remarried, who at practices called her “stupid scum” in front of her peers and smacked her across the head after weak performances, but she did have working-class parents who had to remortgage the family home and take out loans to keep their daughter in competition. She repaid them with unyielding gratitude and humble perseverance, finally pulling the family out of its blue-collar beginnings. Nancy would come to embody middle-class effort and virtue — in her clothes, her manner, her physical body — and she could even be dressed up to look credible in high-class fashions.

Tonya would never be asked to try the glass slipper. Unlike Nancy, she evoked the very real class distinctions in America’s supposedly classless society; she was a reminder of the unmentionable: the indigent white underclass. And so her rise in the skating world was attributed to raw talent and ambition rather than hard work. The subtext early on was that she was merely dressing up and pretending, disguising trailer-trash calculation, brutality and laziness. Her later treachery merely confirmed what her powerful body had displayed in advance, popping, as it did, out of her tacky dresses.

Tonya and Nancy were players in class drama and moral pantomime all at once. They could not have been more perfectly cast. Tonya: tomboyish, stubborn, crude, tawdry, trashy. Nancy: pretty, obedient, polite, well-turned out, classy. Had Nancy emerged from a completely different social background, perhaps Tonya would have felt a less stinging kind of envy. When Tonya’s goon strikes Nancy on the inner thigh, he gets the world to think of the virginal ice princess down there.

The attack is described in this news clip as a “random” and “unexplainable” act of violence, then cuts away to as-yet-unidentified culprit, “91 National Champion, Tonya Harding.”

ABC, “Nancy Kerrigan Attack Detroit” (January, 1994)

With Nancy nursing her swollen knee and receiving the help and sympathy she cried out for, Tonya won the Nationals with a carefree skate that would have suggested that her conscience was clear. But it was only that she had got away with it.

Four days later, the police — weirdly enough — got hold of an audio recording of a meeting in which Jeff Gillooly, Tonya’s deadbeat ex-husband and current boyfriend, offers $6500 to the friend of a friend to “disable” Nancy Kerrigan. Soon after the FBI interrogated Tonya for hours and then let her go. She immediately told the press that she was separating from Jeff, who was then arrested. Jeff joined the other three conspirators already in custody with a stunning declaration: Tonya had been an active participant in the whole plot.

All the while, the Lillehammer Olympics were approaching. Nancy, the wholesome face of Campbell’s Soup and Reebok commercials, was working hard to recover her form. Tonya, shamed by her possible involvement in the gong-show attack on Nancy and facing potential jail time, trained with less fortitude. When Tonya arrived at the Olympic village, she discovered that Jeff had sold their wedding-night sex tape to the media; the pictures were in every newspaper.

The Lillehammer women’s figure skating short program on February 23rd, 1994, had the highest ratings of any US TV broadcast in 11 years. Nancy wore the same white dress she had been wearing when she was attacked. Tonya came out in a sleeveless red dress and heavy makeup and skated to the music of “Much Ado About Nothing.” At the end of the night, Nancy was ranked first and Tonya tenth. Tonya’s crack-up happened during the free skate two days later. Her lace broke and the replacement given to her was too short. “It’s not gonna hold me!” She finished in eighth place, her feet never again to be bound in skates. Nancy got the silver medal, out-princessed by the balletic Oksana Baiul (whose childhood, incidentally, makes Tonya’s seem like a walk in the park).

Tonya’s descent into ignominy had only just begun. Back home in Oregon she pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct prosecution of a case: three years probation, 500 hours community service, a $100,000 fine and an obligation to give $50,000 to a fund for the Special Olympics. “Perhaps the only good thing to come of it,” said Norm Frink, Deputy District Attorney, “is the realization by Tonya Harding that perhaps she has placed too much value on her goals and not enough value on herself as a person.” Had Nancy Kerrigan placed too little value on herself as a person as well? In all the hullabaloo, she let fall the public mask, first with acid comments about champion Oksana (”Oh, come on. So she’s going to get out here and cry again.”) and suggestions of bias on part of the judges (”I was flawless… [Oksana] two-footed two jumps.”) — betraying her own envy, not to mention a sense of entitlement. Worse, she disparaged one of America’s most venerated icons: standing next to Mickey Mouse, she was caught on camera saying “This is so dumb. I hate this. This is the most corny thing I’ve ever done.” For this she was severely admonished in the press. As the idealized half of the Tonya/Nancy monster, she could not be allowed to express dark human feelings.

