All the Wrong Moves

Your Content Goes Here

You knew it would happen.  It was as inevitable as night following day.  Yes, Raygun is back in the news.  After three weeks of introspection and nursing her wounds, she has granted Waleed Aly an interview, reported here by the Daily Mail. It was touted by many media outlets as ‘Raygun apologises’, although there’s not much evidence of remorse or embarrassment that I can see. I feel compelled to write about this, on the face of it a trivial, farce, not for its own sake but because it is a striking case study of the grotesque society that we are fast becoming. There are two dimensions to this sadly telling affair, the personal and the organisational.

Let me deal with the personal dimension first, beginning with the performance itself, and much being made of the fact that Raygun failed to score a single point in her three rounds.  On the face of it this sounds horrendous, but in fact three other competitors also scored zeros (one of them twice).   And there were nine other match-ups in which one of the competitors scored 3 or less out of 18.  The points do not reflect a grading of the performance but simply a win, draw or loss in each match-up. No athlete should be subject to a pile-on, or even be criticised other than by his/her coach, for underperforming on the day.  And, in fact, none of the other lowly ranked breakdancers, as far as I am aware, received anything like the attention Raygun did.  So, the mystery is, how did one substandard performance in an obscure sport so quickly attract the attention of the world?

I believe she went viral so quickly, not because she was bad, but because her routine was clearly a parody of the sport in which she was chosen to represent Australia.  There is evidence that Raygun is a better (albeit maybe only marginally) dancer than she showed at the Olympics. Professor Megan Davis has suggested she set it up this way.  We can only surmise, but let’s give Raygun the benefit of the doubt and assume that, as she claims, she really did give it her all. The Daily Mail report of her interview with Waleed Aly refers to her ‘comical routine’. And also from that report:

After accusations that she made a ‘mockery’ of breakdancing, Raygun took a swipe at her critics as she claimed they don’t understand her ‘artistic’ style and called for more resources to be given to the sport Down Under.

‘Unfortunately, we just need some more resources in Australia for us to have a chance to beat world champions,’ she shared.

‘You know, historically, unfortunately, we haven’t had the best track record of winning World Championships, so, you know, I don’t think that’s just on me.’

‘A lot of the responses, though, is just due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking,’ she went on.

‘It was so fantastic that the next day the judging chair, MG, came out and explained that in the breaking community what I did actually wasn’t very shocking.

‘You know, it’s just a different approach in breaking. You have the athletic-style breakers and you also have the more artistic-style breakers and all of them are very valid.’

I have been a competitive ballroom dancer.  I was no great shakes, but my wife and I took the activity very seriously.  We always wanted to win, and we developed and practiced routines that we thought would give us the best chance to do so.  Failing that, we wanted to be placed, and failing that we didn’t want to be last.

If you have seen the movie Strictly Ballroom, you will have cheered as Scott and Fran took on the establishment by dancing their own style.  But that doesn’t win you competitions.  Despite what the Olympics judging chair, an entity who goes by the moniker ‘MG’, is reported to have said above, all these sports with an artistic component have a body of technique to which you are required to adhere.  And there is a syllabus of approved figures of varying difficulty.  The harder the figure, the more points you get — if you pull it off, that is.  There is scope for freedom of expression and innovation, of course.  That’s what separates the winners from the also-rans.  But you’d better get the basics right and you had better reflect the overall accepted tenor (for want of a better word) of the style.  (I have watched a bit of breakdancing and it is impressive.  A number of words come to mind.  Comical is not one of them.  The words that do spring to mind are power, precision and attitude.  That’s what I mean by tenor.  All were notably absent from what I saw of Raygun’s routine.)

Raygun tweeted after the event “What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative – that’s my strength, my creativity”.  Fair enough.  If your aim is to influence change in the essence of your discipline, sure, go all Scott-and-Fran in your local competition when dancing only for yourself. But when representing your country in the Olympics, the ultimate arena, best leave the up-raised middle finger at home.

And by the way, what serious athlete competes in a tracksuit?

So, by either design or accident, Raygun – and Raygun alone – achieved the coveted status of victim.  Regrettably, in our modern society, that is a better than outcome than achieving a respectable score but failing to win a medal.

And her reward?  Messages of support from Albo, Tanya Plibersek and the usual coterie of Left-wing virtue signallers – coins of very doubtful value admittedly.  But wait there’s more:

The Macquarie University researcher also described soaring to global fame as ‘wild’ as she addressed her newfound status, which has seen her chased by cameras and reportedly be lined up for multiple TV offers.

‘That was really wild,’ she admitted. ‘If people are chasing me, what do I do? But that really did put me in a state of panic.’

However, she noted that the global fame has also come with positives, including getting messages from ‘random people’ who never would have otherwise known her.

