Ruslana, Serduchka, Jamala: National Self-Imaging in Ukraine’s Eurovision Entries

Pavlyshyn, Marko John

doi:10.1007/978-981-13-9427-0_7

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The examples include Jamala’s “1944” which won in 2016, Ruslana’s “Wild Dances” which brought the country its first win in 2004 and displayed a distinct Ukrainian identity grounded in ancient traditions, and Verka Serduchka, a drag artist who reached second place in 2007. While Serduchka’s campy performance may have seemed nonsensical at first glance, it was “widely decoded as a proclamation of severance from Russia” (Pavlyshyn, 2019: 132) and Johnson describes it as a mockery of a “failed Russian utopia” (2014). Cashman (2017) studies Ukraine’s win in 2016 against the 2014 invasion and shows voting patterns in the contest correlate with states’ political responses to the invasion.…”

Section: Background and Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s use of cultural diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest

Welslau,

Selck

2023

New Perspectives

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The Eurovision Song Contest has long served as a platform for cultural diplomacy among its participants. This paper examines how Russia and Ukraine have approached cultural diplomacy in and around the Eurovision Song Contest in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Following an outline of pertinent events from 2014 to 2022, including the Song Contest and the respective countries’ selected entries as well as the public discourse surrounding them, two distinct types of cultural diplomacy—culturalist versus neo-propagandist—are employed in a congruence analysis. The findings show that Russia employed a largely neo-propagandist approach to cultural diplomacy characterized by their projected image of peacefulness, innocence, and strength to alter their situational image. Ukraine has employed a mostly culturalist approach mainly focused on mutual recognition and the representation of national culture. The conscious instrumentalization of the platform to counter misconstrued perceptions of Ukraine shaped by the Kremlin’s rhetoric also adds neo-propagandist elements.

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Section: Background and Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s use of cultural diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest

Welslau,

Selck

2023

New Perspectives

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“…Exemplifying this, and one of many instances when identity politics featured in the Eurovision Song Contest, was the performance of Ukraine’s 2007 contestant “Virka Serduchka.” Serduchka’s use of the hybrid Russian-Ukrainian language surzhyk contrasted with official state efforts toward constructing a form of national identity bound to the titular Ukrainian language, and instead reflected the post-Soviet reality of everyday language use in Ukraine (Pavlyshyn 2019, 135). Yet, as Brusila (2016, 9) states, it is not only the words in song lyrics that indicate performers’ “ethnic, social or aesthetic positions.” Decisions to use specific phrases, codeswitching between languages, pronunciation style, and inclusion of dialect, in addition to commonly employed linguistic tools including humor, irony, and even ambiguity (Brusila 2020, 93), combine to create unique identity expressions (Brusila 2016, 9).…”

Section: Popular Music and Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Russophone Estonian Identity Through Popular Culture: An Analysis of Hip-Hop Hit “für Oksana”

Cole

2022

Nationalities Papers

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Since emerging in the early 1990s, Estonian hip-hop has developed in line with other cultural and artistic projects in the country, reflecting attempts to foster a homogeneous society, yet ultimately cultivating one where diversity and multiculturalism prevail. As a genre where minority groups are frequently presented as “authentic,” hip-hop and its visual and performative manifestations provide a valuable platform to examine expressions of identity. To this end, several Estonian hip-hop musicians have explored aspects of being “post-Soviet” in contradistinction to official hegemonic discourses, which outright reject the Soviet past and emphasize titular ethnicity as a cornerstone of national identity. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) to examine the lyrics and accompanying video of popular hip-hop song “für Oksana” by “Nublu featuring Gameboy Tetris.” Doing so highlights how the song’s basic narrative acts as a metaphor for experiences of integration processes between ethnic Estonians and Russophones since Estonian independence. I argue that through a combination of linguistic and cultural codeswitching, “für Oksana” constitutes an expression, performance, and negotiation of Russophone Estonian identity from both insider and outsider perspectives, emphasizing the need to understand Russophone Estonians as more than simply “Russians who live in Estonia.”

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Ruslana, Serduchka, Jamala: National Self-Imaging in Ukraine’s Eurovision Entries

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s use of cultural diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest

Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s use of cultural diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest

Understanding Russophone Estonian Identity Through Popular Culture: An Analysis of Hip-Hop Hit “für Oksana”

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