Moments after a lifetime ban by the US Figure Skating Association (June 30, 1994)

In 1998, FOX convinced Tonya and Nancy to sit down face to face. They called the show “Breaking The Ice” and it’s fascinating to watch. Asked about her relationship with Tonya, Nancy sighs deeply, sick of it all, reminded again that she is forever bound to Tonya. How do you regard her now? “I don’t.” I do not condescend to feel or think anything of her. Please realize how agonizing it is for me to sit here and do this. There is nothing to “resolve.” I am here for your benefit, not mine. Will you ever let me move on? At the moment Nancy is asked if there is any room in her heart to forgive, Tonya appears on the set. Nancy manages a smile but then recoils as she looks her up and down. She’s the popular girl assessing an interloper, full of disdain and cruel curiosity despite herself.

FOX TV, “Breaking The Ice: Part 3″ (1998)

Nancy is measured and equitable, ostensibly, but by bringing up the tsunami of sympathy she received, she is rubbing Tonya’s face in it. “The entire world got behind me…” Try as she might, Tonya had never managed to win even a fraction of that sympathy. From the beginning everything that befell her was simply a consequence of her resident corruption. Her asthma was never a valiantly managed disability; it was due punishment for bodily disregard (She smoked!). Her experiences of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her mother and stepbrother and husband were not complicated personal impediments heroically overcome, just more evidence of her rightful place among the fallen. Here again she makes an attempt to point out that she too deserves sympathy – “I lost everything” – in vain. Needless to say, there’s a lot more at stake in this interview for Tonya than for Nancy (doesn’t help the interviewer talks to her like it’s Judgement Day), but in the end it simply reinforces the established narrative.

FOX TV, “Breaking The Ice: Part 4″ (1998)

“Excuse me?” See Tonya’s worried eyes, cunning perhaps, glowing under the cresting wave of her bangs. And the way her mouth curls, the way it makes disinclination look like disgust. “Oh my God. No, I did not know that…” Nancy, as ever, the solemn victim of base perfidy: “There was a lot of pain there for me, and for my family,” she says, her face momentarily washed over by feeling, until, that is, her eyes settle on Tonya; then she cannot conceal her antipathy or stifle the smirk that keeps creeping into her mouth. When Tonya says “I’ve always wished you the best… we’re friends,” her eyes are pure mockery; she’d cackle if she could. Enough already of this bullshit! We are not equals! But her eyes soften again — there’s possibly a glint of compassion — because Tonya has included a little truth in her appeal: “I always admired you, your skating and your family. I loved your Mom and Dad… I wished that I would have been able to have something like that…” To Nancy this mix of truth and distortion must have been painfully familiar. “Now I have that. I thank the Lord for that.” The Lord? Nancy lets escape another smirk.

I imagine that pardon from Nancy would have represented pardon from all the world. It would have felt like acceptance, recognition, maybe even a weakening of the class barrier. She would get a big hug eventually, but from a surrogate.

wweekvideo, “Opening Night At ‘Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera‘” (2008)

FOX got more mileage out of tarnished Tonya in 2002 when they invited her to beat up Paula Jones, the Arkansas employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. Tonya bulked up and went professional for a couple years, but it didn’t amount to much: 3 wins, 3 losses, booed in her last bout, retirement “due to asthma.”

FOX Celebrity Boxing, “Tonya Harding vs Paula Jones” (2002)

What FOX must have tried for is what we really wanted to see: Tonya vs. Nancy. All money on Tonya of course. She wouldn’t choke this time. She’d fight beyond herself like Rocky Balboa. Or play dirty like Mike Tyson. That is who Tonya is in our imagination: the girl who will do whatever it takes to win, the girl for whom every contest is a question of survival.

Robin Williams, “Live On Broadway” (2002)

In the Google archive, the expression, “to pull a Tonya Harding,” appears for the first time in 1996 (in People Magazine). Make that over 23,000 times by August, 2011.

HBO Real Sports, “Tonya Harding” (2007)

Tonya’s angular face has grown heavy and sunken, as if armored against the world’s reprimanding gaze. Why has it been so difficult for the public to feel any compassion for her? She’s someone who reached the top against the odds. I think of what happiness she must have felt on the ice in the early years, away from the people who impeded her, the same people who must have cloyed and leeched and blackmailed when she tasted success. Further success must have seemed the only escape from her mounting problems.