Despite her insisting she has no desire to stay in the spotlight, a TV insider recently claimed she could secure appearances on some top rating reality shows.

‘The future of one of the world’s most talked about Australians, Raygun, is currently being negotiated with multiple TV offers,’ a source told Yahoo Lifestyle.

It was also claimed that networks are competing to lock her down for exclusive appearances on Australia’s best-known channels.

‘They are looking for exclusive-network-deals that could be 12 to 24 months long, blocking out other opportunities from competing programming,’ they explained.

Calling her one of the most ‘sought after names’ in Australia, another source said the competing networks could cast Raygun on a ‘celebrity’ show like SAS Australia or Dancing with the Stars.

‘A number of talent agents have been circling the viral superstar ever since her memorable dance at the Paris Olympics went viral,’ they added.

Reports have already been circulating that Dancing with the Stars bosses are desperate to sign Raygun for the upcoming season.

If you haven’t watched it, Dancing with the Stars is based on a team of 14 professional ballroom dancers, each paired with a celebrity who does not have a history of dancing.  The ‘stars’ comprise about 50 per cent Seven’s in-house talent and 50 per cent from other walks of life with significant achievements to their names (e.g. footballers).  So, if she gets a gig on Dancing with the Stars, will she be billed as an Olympic star?

By the way, has anyone heard of Jeff Dunne aka J Attack?  He was our male breaker in Paris.  He didn’t score much better than Raygun, collecting only two points in his three rounds, but failed to achieve victim status.  That can only be down to misogyny, of course.  Nonetheless, compare the two here.

That should make my point about the tenor of breakdancing.

And has anyone heard of Mathew Denny?  Or rather has anyone heard of him since the day he won a discus Bronze in Paris? Any chance he might get a gig on Dancing with the Stars?

How low have we now sunk that our media, who go into paroxysms of praise and vicarious pride when our athletes win medals, elevate a failure to ‘internet sensation’. Raygun became an ‘internet sensation’ because the vast bulk of people who saw her routine regarded it as a joke.   How perverse then that, just because she delivered a ludicrous performance and her feelings were hurt as a result of the inevitable derision, they should seek to console her by making her a star. Oh, and by the way, here’s the ‘apology’ adverted to in the media headlines:

During the tell-all chat, Waleed also confronted Raygun with claims from hip-hop star Spice that her performance ‘pushed’ breakdancing into the ‘Dark Ages’ and made a ‘mockery’ of the Aussie scene.

The question appeared to leave Raygun uncomfortable as she nervously responded to the claims by apologising to the entire breakdancing community.

‘It is really, um, sad to hear those criticisms,’ she shared.

‘I am very sorry for, you know, the backlash that the community has experienced. But I can’t control how people react.’

How’s that for projection? No Raygun, as far as I am aware the breakdance community has not experienced any backlash.  It was entirely yours.

Let’s leave the personal dimension now and have a look the organisational aspect.

In the continuing controversy over Raygun, one thing seems to have been overlooked. Many highly talented athletes in mainstream sports work their guts out for many years with the dream of winning an Olympic medal. Their consolation prize is to gain the coveted mantle of ‘Olympian’, something which stays with them forever. Unfortunately, most of them do not even achieve this. How galling must it then be for those athletes to see a second-rate performer in a second-rate once-only Olympic sport gain this attention?

As I understand it, most entirely athletic sports have some form of qualification for Olympic participation – times, distances, heights, that sort of thing.  That is more difficult for the sports which have a high artistic component.  But surely some standards should apply?  Being a finalist in some other international lead-up competition perhaps?  But failing that, surely our own Olympic Selection Committee should exercise some discretion as to whether or not a competitor has achieved a sufficient standard to represent our nation in the world’s premier sporting competition.

In my view the Australian Olympic Committee failed in its duty to its wider community by not saying ‘Sorry, love.  You’re just not good enough to represent Australia.  We’ll have to sit this one out’.

Let me conclude with a couple of points.

Can you imagine a Chinese, Russian or even an American competitor being feted at home for failing so spectacularly?

Even as I write, four days into this latest installment of the Raygun saga, it is still on the evening news, Seven having just put to air an item on Raygun rubbing shoulders with Richard Branson. I suspect she has an agent who sees a property; what would be interesting to know is   the date on their contract.

This just gets better and better.  Coinciding with her arrival back home, duly reported on at least Seven’s evening news, comes the welcome tidings that the World Dancesport Federation has confirmed she is now ranked Number One in the World! What next?  A call from Albo appointing her ‘emissary’ for the promotion of breaking?

God help us.  Back in the Sixties, Antony Newley had a West End hit with his show Stop the World, I Want To Get Off’.  I know just how he felt.