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Curmie is told that this was intentional.  OK?

When Curmie was an undergrad, he wrote a fair number of theatre reviews for the college newspaper.  One show he reviewed was a student-written revue-style piece that had everything from original songs to vulgar humor (the central shtick was that we should solve the energy crisis by harvesting buffalo farts for the methane).  One segment Curmie praised was a hilarious parody of a pretentious modern dance piece.  There was one problem, though.  The choreographer/dancer in question wasn’t pleased; he didn’t think it was a parody.  Oops.

That incident was called to mind this week when Curmie learned that Rachael Gunn, a 36-year-old Australian college professor with a PhD in cultural studies, has become an internet sensation by placing last in the breaking (formerly known as break-dancing) competition at the Olympics.  Competing as B-girl Raygun (don’t blame her for that part; such noms de guerre are apparently required of competitors) she went through a series of maneuvers looking like a cross between a demented inchworm and flounder flopping on the deck of a fishing vessel.  What it certainly was not was anything that could reasonably be described as a demonstration of strength, balance, or skill of any description.

There are a lot of questions here, not the least of which being what the hell breaking is doing as an Olympic event (I refuse to call it a “sport”).  Curmie has always despised the notion of “sports” in which the winners are determined by judges rather than by who got the most points or crossed the finish line first or whatever other objective criteria might be employed.  This aversion is amplified when original moves are encouraged if not required.  If a gymnast, diver, or figure skater does one more spin than anyone else has ever done or does it in a different position than it’s ever been done, that’s obviously harder and can be reasonably rewarded.  But breaking has no apparent guidelines other than what each individual judge thinks is cool (or whatever term is currently in vogue).  Gunn says all her routines were original.  We can only hope so.

All of this, of course, is an extension of a belief that any activity that requires any measure of athleticism ought to be a sport.  Hence artistic (formerly “synchronized”) swimming, skateboarding, rhythmic gymnastics, breaking, etc. appear as Summer Olympic sports.  I’m not here to suggest that these events don’t require a combination of strength, precision, stamina, timing, and agility.  Of course they do!  So does ballet.  So does roofing a house.  I’m just not interested in seeing how many style points are deducted for using more nails than necessary or having a little caulk spill out of the gun.

Anyway, revenons à nos moutons…  Gunn was, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty awful.  Could I do her routine?  Not now, no.  But I’m pretty sure I could have when I was her age, and that puts her well beneath the status of an elite athlete.  So what’s going on here?  Well, she apparently won the qualifying tournament for Oceania (I really don’t want to see who came in second), and she’s represented Australia at the world championships three years in a row, so she’s at the Olympics fair and square.  There is a qualifying time in, say, a track event (I have a former student who placed second in the Olympic trials in a middle-distance race, but missed the qualifying time by a fraction of a second), but if you’re the best your nation or geographical area has to offer, you get to go, and it’s difficult to establish a qualifying standard if there’s nothing objective about the decision-making.

So, what’s going on?  Well, there’s the post on X that calls her a “grievance studies scholar” and claims she has argued that “breaking’s institutionalization via the Olympics will place breaking more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialized and gendered hierarchies.”  Speaking as a PhD in the humanities, Curmie responds, “Huh?”

It's unclear, to me at least, whether Gunn’s intention is trying to a). open breaking up to other cultural influences, b). participate in an activity she enjoys despite not being especially good at it, c). parody the “sport,” either for squishy pseudo-academic reasons or because it shouldn’t be competitive (or at least not an Olympic event), or d). get international attention for its own sake.  Of course, there’s always e). more than one of the above.

If “a,” I’m not seeing how we get there from her performance.  If “b,” I have no objection, although the Australian Olympics folks might wonder why they’re subsidizing her when they have dozens of current or potential actual Olympics-quality athletes who could use their support.  (They seem to be lining up in her defense, however)  But “c” and “d” seem the most likely candidates.

I have no grudge against lovable losers—as a lad I was a fan of the 1962 Mets, after all—and the 1988 Winter Games alone gave us such celebrities as the Jamaican bobsled team and British ski-jumper Michael David Edwards (a.k.a. “Eddie the Eagle”).  Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the athletes in Paris over the last fortnight and change had little hope of earning a medal.  They went there for the experience, to meet the international stars of their sport, to represent their country, or whatever.  The Olympic ideal, tarnished over the ages though it may be, emphasizes the competition over the result, and we’ve been inundated, both at the Games themselves and (with the notable exception of a series of obnoxious Nike ads) in the accompanying advertising, with stories of sportsmanship and mutual respect. 

So should we cheer Gunn on despite or even because of her obvious athletic inferiority compared to her competitors?  Or do we suspect that her non-conformity suggests she’s in it completely for herself or perhaps for her ideology, hoping to turn notoriety into fame and/or fortune?  Is she charmingly idiosyncratic or just starved for attention?  Is our hesitance to grant her the license we cheerfully provided to Eddie the Eagle based on our interpretation of her motives or on something as basic as sexism?  What do we make of the head judge and the Australian authorities rushing to her defense?

My answer to the series of questions in the previous paragraph, I’m afraid, is “I don’t know.”  My temptation is to believe that no one could be that bad unintentionally, but I’ve been mistaken about that before and felt awful about it.  Help me out here, Gentle Reader…