FUDGING BORDERS: EUROVISION’S CAMP APPEAL
The annual song contest fires up patriotism, stirs controversies and attracts more viewers than the Super Bowl
Countries across Europe (along with several neighbouring states and, for a third time, Australia) were descending on Kiev, Ukraine, last night for the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, a musical competition beloved worldwide for stoking patriotism and bringing a helping of outlandish camp onto the global stage.
The contest has been bubbling since late last autumn as the participating countries have elected its musical representatives.
Founded in 1956, Eurovision was inspired by Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival, an annual song competition. Each year, participants from about 40 countries that are part of the European Broadcasting Union participate. Participants mostly hail from the European Union, but the contest also includes other entrants such as Macedonia and Azerbaijan.
In its six decades of existence, the contest, which is watched by almost twice as many people each year as the Super Bowl, has had some questionable winners and finalists, most of whom have struggled to sustain international fame after the victory.
But it has also started major careers — most notably those of Abba (whose Waterloo won Eurovision 1974) and Celine Dion (a native Canadian who fudged geographical borders to become Switzerland’s entrant in 1988). Because Ukrainian singer Jamala won last year’s competition, her country hosted this year’s contest.
The rules for getting to the final stages vary by country, but each country’s participant faces the same guidelines when he or she gets there: the combined votes of a panel of judges and the public determine the winner.
Eurovision has been plagued by controversies from vote buying to bloc voting. This year’s situation is geopolitical: Ukraine banned Russia’s Yulia Samoylova after she confirmed that she had entered Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, without permission from the local authorities — a breach of Ukrainian law. Russia subsequently withdrew from the contest.
The controversy calmed down but Russia’s exit from the contest left a gaping hole in it, said William Lee Adams, who runs website WiWiBloggs, which documents each step of Eurovision. The absence “creates a huge play for the Russian diaspora vote”, he said, referring to some viewers’ habits of voting for musicians because of ethnic or geographic allegiance.
Adams noted that Bulgaria was likely to benefit, as its contestant, Kristian Kostov, hails from Moscow, gained early fame on Russian television and has a Russian musical coach.
Adams expected Italy to win last night. Occidentali’s Karma, performed by Francesco Gabbani, sends up Western culture’s obsession with social media and the appropriation of Eastern spiritualism with clever lyrics that reference sources including Shakespeare and British academic Desmond Morris.
It’s a little heady but it’s also fun, and it hits lots of Eurovision sweet spots. It’s sung in Italian (a plus for purists who disdain the trend of performing in English); it sounds modern but tips its hat to a big-band past; and the performance has catchy visuals (Gabbani dances with a gorilla in a bow tie).
“He’s got this X-factor,” Adams said. “Perhaps the controversy with Russia and Ukraine has left people wanting something fun and frothy, and this gives them that.”
Other front-runners included Portugal’s Salvador Sobral, whose unexpectedly earnest ballad Amar Pelos Dois has earned a loyal following for upending over-the-top Eurovision expectations; Armenia’s catchy and vaguely ancientsounding Fly With Me; Sweden’s I Can’t Go On, which features performers doing fancy footwork on treadmills; and Romania’s unexpected pop and yodelling mash-up Yodel It!