The Kerrigan Archetype

The media loves an archetype.  An archetype does not need nuance. An archetype needs no background or exposition.  This is because an archetype is easy to understand, and newspaper people and headline writers specialize in easy to understand.  Nancy Kerrigan is an archetype. She is among a select group of celebrities that represent pity in the collective experience of America’s unconscious. This happened the very instant that the video of her crying ‘why me?’ hit the evening news in 1994 after she was clubbed by the Gillooly/Harding cabal.

Others in this elite group are Jennifer Aniston who, after being dumped by the world’s most handsome actor who left her for the world’s most beautiful actress,  became sympathy fodder for every woman who has ever been dumped (so that would be almost every woman in America).   To a lesser degree Conan O’Brian found himself in the sympathy fishbowl after not having been given a chance right after he achieved his life’s dream of hosting The Tonight Show.  Anybody who has a t-shirt with the word ‘team’ before their name qualifies for this elite ‘team step child’ club.

Nancy Kerrigan was thrust into the sympathetic spotlight once again this week after her father was apparently murdered by her brother.  She is now officially better known for bad things happening to her rather than being an Olympic silver medalist.  She is the ‘why me?’ archetype.

Since there is not much to this story other than your run of the mill patricide (see earlier post on the song A Boy Named Sue for more on this), the tv show The Insider quickly ran out of angles so they chose to cover what Nancy wore to her father’s funeral.