Source: John Walton – PA Images / Getty
Australian Olympic “breaker” Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, has, apparently, been having a rough go of it ever since she embarrassed herself in front of the world by flopping around on the Olympic stage, doing what looked like an impersonation of either a kangaroo, bunny or velociraptor while hopping around like a toddler trying to get her mother’s attention — and calling it breakdancing.
We all saw the way Gunn’s performance prompted an onslaught of memes, gifs and relentless mocking on social media. There was even a petition against her that some 58,000 people signed. The internet dragging was well-deserved, but it appears it put the 37-year-old in a state of distress that she’s still working her way out of. Apparently, the worldwide reaction to Gunn’s culture-vulturing nonsense on social media and on late-night television has harmed her mental health, which is why she has made an effort to stay away from all of it — but she still felt the need to tell us all about it, of course.
From Deadline:
And she hasn’t even seen the Jimmy Fallon-Rachel Dratch parody. “I don’t think I’m in the place yet to watch it,” she says in a new interview with the Australian network television show The Project.
“I knew that I was going to get beaten, and I knew that people were not going to understand my style and what I was going to do,” the 37-year-old breaker said. “The odds were against me, that’s for sure.”
“Fortunately I got some mental health support pretty quickly and I also went off social media,” she added.
Elsewhere during the The Project interview, Gunn apologized for the negative attention she’s brought to the new Olympic sport. “I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced,” she said, “but I can’t control how people react.”
I mean, one could argue that she absolutely could have controlled how people reacted — by not taking her talentless, rhythmless self up on that stage in the first place.
It’s arguable that all Gunn did when she (literally) hopped up on that stage was single-handedly ensure that the breaking completion never had a fair shot at being taken seriously at the Olympics.
Gunn—who holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and examines the cultural politics of breaking, bringing both academic and artistic perspectives—had also previously defended herself in a way that indicates she cares nothing about the culture she supposedly studied and was more concerned with the spotlight and what it did for her personally.
“What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative — that’s my strength, my creativity,” she said. “I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage.”
If Gunn really cared about the culture she supposedly studied, she wouldn’t want to be the only thing people would remember about the time breaking came to the Olympics, which will likely not happen again in 2028.
But, sure, I guess it’s good she’s taking care of her mental health or whatever. Good luck with all that.