Behind the Ivy - Spring 2018

SPRING ISSUE |  BEHIND THE IVY

I, Tonya and Molly’s Game–Comparisons on decision-making and influence. Photo Karan Wu

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T H E PA S T C A N C OM E B A C K T O H AU N T U S CHEREEN NG

and adolescent experiences and how those periods and experiences impacted their career decisions. In I, Tonya , it was her mother’s harshness on her childhood training and the absence of her father that led to her desire to be loved and valued by others. As a result, this desire led to her staying in an abusive relationship with her husband whom she met at fifteen, as well as being extremely competitive and lacking sportsmanship in skating. Her tough experiences and background almost became

I recently watched two movies, I, Tonya and Molly’s Game , that I thought had interesting themes. Plot-wise, I, Tonya is a biographical movie about Tonya Harding’s skating career: from childhood training, to her rising career, to her marriage, and to the eventual controversy and her downfall after being involved in a plan to break her competitor Nancy Kerrigan’s knees. As for Molly’s Game , it is about a woman named Molly Bloom who runs illicit and exclusive poker games for wealthy men and eventually earns millions through credit but gets in trouble with

the law in the end.

Comparing them side by side initially, they seem pretty different. One’s based on a woman’s turbulent and controversial career, while the other is about a woman riding the high of earning millions through running poker games. But thinking about them now, they actually have interesting similarities. The one important factor that ties both movies’ storylines together is their references to the main characters’ childhood