Could it have all turned out differently for her? Absolutely, and if you don’t think so, watch this 15-year old glide across the rink. Now that’s a scratch spin (3:56).

Tonya Harding, “Ladies’ Long Program” (Skate America, 1986)

We are not clay in our own hands, our achievements and failures are never entirely our own, and the truth is, we do not make our own luck. Luck makes what it will with the nature and nurture we put in front of it. Tonya Harding’s got dubitable character, but had the world shown a gentler, kinder hand, had it demanded more insistently another version of her, perhaps she’d be in a better place today.

Even if we haven’t been able to forgive her, we continue to identify with her. She is that part of ourselves that resents the adversary who, no matter what we do, outstrips us. Nancy, more beautiful and more loved, represents the teacher’s pet, the captain of the cheerleading squad, and as she was turned into a brand, she also came to represent the Establishment — the Man. Tonya couldn’t take her rival out of the game, but she wounded her. What she did was scandalous, but there was something in it to please every one of us, secretly.

In this sense Tonya has symbolic power. She goes in your place with all of your repressed rage to attack that thing that’s keeping you down. She doesn’t play by the rules, which is fine; we all know the game is rigged, that the rules do not apply equally to everyone. So you unthread the lace from your skate and give it to her. You have sex with her and in that union come to possess some of her power: power to confront your fearful enemy, to “go Tonya Harding on his ass.” If Tonya fails, you have the consolation of sharing in that failure; they are your failures too. By your sustained desire for her, you give some of that power back to her. I’m not sure how else to explain all this dreaming of Tonya Harding, including my own nighttime peccadillo.

Tonya Harding married for the third time in June of this year. The man’s name is Joseph Jens Price. They’ve recently had a baby boy via C-section. On the fantasy page of Tonya’s website, beneath a tender photo of the newlyweds, it reads: “Because Tonya is now married and a mother, it’s time to retire the Fantasy area. It’s been more than a decade and some of you have written eloquent, funny, enjoyable stories. It’s all been fun and we hope you enjoyed yourselves. So, here’s to the future. And to Tonya.”

Loudon Wainwright III, “Tonya’s Twirls” (Q, 2009)

- Erik Rutherford

2006 FIFA World Cup Final, “The 110th Minute” (9 July, 2006)

Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt happened in the dying minutes of the 2006 World Cup final. Bad timing. The French had been swarming the Italian goal mouth. Buffon, the Italian keeper, looked frazzled; minutes earlier, he’d barely tipped a powerful Zidane header over the crossbar. A French goal felt imminent, inevitable, destined.

Destined, most especially, for Zidane. He’d announced his retirement weeks earlier, and this was the last match of his professional career. All that was required to make his personal story into a fairy tale was his foot on the end of a winning goal. Every remaining doubt about his standing in soccer history would give way, and the longstanding duo of inviolable soccer Gods would become a triumvirate: Pelé, Maradona, Zidane.

At tournament kickoff, bookmakers were giving the French a 7.5% chance of winning the trophy, with odds of 12/1. The team had looked a shambles in warmup matches, and Zidane, now 34 years old and losing his ascendancy in soccerland, seemed unlikely to display the old magic. But then, incredibly, mostly thanks to his heroics, France beat Spain, Brazil, and Portugal to reach the final.

At first, no-one knew what was going on, not even the commentators. The live cameras were still following the ball upfield. Play stopped. Materazzi, the Italian defender, was on the ground. Had there been a collision? Had he twisted his knee?

Finally, the images appeared on the screen, in slow motion.

