Earlier than a few of them had been taken down, the memes about Australian Olympic breaker Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, had been all about poking enjoyable. Movies of her flipping round or kangaroo hopping on the competitors flooring on the Paris Summer season Video games had been accompanied by captions like “what my nephew does after telling all of us to ‘watch this’” or pictures of Gunn spinning subsequent to pictures of Homer Simpson doing the identical. The cringe was limitless.
It was additionally solely the start. Because the web does what it does and made jabs about Gunn’s efficiency—she in the end received no medals and didn’t earn a single level—it additionally did the different factor it does and went down a rabbit gap on how precisely somebody with less-than-stellar expertise managed to signify Australia within the Olympics.
That’s when issues obtained difficult.
Pretty shortly after the Olympics breakdancing competitors ended, controversy started to swirl as to how Gunn, a cultural research professor at Macquarie College in Sydney, made it to the Video games. Individuals started to query her bona fides, her relationship to the Australian Breaking Affiliation, and whether or not or not her efficiency was an insult to breaking. Somebody even began a Change.org petition asking for an investigation into what occurred and whether or not Gunn’s participation meant a much less privileged dancer didn’t get a shot. (The petition was taken down following a condemnation from the Australian Olympic Committee calling it “vexatious, deceptive and bullying.”)
In keeping with a Vox report, the malfeasance allegations towards Gunn are largely unfounded. Some breakers in Australia and past even rallied to her protection. Nonetheless others in her dwelling nation famous the unwanted side effects of the scenario had been tough, telling The Guardian that Gunn’s efficiency might have an effect on the flexibility of different dancers in Australia to get help.
“How do I’m going to work now and attempt to get our sponsorship and get our grant cash for breaking applications [for a sport] that’s simply been made a mockery of?” Leah Clark, who runs a dance studio in Brisbane, requested the outlet. “That is really affecting us on a a lot bigger scale than simply memes.”
What this represents is definitely a large disconnect on-line. Because the previous week wore on, Gunn took to Instagram on Thursday to submit a video saying she didn’t understand competing within the Olympics would “open the door to a lot hate,” calling the expertise “devastating.” Harassment is already an enormous drawback on-line, however in conditions like this, it turns into too straightforward for real criticisms to get drowned out by fast jokes and sizzling takes.
There may be benefit to interrogating what position Gunn’s privilege performed in securing her spot—if nothing else, she might afford to take part in qualifying occasions which can have been out of attain for some—and bigger questions on cultural appropriation in breaking. (“Raygun Deserves an Olympic Gold Medal for Colonizing Breakdancing,” learn the headline in The Grio. There are additionally a number of threads on the market on this subject, and I encourage you to learn them.) These questions are being raised in a number of locations, however likelihood is you may not see them till you’ve watched a number of spoofs or response vids first.
