Posted 8:33 AM by Paul
Culture Wars

Last night saw the Eurovision Song Contest, an excercise in pan-European Unity nearly as old as the European Community itself. Americans should note that this is an annual televised 3 hour TV marathon where European countries [stangely including Israel] compete with each other to decide who has the written the best new song. It is a celebration of kitch and it has become fashionable in a kind of post modernist jape kind of way, particularly amongst the gay community.

It used to be restricted to Western Europe, but with the fall of the Berlin Wall all the Eastern European bloc lined up to join the party. Last year Latvia won, so this years final was held in Riga. It is good business for the host nation. Some people even date the Irish tourist boom and the re-positioning of the Irish brand [ from rural backward to hip modern and creative ] to when they won the competiton three times in sucession. The contest gave us Abba and Riverdance [ Michael Flatley danced in the interval ] but it hasn't had a major impact aside from one night of TV watched by around 150 million people.

Well maybe that is changing. Strange thinks happended last night.

The Latvian crowd in the arena booed the Russian entry from TATU - a teen age girl duo that simulate lesbian sex acts in their stage show - and howled with derision every time votes were allocated to them. If TATU had won there would have been a riot. To make matters worse for the home crowd TATU took the most phone votes in Latvia. Around 50% of the Latvian population are Russians dating from when millions were moved their by Stalin either to keep the locals under control or banished to work as slave labourers. Lets just say there is tension between the two ethnic groups now that the Latvians are in the driving seat.

When Moscow came on the TV to announce how their votes had been allocated [ votes are by phone and callers cannot vote for their own country ] the host made a point of praising the excellent show from their "Baltic neighbours". Times have changed. In 1968 the Red Army finally decided to clamp down on dissent in Czechoslovakia when crowds gathered in Prague to wildy celebrate their ice hockey victory over the Soviet Union. The Kremlin would have never tolerated the afront to Russian pride dished out to TATU by the Latvian boo boys. They would have sent in the tanks.

The Poles entered a peon to European Unity called "No Borders" with lyrics in Russian, German and Polish. Perhaps this was an attempt to prevent them both from invading every 50 years.

The Belgiums, who came second, entered a song in a entirely invented language. Some people would say that is very apposite as Belgium is an invented country.

About half the entries sang in English

A Moslem country, Turkey, won.

The world is turned upside down.

The United Kingdon came last with 0 votes. That's right. Zilch. Terry Wogan, the UK chat show host who did the voice over for the broadcast by the BBC went on record to say that this was due to "political voting" and was "a backlash for Iraq". Nothing of course to do with the fact that our entry was crap. The UK entered a faux disco anthem by a duo from Liverpool called Gemini. The bass line was a rip off of "Edwin Starr's" 70s classic "Eye to Eye Contact" or maybe "Disco Inferno" by The Tramps. Gemini sang painfully flat throughout, and there was no discernable song structure. Gemini we are told, studied at the Paul McCartney funded Starlight Stage School, and the song was written by the school's director of music. This confirms by suspicions that colleges teaching popular music are packed with lecturers who have never had a hit record. But Wogan thought this was all down to a conspiracy of millions of Europeans to punish us for our invasion of Iraq.

This is a particularly British trait. When we get knocked out of a tournament or suffer some kind of minor huimilation we blame it all on dirty dealings by "Johnny Foreigner". It is not our fault. Most bizzarre of all - Wogan is Irish. We even manage to infect immigrants with this ridiculous paranoia.