I have to say I shared all the disbelief and calamity that is so passionately (if brazenly) expressed by the immediate commentary of Thierry Gilardi on TF1 (translation below):

France-Italie.Expulsion.Zidane (2006)

“Ooooo oooo Zinedine. Oh Zinedine! Not that, not that Zinedine! Not that Zinedine! Oh no! Oh no, not that! Not today, not now, not after all you’ve done… Aïe!… Oh no Zinedine… He’s going to pull out a card for Zidane. And it’s a red card! Oh no! And that’s what I’d feared. It’s appalling. It’s not possible. It can’t be contested. Even if certain things happened before, Zinedine mustn’t react. He mustn’t give him that headbutt. It’s not true! It’s his last match and the final of the World Cup! It’s not possible. Oh no, no, no, no, no. From the images we’ve seen, we can’t really reproach the Argentinian referee for pulling out the red card, obviously… It’s terrible. It’s terrible. We were living a fairy tale until now… Whatever happens, Zinedine mustn’t react… Aïe!… And it’s the last time! And it’s the last time he’s made us all dream. He’s given us so much happiness…”

Strange and touching the way Gilardi speaks to Zidane directly by his first name using the familiar “tu” form, and the way he beseeches him not to do it, as if events might still be reversed.

In those first moments, I experienced the same mental disarray. Every time the scene was replayed, I’d find myself hoping, against all reason, that Zidane had got away with it, or that I’d only imagined it.

“Zidane being sent off changed everything,” said Raymond Domenech, the French coach. “The Italian team was waiting for only one thing, and that was penalties.”

Though we will never have an exact transcript of the exchange, we know it starts with Zidane telling Materazzi to stop pulling on his jersey. Materazzi responds with something like, “Taci enculo, hai solamente cio che meriti…” (Shut it asshole, you get what you deserve…).

Zidane, smiling superciliously, tells him: “Se vuoi la mia maglia te la dò a fine partita” (“If you want my shirt, I’ll give it to you at the end of the match.”)

“Preferisco la puttana di tua sorella” snaps Materazzi, adding that Zidane’s mother is also a whore.

Lipreaders?

Materazzi justified himself with an appeal to schoolyard etiquette: “Zidane looked at me up and down with super-arrogance, dall’alto al basso,” which was a way of saying: “I had no choice but to take the man down a notch.”

Zidane made use of exactly the same defence in his first first post-match interview: “Some words are more hurtful than actions,” he said, claiming the insults were a “grave provocation” that obliged him to react. “I can’t regret what I did,” he said—it was a question of honor and respect. “Je suis un homme avant tout.”

Surely there is nothing Zidane wouldn’t have heard in his career as a soccer player, especially as the star playmaker. He’d have been more viciously elbowed, hacked down, and kicked than anyone, and certainly more verbally misused (during his Juventus days, by Materazzi himself).

But no-one in France was much in the mood to dwell on Zidane’s disgrace. A post-match poll showed 61% of French people “forgave” him. Zidane’s sponsors—Adidas, Danone, Generali France, France Telecom—sent out press releases to reassure the public they would not be abandoning their best ambassador.

Already Zidane’s hangdog return to Paris had turned into a cathartic moment of national consolation, with enormous crowds chanting “Zizou” at the team bus, and President Chirac offering absolution while eluding any direct mention of the red card:

“I know that you are sad and disappointed, but what I want to tell you is that the whole country is extremely proud of you. You have honoured the country with your exceptional qualities and your fantastic fighting spirit, which was your strength in difficult times, but also in winning times.”

Only the right-wing Figaro dared condemn him, calling his headbutt “odious” and “unacceptable.”

Was it not odious, unacceptable, egocentric, childish, ugly, and unprofessional in the extreme? Many of my friends thought so, but I found myself coming to Zidane’s defense. Consider the pressure, I said. Consider all that had preceded that moment: Eight years earlier, almost to the day, France had won its first ever World Cup—a 3-0 victory over Brazil. Zidane scored two of the winning goals. That night, as hundreds of thousands of people pressed onto the Champs-Élysées—the biggest national celebration since the liberation—Zidane’s face was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe next to the words: “LA VICTOIRE EST EN NOUS.” All at once, this son of Algerian immigrants, raised on a poor council estate in Marseille, became the personification of a French model of integration that worked. He was proof that a nation-state built on provincial values and solidarity could transform its citizens—black, blanc, ou beur—into heroes.

A report by the Dutch bank, ABN AMRO, says World Cup victory in ‘98 improved the French domestic economy by almost one percent. In “soccernomics” this is called the “overwhelming joy” effect.

I lived in Paris through most of the Zidane years, from 1997 to 2005, and I can attest, at least anecdotally, to the ways in which Gallic gusto and gloom echoed the fortunes of the national team. Zidane, of course, was the focal point, always figured in the guise of savior. And yet no matter how excessively people projected onto him, he reciprocated.

