View From The Couch 12/Aug/2024

 One For Wittgenstein, None For Raygun

Where does one start? Let's start with this: I pretty much avoided the Olympics again. I was low-key disinterested last time in Tokyo, but this time I was high-key disinterested with a double dose of I-don't-wanna-know. The medal tally, the breathless celebration of our representatives, and the overall cheese of the Olympic competition largely fell on actively-backed ears. 

So it is a surprise that there was one performance that cut through everything else that happened and it is Rachel Gunn and her three losses. For precision, we must point out the cumulative score against her was 54-0. She was completely blown out by the competition. She is in most part, notable for having been so off the pace to have been delusional. 

Gunn lost all three of her round-robin battles by a combined score of 54-0 and admitted post-event that she couldn't compete athletically with the tricks and spins of her younger opponents. 

'What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative - that's my strength, my creativity,' she said. 

Gunn has published a doctoral thesis entitled 'Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying'. 

The thesis questioned why so few female participants were part of the male-dominated scene but spoke of the sport as a 'space that embraces difference'.

Yeah right. Tell me that doesn't sound like she's full of shit.

I've had a difficult time unpacking this 'performance'. What the hell does this mean? How the hell does Deterritorialising Gender work in the context of being in the Olympics doing women's sport where gender is pretty much a matter of binary determinism, and putting in a lame-ass effort? How can anybody determine the social meaning to this? It's like a radical, context-free, artistic gesture to an unseen art audience more than a proper sporting effort. 

Clearly it isn't a first order serious attempt at trying to win a medal for Australia, or is it? It must be some kind of secondary order performative gesture about maybe how the Olympics are about participation, and not about the medal haul - although if you were to judge it from the media coverage, you'd be hard-pressed to think it was indeed about participation. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese seems to subscribe to the participation-trophy school of thought where trying is the important bit. Which is emblematic because he's a fricken' Boomer and she's a fricken Millennial. 

Maybe Albo is right, and this should indeed be understood more as an Eddie The Eagle moment. If so, it has served its purpose. It has out done all the other medal-winning efforts as the singular Australian sports moment from 2024 Paris Olympics.  

But I tell you what, she looked awful doing it.