To Russia with gay love – a Eurovision message
The Eurovision Song Contest has grown to become as much about politics as pop music, and this year is set to be no different.
An estimated television audience of 15 million Russians will spend Saturday evening watching a two young dancers from Ireland enact a gay love story after Dublin’s entry was voted into the final by viewers across the continent.
Ireland’s track Together is performed by singer-songwriter Ryan O’Shaughnessy, 25, a former
contestant. As he sings, Kevin O’Dwyer and Alan McGrath depict in dance the early stages of a same-sex romance, holding hands on a bridge and playing in fake snow. The nature of the routine, which appears to reference Ireland’s historic vote in 2015 in favour of marriage equality, prompted claims that it could fall foul of Russian laws banning ‘‘gay propaganda’’.
In March O’Shaughnessy responded to the rumours of a Russian broadcasting ban by tweeting ‘‘#IDareYou’’, and criticising the country’s ‘‘anti-gay propaganda regime’’.
Eurovision rules compel participating countries to broadcast all entries and Tuesday’s semi-final featuring Ireland was shown in full on Russia’s Channel One.
O’Shaughnessy’s performance appeared to delight crowds at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal, where he was among ten acts voted through by the public and national juries. Russia’s entry, Yulia Samoylova, was to compete in last night’s semi-final. She had been due to compete at last year’s Eurovision in Ukraine, but was banned by the hosts after touring Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsular region annexed by Russia in 2014.
In response Russian television refused to broadcast the contest, despite efforts by the European Broadcasting Union to negotiate a compromise that would have enabled Samoylova, who has spinal muscular atrophy and uses a wheelchair, to perform over a satellite link.
The homophobic approach and foreign policies of President Vladimir Putin’s government have provoked a backlash against Russian entries at Eurovision, which has a strong following in the gay community.
Russian contestants were booed in 2014 and 2015, prompting Moscow to invest millions in a lavish stage show to support its 2016 entry, Sergey Lazarev. His song,
was the bookmakers’ favourite but finished third, just behind Ukraine.
This year’s favourites include Cyprus, Norway and Israel. The UK entry, SuRie, a former backing singer from Hertfordshire, is a 200-1 outsider with Storm. She qualifies automatically for the final as Britain is one of the ‘‘big five’’ that make the biggest financial contribution to the competition.
UK artists have fared poorly since Katrina and the Waves won in 1997, finishing 19th, 17th, 24th, 24th and 15th in the past five years. Last year’s final was watched by more than 180 million people, down on previous years as it was not screened in Russia.