Celebrating mediocrity

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As the Paris Olympics is now relegated to the annals of sports history. It seems nobody remembers the achievements of the athletes who trained for years with little reward but celebrities and bigshots continue to openly endorse the embarrassing performance of one Rachael “Raygun” Gunn who scored a famous unanimous zero for 4 of her events in breakdancing at the Olympics.

She has since been endorsed by our Australian prime minister
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -of-living

By the prime minister of New Zealand
https://au.news.yahoo.com/nz-pm-makes-b ... 31777.html

By major media companies in Australia
https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/the-proj ... 39861.html

She's been invited to attend functions by British celebrities like pop singer Boy George
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/raygun-b ... amsterdam/

And public event organised by billionaire Richard Branson
https://www.news.com.au/travel/raygun-d ... 85a556d851

Media agents are jostling to sign her up for lucrative contracts where she is set to make millions of dollars
https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/entertain ... s-experts/

So who is she? actually she is a university professor who specialises in breakdancing culture who won the privilege to participate in the Olympics in breakdancing. Her now infamous performance managed to embarrass Australians and outrage many. Let's list a few.

Let's start with the breakdancing community who are angry she bought the event into disrepute and partially responsible for having it axed by the IOC
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/04/spor ... index.html

Australian indigenous people
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olymp ... Games.html

And many in the African American community have accused her of cultural appropriation and mocking their artform
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olymp ... aster.html

So how does such a person get so much adulation and hate at the same time? is she really become an ambassador for an art form that nobody wanted but we now have? what does this say about modern culture?

to be fair to raygun, I thought the other contestants from countries where people from Africa are not wanted, but they are happy to appropriate the culture, clothes and art of African Americans were also awful. But, I don't want to pass judgement, this is a sign of the times. But is it right to celebrate mediocrity?

i rather liked red kelly's estimation of the olympics as [paraphrasing] a waste of time and talent and energy. in his opinion, if the various hyper talented olympians had instead directed their singularly abundant and protean energies towards the pursuit of making this a better world overall, we'd all profit, rather than just a few olympian bigwigs and gold medal winners profiting.

Last edited by auntblabby on 06 Sep 2024, 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Was that for breakdancing or the Olympics as a whole?

please reread my whole spiel it was for the olympics in general. he thought those athletes had sufficient good talented energy that, if only they applied a portion of it to fixing some of this world's problems, would have benefited humanity.

Oh yes, the Olympics are probably an outdated concept started by wealthy aristocrats in the late 19th century who thought it would be jolly to showcase the empires best physical specimens on display.

if one leaves out the greek antiquity origins, then yes.

It's antiquated and has elitist origins. Even the Greeks, the Olympics were a an event to honour Zeus. I understand the modern Olympics can and has been remade to be an opportunity for otherwise warring nations to come together and compete in sport. I don't have a problem with that.

I don't think it's mediocrity that's being celebrated re Raygun's fame, but the baffling weirdness of her performance. No one could believe that a showing that was so bad would turn up in an Olympic forum. At the same time, there was a kind of charming enthusiasm to it that people responded to. I can see both the negative and positive reactions as being understandable.

Yeah I get some comparisons with athletes from countries where they have no swimming pools and no track and field sending contestants who really shouldn't be competing. But the claim Raygun was the best we produced for breakdancing is confusing a lot of Australians. For example I could go to the Melbourne central train station and I guarantee I will see breakdancers who are 10x better than Raygun. Some legitimate questions about the selection process.

Yay, that means I can celebrate, ha ha. Mediocracy should be my middle name instead of hope. Lol sometimes people seem to see more in me than I think I have. Lol I can stand up on the internet but IRL I am just a total coward and would probably have a hard time actually standing up for something IRL outside of standing up for views on the internet where it's safe on an anonymous platform like WP where no one knows who I am.

My purpose in posting this is not to criticise Raygun for being mediocre, its this weird reaction around the world that she did something important and she deserved to be in the olympics.

Don't forget that they wanted the Olympics to be for amateurs.By amateurs they meant athletes who are not professional.
\By not professional they meant they don't receive payment.
By not receive payment they meant they are wealthy enough to train 8 hours per day without having to earn a living.

An example of such is shown below

Yes, part of the motivation for starting the modern olympics was ...so that aristocrats could compete with each other for fame as amateurs. Even the best of said amateurs faired poorly when they played pros.

In addition to other things...like promoting peace through peaceful international competition...which is all fine.

As far as Raygun ...frankly...I didnt even know that breakdancing was still done by ANY one anywhere anymore...even in the US Black ghetto. I stopped hearing about breakdancing when the Eighties ended. So...if it IS still a "thing", and there are unknown folks the world over better than I suppose something is indeed not right.

Judging from the backlash it's still a thing. I was watching an Asian dude yesterday in front of the Victorian Art gallery doing breakdancing with a couple of "b-girls" in hip-hop gear filming him. Down the footpath near Southbank a group of Asian girls were being filmed for tik tok doing k-pop (a whole film crew) again doing breakdancing. Also indigenous kids here all still do it down near Melbourne central train station with the boom box as if its the 1980s all over again. Also hip-hop dance is basically breakdance. I understand the artform is now more or less universal but seeing predominantly European/Asian kids in the Paris Olympics was a bit weird

OMG! She now ranked number 1 in the world????
https://www.news.com.au/sport/olympics/ ... 65d26bd545

She can now update her bio further by adding the world number one ranking to her list of credentials.

I've never heard of her and didn't see her in the Olympics.