On one occasion during Euro 2004, I was in a brasserie outside of Paris to see France versus England. I was delighted to see England, for once, show greater speed, style and elegance (I inherited my soccer passion—as one does—from my father, a Boltonian who raised me on a Man U-rich diet of Premiership matches).

As the match approached its end, the men at the bar had lost all hope (England was leading 1-0). They puffed and threw up their arms and began the familiar lament about the end of the golden era for the French team. The bartender sneered in my direction: “T’es bien content, hein Anglais!”

Then in the 90th minute, France was given a free kick from 24 metres out. There was nothing to shoot at, the angles were covered. Zidane stepped up, and well…

Euro 2004, “France v England“

With the first goal, at least half a dozen men jumped up and danced around my table singing: “Allez les Bleus!” And then, with the second, three minutes later: “On a gagné!”—the same coarse melody that had been engraved into my brain by the celebrating hordes who filled the nighttime streets of Paris during those early summer weeks of 1998 and 2000 (France also won Euro 2000).

Of course, those guys were right about the golden age being over. After Euro 2004, a handful of senators from the fêted ’98 team retired from international competition, Zidane amongst them (he and two others—Makélélé and Thuram—would rejoin the team in late 2005). The national team floundered, barely qualifying for the World Cup. It looked like they would crap out in the first round, just as they had in 2002.

The team’s rubbish performance in their opening match against Switzerland, a soporific nil-nil draw that saw them booed off the field by their own fans, only added to the fin de règne mood that hung over France that spring, a time of endless debate about the economic and cultural decline of the country, close on the heels of a “No” vote on the EU Constitution and countrywide strikes and riots. When Domenech dared to suggest that his team had the potential to reach the final, he was viciously mocked by the press.

Not until their fourth match, a somewhat startling 3-1 win over Spain, did les Bleus show the cohesion and prowess that would carry them to the final. Still, no-one really fancied their chances against tournament favorites, Brazil, in the quarter finals.

This is when the Zidane show began. The skilled, sprightly Brazilians looked clumsy and slow whenever they entered his magnetic field. He created space that wasn’t there, calmly played the ball over and away from anyone who approached him. Sliding defenders were static pylons for him to dribble through.

His flawlessly weighted free kick gave Thierry Henry the easy tap in for the winning goal. By an accumulation of such perfect touches, he broke down the Brazilians psychologically.

L’Equipe, the French sports newspaper, called the match “one of the greatest masterpieces of [Zidane’s] life.” Behold:

Santos Bravo, “2006 World Cup: France v Brazil” (Strauss, “Blue Danube Waltz“)

See how effortlessly he pushes the Brazilian midfielder, Kaka, off the ball, how delicately he pulls the ball back and controls it (0.55). By the time Kaka makes up the space that Zidane has stolen from him it is too late. Zidane has already volleyed a perfect pass (Kaka, by the way, was Ballon D’Or in 2007—no slouch).

Zizoumania swept France, and with it a whole lot of hyperbolic rhetoric: Victory was not “in us” after all. It was in Him: Zidane the prince, Zidane the warrior, Zidane the hero touched by divinity. He alone could make the “impossible” happen (12/1 odds!), for he had climbed the purgatorial mountain out of the dark labyrinth of hellish self-doubt and lonely exile, and now he alone held the promise of national salvation: the World Cup, the Holy Grail.

I got a little wrapped up in this excitement myself. A photo went around of Zidane sitting with his teammates the morning after the Brazil match. He is drinking coffee and having a smoke. Not only was he a soccer God, he indulged small human vices! How cool! How French! I made the picture my desktop wallpaper. I was a longtime casual fan who suddenly had it bad, and I wasn’t the only one: That week, George Vecsey of the New York Times said Zidane was “the coolest man on the planet.” I went out and bought a DVD set called “Zinedine Zidane: Comme dans un rêve” and watched all three and half hours of it before the final (I can still take strange solace and delight watching those DVDs, which apart from testimonials show nothing but one perfect pass, dribble, and shot after another).

Zidane continued to follow the script in the semi-final win over Portugal, scoring the single goal. Now he had only to slay the Italian monster.

