Ownership is a fickle concept. For example, for the last half-century or so, federal legislation has enabled our First Nations peoples to claim land title if traditional association can be proved.
This is nice in theory, but hasn’t translated to much ownership by Aboriginal people in reality. They just end up with the shit bits Gina Rinehart doesn’t want.
But this isn’t about that.
Now Aboriginal Australia is staking claim to intellectual property as well, albeit once more in retaliation after some presumptuous whitey claimed to have created something they’ve been doing for 40,000 years:
The kangaroo dance.
Weird stories sometimes just appear on your radar like UFOs and you can either ignore or investigate. I think it’s thereapeutic to admit that I didn’t watch Dr Rachel Gunn’s bid for Olympic gold, and wilfully ignored the whole #raygun saga because:
But then came the parody — ‘Raygun: The Musical‘ — lawyered to death by Dr Gunn because she ‘owns’ the kangaroo dance, and needs to protect her brand until/unless somebody offers her a fat stack of cash.
I’m not sure what royalties Dr Gunn expected of the anticipated $40 in ticket sales, but the former academic insists, via her lawyers, that she totes has a sense of humor, so long as she gets paid.
Fortunately, while the withering eye of social media can be brutal, it’s attention span is also brief. Dr Gunn initially disappeared over the horizon in much the same way Grace Tame sunk without trace, only with less reminders in the remainders bin.
But then some First Nations nincompoop claimed they own the kangaroo dance.
Virtue-signalling like a quoll on a hot zincalume roof, Dr Gunn insists she has ‘utmost respect for Indigenous Australians‘ and only trademarked the kangaroo pose, not the kangaroo dance.
Murky. So as long as nobody replicates the pose — for example, whilst performing the dance — then she won’t activate her flying monkeys?
Generations of primary school children encouraged to ‘hop like a kangaroo’ should be warned that Dr Gunn is after their lunch money. Also, to keep our Aboriginal brothers and sisters happy, they should also know that cultural appropriation is very bad.
Somebody also needs to ring the estate of the former King of Pop and tell them Rachel’s gunning for their money.
See what I did there? Anyhoo, does Dr Gunn really own it? Can a pose be owned?
Personally, I’m worried for The Bangles and countless others who, recklessly throwing caution to the wind, walked like an Egyptian pouched marsupial at one point or another for profit, therewith potentially falling foul of Dr Gunn’s mercenary ambit.
Near enough, am I right?
How about the guy in the original Fatboy Slim ‘Praise You’ music video? I sure hope his house is in his wife’s partner’s name! And now that I come to mention it, doesn’t he kinda looks like Levy Rozman a.k.a. ‘Gotham Chess’..? but that would make Levy about 60 years old…
My point is, show me the case law Dr Gunn, otherwise I am going to recklessly abandon bipedal locomotion and adopt distinctly gangurru-like hopping behaviour just to make a point.
Kaisson! Too much!
Maybe if we hold our breath and shut our eyes, by the time we count to one-hundred and start feeling a bit faint nobody will remember #raygun and we can all get back to living our best lives?