Netflix’s Untold is ostensibly a series of sports documentaries. However, since its inception five years ago, it has been most successful when sport collides with the wider celebrity machine. There have been films about Caitlyn Jenner, Jake Paul and Vinnie Jones.
The gold tends to come when the subjects spill over into public notoriety. With that in mind, it was only a matter of time before they made a film about Raygun. You may remember Raygun as the Australian breakdancer who spent the biggest moment of her career at the Paris Olympics thrashing around like a toddler having a tantrum in a supermarket.
If you didn’t see her routine, you will almost certainly be aware of the memes she inspired. Adele discussed her during a concert. Rachel Dratch did an impersonation of her on Jimmy Fallon.
For months, Raygun was everywhere. As this film demonstrates, she really didn’t want to be. This, of course, is part of the great Olympic tradition.
In every competition, a country will put up an athlete who – while perhaps the best in their country – finds themselves wildly out of their league on the international stage. Raygun entered the same Olympic pantheon as Eddie the Eagle, Eric Moussambani and the Jamaican bobsleigh team; competitors whose limitations made them more famous than most champions. However, there are a couple of key differences here.
The first is that Raygun was competing in a sport that had never previously been held at the Olympics, and whose inclusion was already primed for ridicule. The second is that she was competing in the age of social media, allowing every idiot with a phone to mock her performance in real time. Crashing out of the Olympics with zero points was one thing.
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