Australian Story: Break It Down - Raygun

When Australian academic and B-girl Rachael "Raygun" Gunn crashed out of the Paris Olympics in the first round of the breaking event she became a cultural flashpoint, inspiring countless memes, heated debate and a torrent of online abuse. And in the months that followed, she continued to confound public opinion.

Nearly a year since her infamous routine, with its questionable athleticism and imitations of kangaroos and sprinklers, Australian Story examines the Raygun phenomenon to try to understand why it created such a storm and why Gunn remains such a polarising figure.

There was criticism of Raygun's routine from the outset, both at home and abroad. Some Australians were embarrassed that the nation's record medal haul at the Olympics was overshadowed by Raygun's performance while those in the country where breaking originated thought her performance was insulting amateurish and culturally insensitive.

"Part of the magic of hip hop culture is the fact that it was created by marginalised teenagers who came from nothing," New York breaking pioneer Michael Holman tells Australian Story. "And so her being white and Australian and jumping around like a kangaroo, that's going to be a loaded gun."

Nevertheless, there was plenty of support for Gunn, not least from Australian comedian Stephanie Broadbridge, who saw in Raygun a flawed sporting hero in the mould of Shane Warne and was inspired to create an unauthorised musical parody or in her words, an "empathetic piss-take".

But when Gunn's lawyers demanded Broadbridge cancel the musical days before its launch on the grounds of copyright infringement, public opinion turned firmly against Gunn.

"People who had backed her the whole way felt like this was kind of betrayal of their support for her," says journalist Jordan Baker, who covered the Paris Olympics for The Sydney Morning Herald. "It seemed like she was no longer even remotely trying to lean into the joke."

Australian Story spoke to a range of commentators and sporting figures to make sense of this confounding cultural moment and ask what it says about us as Australians.

(Rachael Gunn declined an invitation to be involved.)


Monday 23 June, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview

Break It Down: The Raygun Phenomenon

Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.