The Eurovision Song Contest – A Continent (still) Divided?

Abstract

Credited as one of the most successful major televised music events held annually in Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) still serves as a battlefield between Eastern and Western European aesthetic paradigms. Although the Western paradigm has long been regarded as an almost universal criterion of success, the contemporary ESC presents a unique opportunity for post-communist acts to contest that hegemony while playing with its conventions. This article examines how, in the post-1989 situation, the most successful Eastern European acts purposely exploited, juxtaposed and subverted several aesthetic categories, demonstrating their understanding of the conventions promoted at the ESC on the one hand, while undermining and contesting them on the other. The article argues for greater attention to such strategies as over-exploitation of stereotypes and auto-stereotypes, as well as mocking the prevailing aesthetics by playing with such notions as authenticity, folklore, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch or hyper-reality and challenging the contest's utopian and nostalgic ideals. 1 | INTRODUCTION The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) may be credited as one of the most successful musical events held annually in Europe, yet it causes heated debates among music lovers, TV and press commentators, and academics alike. Most of the literature on the ESC is written in the English language and represents the Anglo-Saxon approach to the phenomenon. It is often claimed that despite the atmosphere of joy and mutual respect the contest sharply reveals cultural divergences permeating today's Europe, demonstrating the existence of political and economic tensions in the post-World War II European public spaces. The paper discusses how the intentions of the most successful and controversial acts representing Eastern European countries 1 are misread in Western debates in the press and scholarly writings. The main premise of the paper is that Eastern European (including Russian) acts purposely to apply, juxtapose and subvert a number of aesthetic categories assumed by the ESC in order to demonstrate that they have assimilated ESC's strategies to use them for their own ends. They make use of such notions as authenticity, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch, or hyper-reality, as well as alluding to utopian and nostalgic ideals. In that sense the