to an ever-growing, ever-
diversifying platform of the 
future.
Elaine was the second Black 
editor-in-chief 
in publishing 
giant Condé Nast’s history, and 
was their youngest editor-in-
chief yet, at a mere 30 years 
(she’s now 31 — happy belated, 
boo!). As a white woman, I know 
I will never fully comprehend 
the 
impact 
of 
selecting 
a 
woman of color to a position 
of power, but I do know that 
Elaine understood better than 
anyone before her — and likely, 
most after her — that diversity 
is 
crucial 
to 
any 
credible 
publication, 
especially 
one 
geared toward impressionable 
young people, many of whom 
want to learn about worlds 

outside of their own. She opened 
the doors for new conversations 
in the public sphere. Lauren 

Duca’s 
fearless 
political 
commentary provided us with 
a new lens from which to view 
our country. The Teen Vogue 

YouTube 
channel 
reminded 
us of some tragic truths, like 
the origins of Thanksgiving. 
The website’s Wellness section 
offered more comprehensive 
sexual education than most 
schools nationwide.
First Teen Vogue cut print. 
Now, Elaine is leaving (she 
recently 
signed 
with 
the 
Creative 
Artists 
Agency). 
Everyone is thinking it: This 
feels like the beginning of an 
untimely end.
According to Women’s Wear 
Daily, Condé Nast does not plan 
on replacing Elaine. It makes 
sense enough, given that her 
primary role involved editing 
the magazine’s now-obsolete 
print issues. And then again, 
nobody could replace Elaine 
Welteroth. 
But we can continue where 
she left off.

Margot Robbie shines in 
unusual biopic ‘I, Tonya’

Tonya 
Harding 
is 
remembered less for her brief 
but influential time in the figure 
skating world than for her 
involvement in the infamous 
attack against fellow skater 
Nancy Kerrigan. But newly 
released 
biopic 
“I, 
Tonya” 
seeks to reclaim her narrative 
by telling Harding’s (Margot 
Robbie, “Suicide Squad”) life 
story as a bold 
and unorthodox 
skater. The film 
complicates 
Harding’s 
cultural 
legacy 
by 
exploring 
her life in and 
around 
skating 
from the age of 
four, 
bringing 
to light the emotional weight 
that contributed to whom she 
became as a skater and as a 
person. With a bright, punchy 
tone that reflects Harding’s 
infectious persona, the film is a 
hilarious, gripping and nuanced 
portrayal of a controversial pop 
culture figure.
For a movie that deals so 
heavily in the movement of 
figure skating, “I, Tonya” does 
a remarkable job designing 
static 
scenes. 
The 
film 
is 
peppered with retrospective, 
mockumentary-style interviews 
of Harding and the people in her 
life. The stylized framing and 
set design of these segments 
evokes the small-town America 
that Harding and company 
embody. The film also screams 
’80s culture, from the pulsing 
’80s soundtrack featuring bands 
like Dire Straights and Violent 
Femmes to the vibrant jewel 

tones of Harding’s costumes, 
makeup and scrunchies. Tonya’s 
look, her frizzy bangs and gaudy 
outfits, loudly clashes with the 
refined stuffiness of the figure 
skating elite. But her unique 
style and unapologetic attitude 
makes Harding an extremely 
likeable hero, and we root for 
her as she ignores convention 
and proves herself as one of 
the most technically proficient 
skaters in the league. The 
skating scenes themselves are 
the most visually stunning parts 
of the movie — as 
Harding performs, 
the camera whirls 
around her as if it, 
too, is on skates, 
creating 
this 
swirling 
circular 
movement 
that 
heightens 
the 
suspense and the 
artistry 
of 
the 
moment.
The brilliance of the film 
lies 
in 
its 
performances. 
Margot Robbie is incredible 
as Harding — she’s crude 
and unpolished, but with an 
innocent sincerity that makes 
her a natural underdog. The 
characters 
around 
Harding, 
who are notoriously abusive 
and problematic figures, are so 
well-cast that it makes disliking 
them next to impossible. Allison 
Janney (“Tallulah”) dominates 
in a stand-out role as Harding’s 
jagged mother, who routinely 
beats and verbally abuses Tonya 
in ways that clearly reveal her 
own lack of self-worth and 
deep-rooted 
unhappiness 
in 
life. She is eclectic, weird and, 
honestly, disturbing at times, 
but 
Janney’s 
performance 
leaves you eager for more screen 
time. Sebastian Stan (“Captain 
America: Civil War”) rounds out 

the main trinity as Harding’s 
husband Jeff Gillooly, who is 
infamous for the climactic hired 
assault 
of 
Nancy 
Kerrigan. 
Gillooly is shown and described 
repeatedly 
as 
an 
unstable 
and abusive husband, beating 
Harding and then manipulating 
her every time she tries to leave 
him. But Sebastian Stan is just 
too goddamn charming to be a 
villain taken seriously.
That’s one of the major weird 
and maybe problematic parts 
of the movie — the tone is a 
confusing mix of hilarious dark 
comedy and genuine physical 
and emotional abuse. Harding is 
surrounded by people who take 
advantage of her and beat her 
down (literally and figuratively). 
But immediately after every 
instance 
of 
this, 
the 
film 
switches to a campy breaking 
of the fourth wall and a wise 
crack about rednecks. The only 
thing standing in the movie’s 
way, besides its slightly lengthy 
run time, is that it doesn’t seem 
to know exactly what it is — the 
movie is hilarious and fun, but 
also tragic and stressful. And as 
a result, the moments that reveal 
the hardships that may have led 
to Tonya’s inevitable crumbling 
are rendered disingenuous or 
superficial by the ever-present 
thread of humor.
“I, Tonya” is as unorthodox 
as its protagonist, the unlikely 
but passionate underdog that 
continues 
to 
surprise 
and 
impress. It tackles the Tonya 
Harding story with verve and 
sincerity, giving voice to a 
figure who has been largely 
disregarded by pop culture but 
whose talent and perseverance 
marked her as one of the most 
formative skaters in the history 
of the sport. She’s insane, she’s in 
your face and she’s sensational.

