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My god his family too. Imagine being the kind of person whose reaction to the things that left your own family members in such a horrific and tragic state as his upbringing, and I mean literally every one of his immediate relatives. I also come from a lot of intergenerational trauma in the south with poor resources and a lot of deep denial of abuse and I’ve come to be very VERY scared of the kind of man who claims such a background and whose primary mode of “fixing” the world feels like he is trying to right the wrongs he perceived as a child. Magical thinking, child-like thinking… it’s very dangerous when it exits the world of entertainment and fiction. We are not NPCs in his drama. Then again, I think he’s a lowlife who exploits his family problems for sympathy to sell a lie.
I am also traumatized. But I consider hallucinating my trauma onto another generation in order to guarantee it spreads like a virus across the country something I wouldn’t do for love or money. He’d definitely do it for one or the other, that much is clear. What a sick fuck and I wish he’d spend some of his book sales exploring himself and learning to be a better father and husband. A lot of this GOP crop don’t even seem to truly seem to like their own families. I guess Trump normalized that, and Cruz, and DeSantis… but like a lot of them though!?
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Re: Raygunn The Appropriator’s defense of her Olympics mess–
But this hits on something white people have been doing for decades and even stamped with coolness in the fifties: Fetishising the myth of Black Cultural Primitivity. We don’t even have to touch rock and roll. The worst offenders were the Beats who thought they were doing jazz a massive favour by liking it. Ginsberg himself once said that BeBop made him just want to “grab a horn and blow,” which is nice I guess, but every player who played bebop was a genius and there is no such thing as a bebop dabbler. And yes, some of those geniuses were white. Also I’m pretty sure you were listening to modal jazz and post-bop you jackass. I’m sure Michael Jordan made some people think they too could jump, but it’s the idea that a black person’s remarkable achievement must be within the mediocre white person’s capability that made the desire such dangerous nonsense. Otherwise they go to the other end of the spectrum and label it a feat of freakishness a term also used to describe Jordan. And Hendrix. Plastic soulchild Duffy once said she sang soul because to her it is about “feeling”. No girl, soul is about immortal technique, GENIUS by another name; that’s why there is only one Aretha and one Patti, hell one Tina Marie. We see these words all the time, effortless, baffling, easy, instinctual, words you will never see describing Stravinsky even though Rites of Spring caused riots. Austrabreaker says she taught herself her own moves, because it’s about feeling right? Doing what you like? bringing your own style to rewrite the game. Forget technique. Forget paying your dues. Forget that half of the world’s best breakers are women. Forget mastery or even watching the masters and the elders because black art could not possibly have shit like tradition, practice, or even standards. Forget that maybe, just maybe this thing is outside your realm of possibility and your job is to watch in awe. This is why the average white man still thinks he could beat Serena Williams. This is why Harry Connick Jr once said rock and roll takes no skill or intelligence. This is why that girl thought why not, I’ll just become the first female Masai warrior. This is why Austragirl thinks that all you gotta do is feel the black shit and it’s hers. Girl, no.
White culture = thinking that all you gotta do is feel the black shit and it’s yours
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Yeah, I’m not a fan of the sort of bullying that this woman feels she experienced, but all this is totally true.
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I dunno; it seems to me that her cringey piss poor attempt at appropriation merited being mocked.
IMO she brought it all upon herself.
Trash talk is a huge part of the hip hop culture, especially when it comes to dancing.
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It’s not like she hasn’t studied the culture
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/hoping you’re joking
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And yet… 
He’s not… she has a Phd in cultural studies, including dance…
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Oh sure, she does indeed, but that doesn’t excuse (for starters) her shit Olympics performance, nor her failure afterward to acknowledge good points made by her critics.
I think I get @timd’s implication now, though-- that as a person who’s studied the culture, Gunn should bloody well know and do better.
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Oh agreed. It should, in fact, have made her think twice about it… I agree it’s not a pass.
Agreed. I assume that’s @timd’s point as well?
