Last weekend I watched the Fremantle Dockers versus Melbourne Demons match. It was a good’un — we trounced the opposition. But there was one aspect of the game that left me disappointed — and it had nothing to do with what happened on the field and everything to do with the Acca Dacca track, Thunderstruck, that was playing in the stands.
Usually this gets me razzed up in all the right ways — it’s a belter of a hype track — but it left me cold. And if you’ve watched this new Netflix documentary, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You see, this song is now so indelibly linked in my mind to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and all the gross injustices they’ve endured (which I now know all about thanks to this excellent doco), I struggle to hear it without shuddering.
All I can think about is how the women in this doco don’t think of themselves as victims, but undoubtedly are; how many have been left battered and bruised and with lifelong injuries thanks to the brutal training they’ve endured to perfect their Thunderstruck routine; how they’re settling for wages little better than a fast food worker, when their footballer colleagues are on contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. The injustice of it all! Yet they all still seem so shiny and . .
. happy? It’s strange — give me an oversized Docker mascot with comically big muscles holding a giant anchor over this rank hypocrisy any day. Better yet, get him doing high kicks to an AC/DC track.