EUROVISION BRIEFLY EXPLAINED

Every year around this time I baffle my acquaintances with my repeated references to the Eurovision Song Contest.  I will attempt to clarify my interest in this, to Americans, otherwise entirely nonexistent event.  I watched a documentary on it last year, but I am not looking anything up and am just doing this off the cuff.  The cuff on the top of my head so to speak.

The Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final is the single most-watched television broadcast throughout Europe and has been for umpteen years, since the earliest years of television.  It was so popular that East Germany had to create its own Soviet version to keep the comrades from mentally defecting.  It is a confluence of many disparate streams of sociopolitical, cultural and diplomatic influence.  It has had a genuine permanent impact on international relations between European nations on more than one occasion. The nation which wins is the host of the next year's event and that adds complications. Here are some of the things going on with this thing:

1. Grand Spectacle of Schlock  Eurovision is a multinational Lawrence Welk show and the intent is to create music which appeals to the greatest number of people.  Occasionally, as with Germany's winning song Satellite, by Lena Meyer-Landrut, it results in a conjunction of appealing song and singer which can be captivating.  Most often the result is a mopey pop ballad, a jingoistic anthem, or some kind of ethno-folk disco atrocity.  When we try to appeal to the greatest number of people we may end up appealing to none.
2. National Advertisement A relatively obscure country like this year's host Azerbaijan can find in Eurovision a mini-olympics, a nearly affordable platform to show itself a capable nation.  The fact that it can put across a big expensive event like this demonstrates that it may be a functional business partner in an unusual corner of the world and provide valuable goods and services to multinational corporations.  If the host is a deranged autocracy like Azerbaijan it is an opportunity to show that it is not a deranged autocracy, and the way to do that is to become even more of a deranged autocracy, bulldozing homes to build a venue for the event, and suppressing even more harshly than usual the inevitable public rebellion which results.  This shines a light upon the actions of the regime in the international press.  Even non-winners can gain some publicity from losing, like the autocrat of Belarus who last year revealed the paranoid mindset of the dictator by blaming collusion for the failure of the the Belarussian entry, titled I Love Belarus, to take the laurels.
3. Melting Pot Hundreds of people from dozens of countries, not diplomats or politicians but for the most part fairly normal people, meet in one place to rub elbows, sing songs, and try to create some happiness in the world.  Millions of people in all those countries are watching the same show at the same time, seeing that people in other lands are just people like them who enjoy having fun or shedding a maudlin tear over a song.  That can never ever hurt anyone.
4. In It To Lose It One of the most fascinating aspects of it is the winner's obligation to host the next year's event.  All the participating nations want to be seen as competitors but not all of them want to win.  Countries like Spain and Greece which are in bad financial straits, or little countries like Andorra and Montenegro, can't afford a 200 million dollar throw-away like Eurovision.  When Ireland won it three years in a row it was a bit of a disaster.  We end up with performers who want to be good, but not too good, songs that were written to lose but not to lose badly.  It's great to make it to the finals but for god's sake please don't win.

That, extemporaneously, is what Eurovision means to me.  I'm going to try streaming it live to see the opening, and then will download it when it pops up in the torrent trackers later on, because I have never been able to enjoy, or endure, the thing in its entirety.

Now you know what I know about the Eurovision Song Contest.