Media (Events), National Identity
and the Eurovision Song Contest
– Or why The Netherlands will never give
Belgium ‘douze points’
Hilde Van den Bulck
Eurovision Song Contest
Each year, our fine continent's cultural
trouts and tiddlers wriggle together to
suck at the very Euroteat of
Eurodiversity. They wear Euroshoes,
drink Eurobooze, and then they sing
some songs and invite each other to
pick the least worst one(Bubblegun.com)
3
Media and Collective identity
• Invention, articulation, promotion
• Traditional stress on national identity
– Anderson/Gellner: press and radio
– Reith: Public Service Broadcasting
– Commercial broadcasters
• Other forms of collective identity
– Gay identity (see Alexander)
Forms of articulation
• ‘Banal nationalism’ in every programme
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stereotypes
Imagery
Deixis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnkCQpawrb0
• ‘Hot nationalism’
– Media events
– Media spectacles
Eurovision Song Contest
• °May 24,1956
• EUROVISION (EBU),
• Parallelled political ideas
ESC as media event/spectacle
• ESC in international event culture (Björnberg)
‘an event of which the ingredients of participation –
music, language and dance – are all potential
indicators of national culture’
• ESC as media event (Dyan & Katz)
– ‘central values’, ‘aspect of collective memory’
– positive, consensual
• ESC as media spectacle (Kellner)
– ‘cultural phenomena that embody social values and
dramatize conflicts’
– negative: hegemonic
ESC & articulation of collective
identities
• National identities:
– us
– versus them,
– essentialism
• European identity/identities
– European unity in diversity
– ‘The Nordic Countries’, ‘The Balkan’
– West versus The Rest
Forms of articulation
• Articulation of collective identity through:
– Song and performer/performance
– promo/host
– voting behaviour
– off screen comments
– collective memory
Song & Performance
• National idenity: Essentialism, folklore,
– Ruslana Wild Dance (Ukraine, 2004) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEXdwwHWLSU
In the very heart of Europe in the majestic kingdom of the Carpathian mountains;
there lives an ancient culture of the mountains that possesses unique mystic
rituals, mountainous rhythms and dances. Ruslana has united the mysteries of
the mountains with a new energy and power. (Ruslana,2004e)
“rejuvenation, novelty, authenticity, originality, the ‘real,’ and the spiritual”
– Croatia, 1993 (first participation)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKanpKMeLfQ
eagerness to be European vs East
•
‘Regional’ identity:
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Scandinavian style (ABBA and onwards)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFec_mrD-cQdfsklm
Yet: Euro-pop
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW54iRBPDuc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Db6ruoT_k
Promo / Host
• Hosting offers a city/state/broadcaster opportunity to represent itself
to Europe through the ‘master narratives’ it attaches to the entire
show (Bolin)
• ‘Putting the local on show for the global’ (Harvey)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=eoNv_2j3HHw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtrhiL6_5E
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=wYa4JBxsUog&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=vFsimDfpaZk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=itP7H6Uo29s&feature=related
• Presenting each country
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ms2jzEm4o0
Voting behaviour
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=QNu-yXv6J5U&feature=related
Voting behaviour
Voting behaviour
Evaluating bloc voting
• Regional taste groups?
• Expressing political views through ESC?
– United Kingdom's 2003 "nul points" debacle linked to "post-Iraq
backlash" ?
– obvious ancient historical affinities
• between Greece and Cyprus,
• Croatia and the other seceded republics of the former Yugoslavia
• Voters have realised that it increases their own country's
chance of winning the contest?
– Collusion = a meme = a horizontally spreading cultural behaviour
that has progressively colonised the contest (Dawkins, 1976)
Off Screen Comments
‘There is a little Neighbourhood
voting going on’
‘I ’ve said it so many
times it has become a cliché: we won the cold
war but we lost the Eurovision’
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=HoJzeI4YG4w&feature=channel
Collective memory
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRfve3
wHYUY
Not the whole story
• Entertainment, Kitch, Embarrassment
• Other collective identities
Some useful references
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Baker, C. (2008) 'Wild Dances and Dying Wolves: Simulation,
Essentialization, and National Identity at the Eurovision Song Contest',
Popular Communication, 6(3): 173-189
Coleman, Stephen(2008) 'Why is the Eurovision Song Contest Ridiculous?
Exploring a Spectacle of Embarrassment, Irony and Identity', Popular
Communication, 6(3): 127-140.
Torres, G. (2005); Pan-European, Regional and National Identity in the
Eurovision Song Contest’. Central European University Budapest:
Department of Political Science..
Pavlyshyn, M. (2006) ‘Envisioning Europe: Ruslana’s Rhetoric of Identity’,
SEEJ, 50(3): 469- 485.
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Le Guern, P. ‘From National Pride to Global Kitsch: the Eurovision Song Contest’,
[http://wjfms.ncl.ac.uk/leguWJ.htm ]
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Gathereer, D. (2006) ‘Comparison of Eurovision Song Contest Simulation
with Actual Results Reveals Shifting Patterns of Collusive Voting Alliances’,
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 9(2):
Yair, G. and Mamam, D. 1996. ‘The persistent structure of hegemony in the
Eurovision Song Contest’, Acta Sociologica 39: 309-325
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