In the first half, he put France ahead on a penalty, a daring slow chip that made Buffon crumple to the ground. The Italians tied it up. Extra time. Zidane got himself the red card. Trezeguet missed his shot in penalty kicks. The Italians won the World Cup. Campione del mondo…

Why did Zidane allow the story to end this way? He can’t tell us. If it was defiance against the heroic narrative imposed upon him, a revolt against the deification that awaited him, then it was most certainly unconscious—a sort of involuntary suicide.

This is the “renunciation” theory put forward by, among others, Bernard Henri-Levy: “It was as though he were repeating, in parody… before the triumph of this liturgy of the body, performance and commodity: Ecce Homo, This is a Man… Achilles had his heel. Zidane will have had his—this magnificent and rebellious head that brought him, suddenly, back into the ranks of his human brothers.”

So instead of mascot to a nation, one-dimensional icon, living monument, Zidane regained his freedom to be a man amongst men.

This was my first intuition as well, but we might just as well say that some obsolete Greek God sent the Furies to drive Zidane into a sudden rage to spite him for his impossible feats. In the end, I return to the simple idea that he was tired, and when Materazzi defied him and insulted his mother, his Kabyle blood rushed to his head. The headbutt was unprofessional but it was not odious.

Looking at it now, I just think how beautifully executed it is. Straight into the sternum! Such a primal gesture. He is a furious bull.

The 2006 World Cup will fade but for that indelible, iconic moment, forever thread into our popular mythology, overlaid with hundreds of interpretations: Zidane knocking down Fidel Castro, Zidane saving Materazzi from a sniper cat, Zidane destroying the death star.

Zidane, you have me! You hate me!

- Erik Rutherford

Sarah Goldberg, “American Idol Psycho”

Personality is the individual socialized, says Durkheim. Amazing how well Sarah Goldberg reveals the prevailing modes of being in the world. She’s a narcissist by inheritance. Countless derived guises of self-awareness compete at every moment for expression, binding her very power to think while supplying the disjointed substance of her persona.

The celebrity she wants to have (there is nothing else to want) is already alive inside her. By wanting it she achieves it, at least provisionally. She does not think to emulate any one hero. It is enough to cloak herself in dreams of invulnerable stardom.

Alas, while achievement molds, desire without fulfillment warps. Alone, she hardly discerns her own poses from those of the celebrities. TMZ, Entertainment Tonight and People have become foundational narcissistic supports.

But the world is unfair. The gatekeepers will not send her to Hollywood. So she turns with terrifying ease into a martyr—martyr to her own beautiful and commendable dreams: “I just wanted to be the next American Idol…” Words to put her beyond reproach, to justify her inability to sing. She has been taught to value herself, to claim her personal rights; she has been taught that it is enough to aspire.

Once the scene is played out, she is left to seethe against the injustices of the world, and her coarsest stuff pours forth. But she is always safe against rejection. Infusions of approval are a dime a dozen. Self-pity is the sweetest emotion; it runs through her like adrenalin and she is libidinally eager to mourn for herself and rage at her judges, who are everywhere.

Paula and Randy have betrayed her, of course they have (and she’d thought they were friends!). They have betrayed her just like her last boyfriends and for the same reasons: they are corrupted and too selfish to give her the attention she is entitled to.

Amazing too how familiar this person is, born in 1986, even to those of us who are older and who go light on TV. We are all, in some way, entangled in the same stuff, which is also why this fantasy version of the audition is strangely joyful:

Sarah Goldberg, “American Idol Psycho”

-Erik Rutherford

Techno Viking

A cento is a poem made up of verses from other poems (from the Greek κεντονιον, says Wikipedia).

With the exception of some punctuation, I have added or changed nothing. I have simply assembled the comments of 46 different people into an order:

“WTF is going on in this video? Guy does something to girl. Techno Viking lays the smack down. He was ready to fight but then he just walked it off with a little twist. He’s marching in the Fuck Parade (that’s the real name) in Berlin, Germany to protest the ban on rave music that had been in place. The parade continues to exist to celebrate the music. It’s a like the Love Parade.

This video makes me happy in pants. I like how he is just dancing. This guy is pure intensity! His energy level is over 9000! Holy jesus he’s goood! I swear, I love this guy! I want to be this guy! This guy is dope! Rambo, only cooler and no shirt. BEOWULF! The Obama of Techno. The character from Mercenaries. Onebadassmotherfucker. I wish he was my Dad.

Dammit I wish someone could hand me upside down water! So I can dance like that. I’ve never seen any one hand over a water bottle in such a badass way in my life!

