I've been Breaking 20+ years. The Raygun Olympic situation is worse than we think...

...but that 'situation' is not the one you're thinking of.

Hi everyone. It’s the Monday after the Olympics. If you are like most people on my feed then you’ve no doubt watched some clips of Australian B-girl, Raygun. Perhaps you’re also like the people on my feed and you got various opinions on the skills displayed by said B-girl. For those uninitiated here…I just so happen to be a Breaker myself, having started around 1999, so rounding up that’s about 25 years of experience. I have some thoughts about this whole situation. Let’s get into them after the jump.

Let’s get this out of the way, because maybe the title of this article attracted those haters that are looking to further ride the wave of internet hate against Raygun. This is not that article. On the contrary, the ‘situation’ I’m referring to is the toxic and frankly, ridiculous hate that this dancer has generated online. It’s a tidal wave of discourse that has already transcended the memes and gone into outlandish realms of spiteful discourse from people that really don’t know what they are talking about. Floyd Mayweather and his father had a famous saying that reverberated throughout Boxing circles. They would say it almost as a mantra or catch phrase. It was, “Most people don’t know SHIT about Boxing.” Now say what you will about Money Mayweather and his camp. Lord knows I have my opinions about the guy, but in this instance, I have to embrace and echo this statement when it comes to Breaking. Most people don’t know shit about Breaking and that becomes painfully clear when you read the comments about the Olympics.

Let me peel back this curtain and relay my experience in watching the Olympic B-girl qualifier last Friday. I was watching with my daughter Marisol, who, like myself, loves dancing. Mari is known to even bust out a freeze or two on the floor nowadays. So we’re watching what would be Raygun’s first appearance: her battle with U.S. B-girl, Logistx. Here is one of my first points. If you have mocked this dancer only based on some out-of-context, curated video clips then that’s one thing. Here is the full clips of her battles.

Not to say that watching her full set’s will change your mind over whether you think she was wack or not. But I’ll let you in on how I felt when I watched her sets with my daughter that Friday morning. [Insert shrug emoji here] as in, I didn’t really have that much of a reaction. I thought Logistx fairly won but I gave some props to the moves that Raygun threw down and I appreciated her musicality and originality. To be honest, it was kind of a ‘nothing’ moment. Another battle in the probably thousands I’ve seen before. I thought, Oh Raygun is a style-head but she’s not as good as her competitor. That’s cool though. Moving on. And I can bet good money that 95% of the Breakers that watched her battles thought versions of the same thing. Here is a comment from B-boy Cros One, a promoter of one of the biggest American Breaking competitions.

I’ll cherry pick two key phrases here, “If you watched the battles (it) was nothing you wouldn’t see at an event anywhere in the world.” And, “I really didn’t think it was a big deal, watched the battles she got blanked every battle.” Again, my experience was very much like Cros One’s and other Breakers that I’ve talked to.

Which made it really surprising when my wife, later that day, read out a headline on her phone. Something akin to, “Australian B-girl embarrasses herself in Olympics games.” Here is how you know I really didn’t think it was a big deal. I went to my wife and said, “Oh no! Something must have happened after I stopped watching. Did someone trip and fall on the stage or something?” I was floored when I realized the headline was referring to her regular ole sets that I had already watched. Let me make it super clear: not once did I feel embarrassed or put off by Raygun’s moves. Not once did I feel that it reflected poorly on Breaking as a whole. Did I think her sets were fire? No. Did I think they were bad? Absolutely not. She was obviously not at the same level as her competitors but the judging reflected that. And again, I gave her props for keeping it original while still being foundational.

Here is why this has me so flummoxed. You have people on both sides of the political spectrum taking this to gross places. On one hand you have things like this quote from an article. "Her viral performance was a modern-day minstrel show, where cultural appropriation masqueraded as athleticism, and a global audience was invited to laugh at the crude distortion of a cultural expression once demonized because it originated with Black urban youth. Gunn stripped away the history, socio-political significance, and skill behind breakdancing, reducing it to a caricature for the world to mock.”

(The fact this this author still refers to it as “break-dancing” shows you just how much they do not know or care to learn about the dance.)

And on the other hand I’ve read more comments than I can count that parallel so many of those gross right wing talking points. Making fun of Raygun because she’s an academic. Here is a hot-take from a hard right Australian Senator (the type of dude that wears his, “right-wing climate denialist” label with pride.)

So all of a sudden we got people from all sides of the political spectrum that are talking a lot of shit about something they know very little about. Want to know my true hot take? I genuinely believe that Raygun could take out like 70% of the Breakers around the world. This might get other Breakers raising their eyebrows but I want them, and you dear reader, to watch this other clip of Raygun.

raygun_aus

A post shared by @raygun_aus

It’s a solid style set. Good musicality. Has all the parts you need. This set would take out the majority of Breakers…I’m talking about those dancers that have been dancing for 2-4 years. Those dancers that can’t really toprock yet. Who crash a bit and look down at the floor while they do their sets. Because that is the majority of Breakers. Most Breakers are not at the elite level. Again say what you will about Raygun in relation to the other B-girls at the Olympics. But remember that those dancers are like the .02% of elite dancers. They are the best in the world. I can get people saying Raygun isn’t as good as them. Hell, Raygun herself admits that freely. But that toxic ‘situation’ is evident in the comments on the IG clip. A clip that is more than a year old. Where the trolls are systemically going through the archives and saying things like, “Ur so bad at this it hurts too watch this has got to be a joke come on” or “6 to 8 months of training n lk I think I could beat you in a 1v1” Surprise, surprise these comments both seem like they are coming from men.

Here is my last piece. So if you take a set like the last one there…you’re talking about a fairly traditional Breaking set. So then when you get these toxic comments of people saying that, “This is so bad” and “Jesus this is embarrassing” and that she is a disgrace what they are really saying is that traditional Breaking aesthetics are bad and embarrassing. And again I echo Mayweather. Most people don’t know shit about Breaking.

Which is why having it’s inclusion in the Olympics has been such a double-edged sword for us Breakers. Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Lady Em and B-boy Supa Josh for Little Village. Josh, while speaking of the Olympics, said something that feels almost ominscient, “Everybody loved when skateboarding got in, but they already had their infrastructure sound. Just the way in which society views Breaking and how we identify who is a good breaker. With the Olympics, it redefines what we believe this to be, which does push it more in a sports element versus a dance element. Dance is freedom of expression.”

Who gets to define what is good in Breaking? The general public? The people that don’t understand that it’s not just about headspins and windmills? The people that would make fun of legendary B-boys like B-boy Stuntman cause he’s too weird.

So this post is for the people that actually do know something about Breaking. That do value originality and style. Take away the whole Olympic part of it. Take away the skill level part of it. Let’s look at what people are really making fun of. They are making fun of a style head that dared to be different and had fun with it. It’s up to us as Breakers to stand up for the weird stuff in Breaking. The acquired tastes of people like B-boy Stuntman or Lil Ossa.

ill_ossa

A post shared by @ill_ossa

And yes, people like B-girl Raygun. But if there is a silver lining here, it’s that it seems like Raygun is taking this all in stride. Just peep the celebrations on the street.

If I could distill my argument to one point it would be this: I’d rather be in that crowd, hyping up a B-girl that stayed true to herself, then behind a keyboard and commenting some critique on things I know nothing about.

-C