Opinion
I am Raygun. You are Raygun. We are all Raygun!
Peter FitzSimons
Columnist and authorYeah, yeah, yeah, we know. The Olympics is meant to be all about excellence. So what is Raygun doing there, with her breakdancing routine, you ask?
Being EXCELLENT, dammit, at too many things to count. But let’s try and count them, after a quick recap.
Dr Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, is a 36-year-old Sydneysider with a PhD in cultural studies, “interested in the cultural politics of breaking”. She is also the talk of much of the globe for a – technically – less than prepossessing performance in the brand spanking new Olympic sport of breaking (aka breakdancing).
Sure, she didn’t make the podium, but she has sure made the world talk, and laugh, and exult!
So let’s tabulate her excellence as I see it.
She was excellent at bringing the world what it most needs right now: joy. Her routine has launched literally thousands of memes and gifs, most of them hilarious and essentially good-hearted, not mean.
Raygun caught the attention of fans with her kangaroo-like pose.Credit: Getty Images
She was excellent at embodying the most cherished Australian catchcry of all: have a go, ya mug! And by gawd, she had a go, in a manner we’ve never seen before.
She had to be excellent in the first place, to win the Oceania qualifiers and has also represented Australia at two world championships.
She was excellent at embodying the best of the old lines, “Dance like nobody’s watching, sing like no one is listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, and live like it’s heaven on earth”. She certainly did the first and last of those.
She was excellent at bringing us together as a nation, as we gasped and then quickly fell in love with this unlikely hero. How long is it since we’ve all talked, mostly lovingly, about a fellow Australian, an underdog, who does sport in a different way?
I say it goes back to Cliffy Young, and yet in that one, short Olympic performance, this 36-year-old and her trackie daks have meteorically surpassed the great man, who once shuffled all the way from Sydney to Melbourne, after training by chasing his sheep and cows in gumboots! I am not sure how Raygun trained, but I really do want to believe that Kath and Kim had something to do with it, not to mention Sharon Strzelecki.
Dr Gunn was excellent at showing, against all odds, that the Olympics still has a place for those who are not necessarily elite athletes. We thought we could never love an Olympian like the way we loved Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eel again. We thought that in this ultra-serious, super-professional and too-oft anodyne age, the days of the fun participant we could love like this, were gone. We were wrong.
For we do love you Raygun, and want you to keep doing you, wherever and whenever you want. You and your routine were the very best of us, the joyous thing we all have in us, but too rarely display in public – and even then, only very late at night, at wedding receptions. From jumping like a kangaroo, to doing the sprinkler, you were all of us, all at once, and you had every right to wear that Australian uniform with pride.
Certainly, there has been some nastiness about her performance, but I submit that the bitter critics are just – what’s that word again? – dickheads. Who can watch her performance and not feel good about life? How many nations could produce someone like that, who not only has the confidence to go through with it, but then good-heartedly laughs off the critics afterwards?
The US? Not a chance.
Japan? Surely, out of the question.
Russia? Putin would never allow it, game over.
But we can. We can produce someone like that, send her to the Olympics Games, have her perform in a wonderfully Australian manner, and love her forever afterwards.
And how good were her comments?
“All my moves are original,” she said proudly. We don’t doubt it.
“Creativity is really important to me.” Well, you nailed it.
“I wanted to make an impression in a different way.” Done!
“Sometimes it speaks to the judges, and sometimes it doesn’t.” This time it didn’t, but so what?
You do you. This is your world, Raygun, and we are just privileged to be living in it, and watching you at the same time!
And I am not just talking as an Australian. You have made headlines around the world, and rightly so. And you are, right now, the toast of Paris, the one everyone is talking about.
I know I speak for them all and their admiration, when I misquote John F. Kennedy to say:
Ich bin Raygun. Du bist Raygun. We are all, RAYGUN!
We just don’t have your chutzpah and courage. Yet.
But you are showing the way. And we will follow.
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