SYDNEY COHEN
Daily Arts Writer

“I, T
onya”

NEON

State Theater

NEON
Courtesy of Elaine Welteroth

Recently, my friend sent me 
a surprise gift in honor of the 
new year. The gift was Ocean 
Vuong’s new book of poetry, 
“Night Sky with Exit Wounds.” 
I’d spent maybe 45 minutes 
back in December raving to this 
friend about how much I loved 
Ocean Vuong, both as a writer 
and as a person, so she must 
have taken the hint.
In 
the 
poem 
“Notebook 
Fragments,” there’s a line that 
goes like this: “When the prison 
guards burned his manuscripts, 
Nguyen Chí Thien couldn’t stop 
/ laughing — the 283 poems 
already inside him.” Vuong 
explains this in the back of the 
book, clarifying that Nguyen 
Chí Thien was a Vietnamese 
dissident poet who spent 27 
years in prison as a result of his 
writing.
I had never heard of Thien 
before, but this instantly seized 
my 
interest. 
Twenty-seven 
years just for writing. I looked 
him up, and sure enough, it was 
true — and what’s more, the 
more I read about Thien’s life, 
the less I was able to believe it.
The first time Thien was 
imprisoned, it was for teaching 
a high school history class 
in which he contradicted the 
government’s account of how 
Japan was defeated in World 
War II. He spent three and a 
half years in reeducation camps, 
where he began composing and 
memorizing poems with no 
pen or paper. He was released 
briefly in 1966, then sent back 
to jail again for his “politically 
irreverent” poetry. He spent 
another 
11 
years 
and 
five 
months in labor camps, until 
1977, when he was released to 
make room for officers of the 
Republic of Vietnam.
He used this opportunity 
to write down every single 
poem he’d composed in prison, 
which until now had existed 
only in his own memory and 
in the memories of some of 
his fellow prisoners. Many 
of them were poets as well, 
and had taken up a similar 
practice of memorizing their 

poems, sometimes counting the 
beats on their fingers to keep 
track. They would recite their 
poems to one another and to 
themselves, just to make sure 
not to lose them.
In 1979, Thien ran into the 
British 
embassy 
in 
Hanoi 
carrying a manuscript of 400 

poems and a cover letter written 
in French. (He had originally 
intended to take it to the French 
embassy, but was unable to do 
this due to the heavy security). 
British diplomats couldn’t give 
him asylum, but they promised 
to get his work out of the 
country, and he was arrested 
and imprisoned again without 
trial as soon as he left the 
building.
He spent the next 12 years 
at 
various 
prisons 
around 
northern Vietnam, including 
nearly eight years in solitary 
confinement. While he was 
in 
prison, 
his 
manuscript 
was published under the title 
“Flowers of Hell,” and he was 
awarded 
the 
International 
Poetry Award in 1985. He 
learned of his success only 
when a prison guard waved a 
book in his face, attempting to 
taunt him, and the book turned 
out to be his own.
There are some schools of 
thought out there that say 
that you shouldn’t need any 
context in order to appreciate 
what makes literature good. 
You shouldn’t need to know 
anything about the writer, or 
the historical situation in which 
they were writing. But I don’t 

understand how this argument 
makes sense when you think 
about someone like Thien, or 
really about anyone. Often, 
you’re missing out on half the 
literature — half the beauty, half 
the poetry — if you miss out on 
the incredible story that it took 
for that writing to make its way 
to you. Thien’s poetry by itself 
is striking, but I’m also stricken 
by the strength, determination 
and creativity that tied him to 
that poetry within his own life.
I think that, historically, 
I have a bit of a tendency to 
aestheticize literature. Take 
Ocean Vuong, for instance; I 
love his poetry, but I also love 
his Instagram page and the 
cover of his book and the fact 
that it seems like he’s always 
going to Iceland. And that 
might be a bad thing — that 
I tend to fixate on aspects of 
writing that seem to have to do 
with everything but the writing 
itself.
But I don’t think that’s true. I 
think that writing, like any art 
form, is just a way of teaching 
ourselves to better understand 
and appreciate the millions of 
stories, thoughts and emotions 
that make up the world. And the 
facets that make up somebody’s 
life, the decisions that they 
make, have just as much to 
teach you as the words that they 
choose to write down. If I’m in 
awe of Nguyen Chí Thien’s life, 
it’s because he knew who he was 
and what he wanted to be in the 
world, both on the page and in 
practice. There was no divide; 
it was all inside him. That’s the 
kind of writer I want to be, and 
that’s the kind of person I want 
to be. Besides, a real role model 
isn’t simply somebody you can 
look at and say that they wrote 
something well, or that they 
mastered a certain poetic form. 
It’s somebody who affects the 
way that you think about other 
people and the way that you 
want to live your life. For me, 
Nguyen Chí Thien has done 
that; the story of his life is the 
story of a hero of literature, of 
Vietnam and of humanity.

Prison poet & hero Thien

DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN

LAURA 
DZUBAY

Elaine Welteroth and me

The Teen Vogue Editor-in-Chief revolutionized what teen 
magazines look and sound like. Now she’s stepping down.

Continued from p. 5A

Elaine was the 
second Black 
editor-in-chief in 
publishing giant 
Condé Nast’s 
history

STYLE NOTEBOOK

FILM REVIEW

6A — Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

