Raygun/Rachel Gunn?

JustKneller

JustKneller

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I honestly don't care about the Olympics. Somewhere along the way, when various scandals started happening (maybe around the time of the Tonya Harding thing), I lost interest. However, I'm not wondering about this from a "fan" perspective, but really just general curiosity about the human condition.

I mean, I get that the selection processed was skewed, but that was literally the worst break dancing I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen quite a bit. Like, it wasn't even breakdancing, but just someone satirically mocking breakdancing. I just don't get what would possess someone to do something like that. What is the angle? What is there to gain? It made me think of the USC scandal. Her spot could have gone to someone that was more deserving and would have represented better.

I dunno. I'm just confused. I gave myself some time to process it figuring it would eventually make sense, but no luck. I also just texted an Aussie friend of mine to get their take. What do you think?
 
m7600

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I'm not really interested in the Olympics. I'm currently watching the Craig Jones Invitational. Tomorrow's the last day of the tournament. The winner walks away with a million dollars.

 
Alesia_BH

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Say what you will about Raygun, but this is the most iconic dance move of the Olympics, possibly the decade.

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Also, this is how I'm cleaning the kitchen floor for the rest of my life

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JustKneller

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I talked to a friend of mine in Australia about it and apparently folks there are really divided, but mostly just pissed. The general narrative is that there are tons of better breakdancers, but access to this was really limited to privileged people so most of Australia was cut out of the opportunity. On one hand, it sounds like Rachel Gunn has been basically blacklisted from the breakdancing scene at large, which is going to inhibit community access for future research (as she is an academic). However, she's also a privileged person, so this isn't necessarily going to matter. There are ways to take a different angle on research so you never have to even deal with people.

So weird...
 
Alesia_BH

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JustKneller said:
So weird...
Click to expand...
My guess? It's all very simple. Rachael wanted to go to the Olympics, so she came up with a plan involving her husband. He didn't turn her down because he didn't want to rock the boat relationship wise.

Not too long ago I met a first time author whose husband was a publisher. She came up with a book title. He couldn't tell her no. That's how this became a thing:
168101802_1378110715887394_7187586209702032963_n.jpg

Raygun's Olympic adventure was probably similar.
 
m7600

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Well, I tried looking through some information about this (there was a lot of garbage to sift through), but I found what I believe is a decent take:



The behavioral analysis part (i.e., the analysis of her body language) should be taken with a grain of salt, but there's a lot of interesting info on the specifics of breakdancing (b-girling?), like power moves, freezes, etc., as well as how these were scored by the judges. The video ends on an interesting note about a classical problem in the arts more generally, the problem of skill vs creativity.
 
m7600

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With that being said, if there's a sport that I would like to see in the Olympics, it's medieval MMA. No fancy moves, no subtleties, just two people in full plate armor entertaining a drunken, rowdy crowd with some good, old-fashioned barbarism.
 
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