lockdown film no. 52 - Athlete A (2020) dir. Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk
29/06/2020
cw: sexual assault of minors, abuse
- powerful
- I’ve never done gymnastics, apart from in school, but one of my favourite you tubers is nile Wilson so I was really interested to watch this when it came out — I saw that he’d posted about it saying how important it was and what a great documentary it is, so I went to watch it a few days after it released.
- it’s kind of funny to think that every time I watch the olympics, especially in sports that I really like, like martial arts, boxing, gymnastics, etc., I always get kind of sad that my parents didn’t put me in elite sports from childhood because then I would be able to do all this cool stuff and you’d have that moment when you succeed and feel like you’ve done really well, which you see a lot in sport. But then I remember watching celebrity sas who dares wins with Victoria Pendleton and she was talking about how when she was a kid she didn’t really like cycling, she just happened to be really good at it, so everyone was like “you can’t stop, you’re too good !” And then that makes me more glad that I wasn’t put in elite sports as a child
- when Jamie was talking about how she found herself looking forward to treatment because nassar was the only nice adult about that makes a lot of sense because every other adult there is interested in your physical performance and maybe they care about you, maybe they don’t. But if there’s someone who’s nice to you around, it makes a lot of sense that you look forward to seeing them. And it sucks that now they feel guilty for feeling like that when they were children because now they know what it was that happened to them. But then also it makes sense that nassar would thrive in an environment where he was the nice one, and could gaslight these girls into thinking that he was their safe haven at the ranch
- I didn’t know Nadia Comaneci was 14 when she won the olympics. I know she was a child but FOURTEEN
- it’s so fucking creepy to know that after Nadia won the olympics so many little girls started gymnastics and then you have their coaches, especially Bela and Marta karolyi, controlling them as if they were dolls. “Nadia was Romania’s best product.”
- I’d seen the clip of kerri strug before in a compilation video of “most inspiring olympic moments” or something like that and even though it was presented as heroic it still felt off. She has an injured ankle, and she has to perform a vault, which she somehow manages, landing on one foot. She crawls off the mat, very obviously in a lot of pain, and pretty much straight away her foots been taped up and Karolyi’s carrying her around like he’s holding some kind of trophy.
- in the scene where they had footage of nassar being interviewed by someone who had been told that he’d molested girls and he was explaining that when you he’s fixing a coccyx you have to anally penetrate the patient I legitimately retched I felt sick it was disgusting
- it’s literally insane that after Rachel denhollander and Jamie dantzcher coming forward anonymously nassar was running for the school board. And people voted for him. The things that white men can get away with will never fail to astound me.
- I cannot even imagine how it would feel to appear in court in front of your abuser and know that they were going to prison. And to have so many other people around you doing the same thing
- it was so great to see Maggie at the end still doing gymnastics and loving it and excelling at it in an environment that wasn’t the US elite squad. Not to state the bleeding obvious but guess it looks like if you nurture someone while they work doing something that they really like it turns out a lot better than if you abuse them relentlessly
- overall this is a fantastically made documentary — it was well paced; while there were a lot of people to follow it was easy to remember who everyone was; there was great use of archive footage and it was one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in a while. all in all — please watch this. It’s really really important that we know stuff like this and hear from the people who have experienced it firsthand