Do not want to meet Techno Viking in the following locations: Dark Alley, Medieval Battlefield, Moshpit, Rugby field, Football field, in a public dressing room, in a Butcher shop, in a morgue. I wonder if Techno Viking could take Chuck Norris.

Whenever I’m lazy I watch this… and my ass corrects itself. It’s that cool-probably the most masculine thing ever. I could look at those jiggling pecs for hours. When he points at 1:03 his awesomeness overpowers my heterosexuality and makes me pop a huuge boner! I bet his cock is 12″ long. We need more Techno Vikings in the world. When the revolution comes I’m on his side… Fight the good fight. Bang the groovy chick off scene. Destroying Scientology! I for one, welcome our new Techno Viking overlord. C’mon Hollywood: Techno Viking -- The Movie.

WTF? I would beat the shit out of that guy if he went prancing down my street like that. Fuck the Techno Viking. Kimbo would kick his ass anyway…. Hail Odin, Thor, Balder, Tyr, Heimdal, Loki. Death to false pagans. Honor and blood. And blue-haired faggotress should kill itself.

You dare to presume you can speak like this of the Techno Viking? Techno Viking will wave his Nordic hand of rhythmic techno power and reduce you to a pile of glitter. He will then pick up that glitter that used to be you and sprinkle it over his minions. You will then spend eternity as decoration on the bodies of pulsing ravers! Techno Viking is KING! Techno Viking doesn’t dance to the music, the music dances to Techno Viking! IMPREGNATE ME O MIGHTY TECHNO VIKING! HUMANITY LOVES YOU AND NEEDS YOU!

I wonder who the Techno Viking is in real life…”

- Erik Rutherford

Naturally Seven, “Feel It (In The Air)” (2007)

As the lead singer of this a cappella group from New York belts out the first verse of Phil Collins’ 1981 hit, “In the Air Tonight,” passengers on this Paris metro must assume that a bunch of rowdy youths are on their way back from the Champs-Élysées to their towers in the suburbs.

But no… The singing is too good; it’s in English. And though these guys may be wearing the familiar “homeboy” gear, they show too much unabashed intensity to be French. This is not native insolence, it’s the naïve assurance of elsewhere. These have to be Americans, clearly professionals, and cameras are rolling: The whole event has no doubt been contrived for the sake of publicity.

And yet the fact that it’s a promotional stunt does little to diminish the authenticity of the interactions between the various players in this scene. Every time I watch this clip I feel happy, almost moved. I love how the atmosphere softens as commuters gradually submit to what is happening, and how the singers of the Naturally 7 grow emboldened as they feel themselves appreciated. They begin to delight in the sound of their own voices; that delight spreads through the car. People turn to watch, they smile (it’s almost impossible not to). The woman with the leopard scarf bobs her head, the French Everywoman in the black coat dances ineptly; others pull out their cameras, suddenly realizing that something special is going on.

Then there’s the iPod Man, conspicuous exception to all this. Singing be damned, he will not be imposed upon, will not have his personal orthodoxy challenged. Fair enough, we’re in the subway, sidewalk stilled and pushed underground, and in such close quarters we expect strict decorum: no staring, no bum or crotch contact, and of course, no excessive noise. Ideal space for provocation, peddling and spectacle, and admittedly, Parisians have their metro invaded every five minutes by beggars declaiming tales of woe or by musicians whose faces tell of similar woe. Such is one’s right to just pretend it isn’t there.

But it seems awfully stubborn for the iPod Man to exercise his right when it’s so obvious this is not a routine subway intervention. Notice, by the end, he has given up on his crossword and let a smile creep into his lips. I can’t help but feel there is a gentle collision of cultures at play, and the iPod Man, by virtue of his refusal to partake, helps bring that collision into focus.

Although as a nation France has fallen from the dizzy heights of two centuries ago, in the heart of its people it remains “la lumiere du monde” (to use the words of Charles de Gaulle)—the polestar against which all other cultures should be gauged. And so even today the French find it galling that the Anglo-American pop mainstream has become the world’s “official culture,” hovering like a great monolith, casting its dominating shadow over what’s left of their higher, more refined civilization.

