Returning to my hotel after the awards ceremonies for the NATSIAA in Darwin, I flipped on the TV to idly watch the Olympics. Half asleep, I suddenly found myself electrifed by Raygun’s performance in the women’s Breaking. It’s not surprising to learn this little Aussie battler has “broken the Internet” with her efforts. Raygun made me feel my Olympic dream is still alive. Indeed, aging, non-atheletes all over the world should take heart. There’s still a chance to make it to LA! All we need is a suitably odd sport, a PhD in Cultural Studies and a lot of chutzpah.
Even now I’m not sure it wasn’t a skit by Tracey Ullman in an Aussie Olympic jumpsuit. Anybody who had just watched the gymnasts twirling ribbons or throwing hoops about 30 metres into the air and catching them in their toenails, must have suffered severe decompression when they tuned into the Breaking. Raygun seemed to be going through her moves in slow motion, and when she found a pose she liked, would hold it for a while, koala-fashion. Meanwhile, her opponent gyrated and bounced like a marsupial mouse on heat.
It looked like some fiendishly clever strategy to confuse and demoralise the opposition. But when she unveiled her secret weapon – the kangaroo hop – surely the other girl had no choice but to throw in the towel right away. How could anyone compete with such poetry in motion..!? Unfortunately, the judges didn’t understand the subtleties of Raygun’s work, and gave her zero points for three separate contests. If there were to be a next time for Breaking, we’d obviously need to have a few Aussies on the judging panel. The local references went straight over this mob’s heads.
The media has lapped up the idea that Raygun – AKA. Rachel Gunn – is a 36-year-old academic who wrote her doctoral thesis on Breaking. Having not read this text, I hesitate to pass judgement, although there’ll be plenty of unkind people who’ll think this testifies to the frivolous nature of PhDs today. At least she did the writing, which is more than one can say for those like “Dr.” Nick of the National Gallery of Australia, who now puts his honorary gong on all official documents. Margaret Olley had three of ‘em, and never once insisted on being called Dr. Margaret. Ditto, Bill Robinson.
Nevertheless, there’s something fantastic in the idea of an academic in Breaking representing her country in the Olympics and scoring zero. It’s as if I decided to stop writing about art and paint my own pictures. The results would be roughly similar. In sport, as in art, there is a huge gulf between theory and practice. One can know everything about drawing, but without sufficient skill and practice it’s impossible to produce a good drawing. On the other hand, it may be just as difficult for the most skilful artist to sit down a write an essay.
Somewhere between theory and practice we find Raygun. Are we Aussies so useless or insecure with our Breaking that we decided we needed a really knowledgeable contestant? Are we so much in awe of credentials that we didn’t look too hard at what the rest of the world was up to? Either way – shades of Eric the Eel! – we can thank the Australian Olympic selectors for providing one of the golden moments of this year’s Games. All that steely determination, true grit, pent-up emotion and agony was swept aside in a few minutes of really strange dancing. If only the directors of Australian movies would understand that a little comedy does wonders for a tense drama. As for Raygun, one suspects that a cult heroine is born.
This week’s art column looks at the Hadley’s Art Award in Hobart, where for once a landscape prize didn’t go to an Indigenous artist. While you’re trying to cope with this revelation, I can reassure you there were plenty of First Nations entries, and some very good ones too. I’ve tried to grapple with these thorny issues in the review.
With the movie review, in a slow week I’ve settled on Russell Crowe as an aging detective with Alzheimer’s, in Sleeping Dogs. It’s an unconventional crime story that never really catches fire but keeps us watching as it fizzles along. Rusty is in excellent form as man slowly losing his mind. I just hope he was acting. After watching the Olympics Breaking contest I know the feeling.