On Raygun, Netflix And The Obliviousness Of Whiteness [Op-Ed]

So, I watched Netflix’s Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly, about Australian “B-girl” Rachael Gunn. I watched it knowing what it would be. Knowing it would piss me off. I watched it, I suppose, for every reason I chose not to watch Rachel Dolezal’s Netflix documentary. So, I knew it would be, at best, an ode to a white woman’s innocence and good nature, sure to fixate on any hint of a white woman’s trauma, while, as usual, making the offenders’ effect on Black people and cultural appropriation take a back seat.

Only when it comes to the Raygun’s episode of Untold, there was no back seat. No Black culture. No Black people at all, except maybe Snoop Dogg, for like 15 seconds. 

When Gunn’s Kangaroo Stomp, Flop and Roll went viral during the 2024 Paris Olympics, we had a lot of fun on social media. We mocked her. We made memes. We made parody videos and cosplayed her if-Ninja-Turtles-worked-at-Walmart-ass Olympic uniform. And, according to her documentary, we made her cry a lot. But what got lost was the truth behind the jokes: Raygun became the poster child for the reason Black people gatekeep Black culture.

Perhaps breakdancing culture and the Hip-Hop culture it was birthed from should have been kept off the global stage. Maybe the culture should have been protected for the culture and spared from the scrutiny, scorn, or worse, Columbusing, that making it an Olympic event would certainly bring. But, putting that aspect of the discussion aside, the physicality and artistry of breakdancing absolutely justified it becoming a sporting event, even on an Olympic level. And it shouldn’t have been up to the whim of one ditsy, wayward, rhythmless white woman to decide whether it would be taken seriously as an Olympic event. 

If Netflix really felt the need to platform Raygun the Convulsing Culture Vulture, the least it could have done was give us a documentary that addressed this underlying issue. Spoiler alert: It did not. Not even for the briefest of seconds.

Instead, for just over an hour, we got to learn about Gunn’s experience as a viral sensation, and about her training process as an Olympian — by which I mean the process through which she made it brutally clear, even to herself, that she had no talent for this dance form and was simply not physically or rhythmically suited for it. 

“Right before the Olympics, I went to my therapist, panicked,” Gunn said at one point in the documentary, explaining that her therapist asked her what the worst thing that could happen was, to which she responded, “The whole world could laugh at me,” to which her therapist responded, “Do you think that’s reasonable?”  

Look, I’m not sure if Gunn’s therapist was asking that question rhetorically, but I am sure that, in that anecdote, along with much of her and her peers’ commentary, she knew the whole damn time she couldn’t dance and did not belong on that stage. 

The documentary features interviews with Gunn, her parents, her husband, a few dancers who know her from the Aussie breakdancing scene, and her coach/consultant, who admitted during commentary that he barely spent any time with her before the big day. What it didn’t feature was a single Black voice, anyone who sounded like they had a real, foundational understanding of the breakdancing art form, or any hip-hop journalists, historians, practitioners, or enthusiasts. There were no mentions of the South Bronx, where the art form was born, where inner-city Black people in the U.S. created the culture of Hip-Hop and its four elements, including breakdancing.

In fact — and I would have to go back and watch it again to be 100% sure of this — I don’t think the term “Hip-Hop” was used even once. There certainly were no references to the culture outside of a split-second clip from 1984’s Breakin’, which still isn’t mentioned by name during the clip.

So, this doc covered no Hip-Hop or breaking history, but it did cover plenty of Gunn’s history. She was introduced to the art form by Samuel Free, her now-husband, Samuel Free — arguably the true villain of this tale, or at the very least, Raygun’s main henchman — who is seen hyping up her uncoordinated ridiculousness both in training footage and in commentary for the documentary. All while also knowing painfully well how bad she was.

Gunn’s love of breaking inspired her to get a Ph.D. and craft a dissertation exploring gender in breakdancing, which would have been fine if she stopped there, but she kept competing in local breaking competitions and in the preliminary competitions that allowed her to Forest Gump her way onto the Olympic stage. 

To be fair, some footage from her earlier competitions showed her looking far better than she did at the Olympics, although she still wasn’t good by any stretch, nor were most of the competitors she faced.

And that was the other frustrating thing about Netflix’s production: it was a showcase of white mediocrity by people who are claiming to be part of an authentic breakdancing scene and culture. And, again, it didn’t include any actual information about actual breaking culture.

But we got to watch Gunn be self-deprecating and likable — if privileged white women who are self-aware about everything but the non-white cultures they bastardized and denigrated on the world stage are the kind of people you like — and we got to hear her brag that she never gave up, no matter how clear it became that she really should have. 

We also got to hear her comment on how her performance was meant to highlight and promote her Australian culture, hence the Kangaroo mimicry, although I maintain she owes the Kangaroo community an apology for her disrespectful adoption of their ways as well, to be honest. Jack and them are not pleased.

Then there was one line she gave during commentary about the criticism she received during the humiliating aftermath of the spectacle that almost made me throw something at my TV:

“People just have an opinion on what women do — what women should do.”

Uh, no, Becky with the Rhytmless Nation, you don’t get to coast on white privilege and appropriation of Black culture and then play your quasi-feminism card when it suits you.

“I know I’m a dorky white woman and academic, and I’m OK with that,” she said in the doc, another line that got on my nerves because, non-sis — ima hold your hand when I say this — being a “ dorky white woman and academic” is not only a thing you won’t be asked to apologize for in this society, but it’s an identity you were able to thrive on in leu of talent.

If Gunn really cared about the culture she supposedly studied, she wouldn’t want to be the only thing people remember about the time breakdancing came to the Olympics, which will likely not happen again in 2028. 

If Netflix really cared about the culture it has produced multiple docuseries to spotlight, it would not have released a documentary that seemed to intentionally sidestep the harm Gunn did in favor of Gunn’s unearned redemption arc.

Most of the documentaries in Netflix’s Untold series feature major sports scandals or sports media frenzies, where athletes’ criminal charges or systematic cheating were uncovered. Raygun’s doc was about a white woman who just did what she wanted, and then cried about the hurt and embarrassment she felt after her Olympic moment went viral and the internet piled onto her self-imposed humiliation, which many would argue amounted to a FAFO moment that was the least she deserved.

This documentary ended with a montage of her many media appearances, including late-night show guest spots and event cameos. We get to hear her boast that the media pile-on and public humiliation “didn’t defeat me.” It became this exaggerated story of triumph instead of the conclusion of shame and regret that most Untold stories end with. 

For audiences outside the culture and not invested in it, Raygun’s story is one to empathize with. For the rest of us, this documentary was an hour-and-change-long display of white obliviousness and cultural erasure. 

Ultimately, it infuriated me, and the people involved will never truly understand why.

SEE ALSO:

Olympic Judges Among Raygun’s Defenders

Raygun Breaks Her Silence Amid ‘So Much Hate’

How The Olympics Made Breakdancing A Global Joke