Sunday, May 26, 2002

 

Watched the Eurovision Song Contest tonight. Cheesy as it is, I usually end up watching it anyway. Because this dinosaur of a TV-show that should have died out in the 1970s is so dumb it's fun.

The German entry finished in 21st place (of 24 contestants) with a whopping 17 points. Thank you, Corinna May! Thank you, Ralph Siegel, for producing Germany's biggest Eurovision bomb in five years. Thank you for being so awful that Germany would have gotten thrown out of the contest altogether, if not for the fact that German TV is so mighty and rich we are in no matter what. Not that we deserve it, considering how bad the song was.

This year's winner was a tango pop song from Latvia (forgot the name of the singer) that was actually quite good. Add to that last year's winner Estonia and you can discern a trend. Many of the new and old countries of Eastern Europe flogged to the Eurovision Song Contest after 1990. In the beginning, they were something of a laughing stock with performances that tried hard but just weren't up to Western standards and tastes. But now we have the second East European winner in a row, both with songs that were almost indistinguishable from Western productions. To be fair, Estonia and Latvia are among the most westernized countries in Eastern Europe, plus both countries have a great musical tradition. But still, having winners like Estonia and Latvia shows how far we've come in the last ten years.

The contest itself, held in Talinn this year (it's always held in the country that won the previous year), was further proof to this. Like many people, I was expecting to see folkloristic dancers and flower girls in a Soviet era sports stadium. But Estonian TV surprised all of us. What we got was a very polished, very professional show that was indistinguishable from anything produced in London, Kopenhagen, Stockholm, Dublin or wherever.

In the last few years, the Eurovision Song Contest has become a lot more professional. Year after year, we get to see newly built auditoriums with state-of-the-art stage technology. The overall level of performances is rising, there are fewer and fewer turkeys. Everything is very polished, very pretty and very bland.

The Eurovision Song Contest is gradually losing its goofy charm. Nobody is watching this, because they honestly expect to hear good music. People watch the Eurovision Song Contest for its oddities. Folkloristic pop from Turkey and Israel, Finnish peace activists, the Macedonian contestant who looks as if he's just arrived from 1975 via time machine. And everybody singing in his native language, no matter how awful it may sound (and trust me, Finns singing against nuclear war in Finnish sounds unbelievably awful). But since they changed the rules a few years ago, most songs are in English. There still are a few oddball entries, such as the Slovenian transvestites or the world's oldest and heaviest boygroup from Russia. But the quirkiness of the past is largely gone. You tune in to see Europe's biggest freak show, you get watered down MTV. Which - although it's good to see that Europe is finally coming together - is a shame.

posted by Cora link 02:35