The Naturally 7 express all the blithe pride and charming insensibility of that American dominance. They are products of the America that defines you by what you can perform and what you can get, rather than by where you come from and what papers you hold. They are quite naturally certain the sheer brilliance of their “vocal play” will crush any objections, and it does.

A little cliché perhaps, but that’s one of the back-stories I see framing this scene: Parisians going about their hapless business — preserving millennial heritage, debating old questions, critiquing new improprieties, and just generally harrumphing in dispassionate indignation — while ingenuous Americans come and use their vestigial city as a playground.

- Erik Rutherford

As the vlogosphere expands, it spawns new vlogging genres. The Why-I-Make-Videos Confessional is one of them. It seems every dedicated video blogger must eventually perform this painful rite of passage before returning—chastened—to business as usual (though it sometimes marks the end of a vlogging career).

While these tender defenses of vlogging can be revealing, they also betray a very shallow self-awareness. At the bottom end of the insight-scale are the vloggers who exist in perfect denial of their own motivations: “I don’t make videos for viewers or subscribers or comments, I make videos for me. If you don’t like it, too bad.” Huh?

Most readily concede that they seek an audience, but the reasons offered are not terrifically illuminating either. We are told, “vlogging is fun,” that it provides a “creative outlet,” and that it’s a chance “to share views.” They could say the same about dancing, cooking, or sounding off at a party.

At least there is this effort from Terroja Kinkaid, a young fellow who names his online persona “the Amazing Atheist.” His Why-I-Make-Videos video is quite astute and entertaining. You sense he is genuinely uneasy about the artifice vlogging demands of him, and he expresses nicely the anxieties that underlie the whole enterprise.

TJ dismisses his previously held belief—though showing wobbly conviction—that he vlogs simply to “voice his thoughts” and gain approval among YouTubers. Instead, he tells us: “I’m searching for who the fuck I am.” By disclosing himself to the invisible audience beyond the camera lens, he will “peel away the layers” until he gains access to his true, authentic self.

Well, why not? Surfaces are essences, the camera doesn’t lie, blah, blah.

But then almost immediately, TJ admits that the whole vlogging-as-path-to-self-knowledge thing hasn’t really been working. If anything, it has led him further away from the elusive Self he seeks. Try as he might to show perfect candor, to allow contradictions in his personality (like a real person), and to refuse the hypocrisy of a focused narrative, he always finds himself in yet another posture, behind another mask—just one more version of “the Amazing Atheist.”

And so the question TJ has to confront is no longer: Why do I expose myself in videos? It is the altogether more enigmatic question: Why can I not expose myself in videos? He succeeds in sharing his most intimate thoughts, his most visceral passions and fears, only to find that he has fed parasitically upon these thoughts and passions to simulate them for the camera. Which is why he can only put “dings in the armor.” The “real me” is once again absent from the consumable caricature of his video blogs.

“Is it futile?” he asks. What’s the point if vlogging is no more meaningful than duty to a compulsion, or the enactment of another communal subjectivity?

Significantly, it’s at this point TJ slips into platitudes about “our world” and our uniqueness as individuals. He declaims speciously: “There is nothing that can make you any less of an individual.”

The reality is that there are all too many things that can dilute our individuality, and despite appearances, vlogging may be one of them. I’ve noticed that however various the backgrounds and approaches of vloggers, there is a strange homogenization of identity among them, largely, I think, because they are faced with the same narrow range of predicaments, all of which tend to encourage feelings of shame, paranoia, frustration, and disproportionate gratitude.

Clearly vloggers are better off setting their sights on humbler summits than self-knowledge. Minor celebrity will have to do, and so their principal concern is once again the numbers.

For advertisers, falling numbers mean falling profits. For vloggers, falling numbers mean falling popularity. And the “you” out there—the reified audience, the “fan base”—is as fickle, unforgiving, impatient, and voracious as the cruelest kids in high school.

Which is why even the most popular vloggers eventually announce their departure, not without a little feeling and a little reproach—”I call and you don’t answer.”

sxephil, “Meh, Goodbye” (June, 2008)

Of course, vloggers like this are soon busy posting again, trying to recapture the audience that’s moved on with barely a shrug.

In a short video appendix, TJ sends best wishes to a fellow vlogger who is giving up the monologuing to make pornos. Any fans who feel concerned by the earnest introspection they have just witnessed are reassured. Nothing to worry about. The Amazing Atheist is back!

- Erik Rutherford