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Her recent article on the impact of Olympic breaking on the Australian hip-hop scene is a view alien from mine (and fitting for this thread). Her principal concern seems to be that the traditional hip-hop scenes will impose themselves on Australia and constrict their more authentic breaking
from the abstract:
Isolated from the major breaking hubs (North America/Asia/Europe), Australia’s breaking scene is marked by distinct, self-determined localized scenes separated from each other by the geographic expansiveness of this island-continent. Here, breaking is a space for those ‘othered’ by Australian institutions to express themselves and engage in new hierarchies of respect. We argue 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.
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Ok. I freely admit I’m a few adult beverages into the evening. But what.the.fuck. Raygun went and competed to be Australia’s Olympian breaker. But this sounds a whole lot like she thinks breaking in the Olympics is a bad and harmful thing for Australian breaking. So… she competed to sabotage Olympic breaking? If so, congratulations I guess?
I was going to quote some of the article (Doesn’t read to me like a scholarly discourse. More like a pop-sci piece). But I’m a teensy bit too inebriated to make that work on my phone.
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I think there has been a lot of people in academia seeking to make academic discourse more accessible? Lots of people who can’t find full-time positions are turning to social media to both pay the bills and to have an outlet for their interests…
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Maybe that’s it? The article was meant to be more accessible. Accessible is good! I wish the law was better about it. That article kind of rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. 
I was discussing the criticism Raygun is getting with my spouse and how I think some of it is legitimate criticism but a lot is trashing an Olympian who didn’t perform well. To him* it’s wrong to criticize an athlete who made it to the Olympics but can’t really compete at the same level as others (especially when they come from a poorer county). So we talked about how there is some of that elitist/wealthy bullshit and also other things worth discussing.
*He’s a white cis-het man and the absolute shyte the algorithm feeds him on YouTube is gross. He watches a lot of interesting discussions on masculinity and dissection of toxic masculinity and yet still gets recommended the lobster asshole.
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So, like much of the flora and fauna of Australia, it’s evolved isolated from other continents and become toxic/venomous and/or raises it’s young in pouches?
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Is imitating a kangaroo part of authentic Australian breaking? Because that seems a bit too on the nose.
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I really don’t see how you can get that interpretation from the article.
The article is mainly reciting the views of other Australian breakers about the inclusion in the Olympics - their hopes, concerns, etc.
Secondly, the concern expressed is if anything exactly the opposite - that making it a formal sport with an outside judging body, etc. will homogenise the sport and remove it further from its “African American and Latin cultural traditions and histories”.
The whole article is worth a read but the conclusion should suffice:
Conclusion
In this article, we have outlined the key ways in which Australian breakers are responding to, and making sense of, breaking’s inclusion in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Our ethnographic materials and analysis demonstrates that this development is not simply understood as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but rather that there are gains and concerns specific to the Australian context. These gains include the chance for wider recognition and legitimization of the dance, the monetary and career possibilities that a future breaking industry might provide and a sense that things will be easier for future generations of breakers. Yet the concerns are centred on the impact upon culture, and a potential loss of agency and self-determination. Isolated from neighbouring countries, and consisting of distinct, localized scenes guided by individual agents, top-down decision-making led by the WDSF already impacts the social organization, identities and hierarchies of respect within the Australian breaking scene.
While sport and the Olympics are framed as ‘great equalizers’, the exclusivity of Australia’s sporting institutions along gendered, class and racialized lines means that breaking’s sportification may in fact impact the accessibility of breaking. While the ABA aims to ensure that Australian breakers retain self-determination and agency through this Olympic process, there are many obstacles that come with the introduction of concepts like governance, transparency and accountability. Making global what is essentially a localized practice invariably requires standardization, homogeneity, professionalism and risks further moving breaking away from its African American and Latin cultural traditions and histories.
It is important to note that this research captures what Australian breakers expressed to us at a particular moment in time, before 2024. As the 2024 Olympics comes and goes, the consequences for the dynamic ways in which the Australian breaking scenes (as well as other breaking scenes around the world) are constantly being ‘remade and renegotiated’ (Marie 2020: 4) across time and space remain to be seen. How breakers from all parts of the world respond to, and make sense of, these changes within their respective scenes should continue to be mapped and documented.
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i just found this thread today, thanks for creating it. Now my weekend plans are ruined (in a good way). : )
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