Fredrik Rydström | The Lithuania Tribune
The perception of Eurovision Song Contest is likely to vary across Europe, although it is regularly meet with open contempt and ridicule. One might see it as an overindulgent festivity in poor music taste and comic camp dancing, or yet another rainbow celebration. However, as been noted by the few experts and enthusiasts there is, the competition has, with the rapid growth of participants, become increasingly political, and might to some extent even mirror the development and setbacks of European integration.

To be sure, although the majority of songs represented may carry the worn-out themes of world peace, eternal love, wild dancing and Hard Rock Hallelujah; Eurovision Song Contest has nevertheless quite frequently been used to convey a more profound political message.

Portugal, the least successful country in the history of the competition, was, for example, following the Carnation revolution in 1974, for several years in a row dedicating their Eurovision entries to lamenting the yoke of fascism and to eulogizing the overthrowing of the regime.

In a similar vein, when the contest took place in Kiev in 2005 after the victory of Ruslana the previous year in Istanbul, the Ukrainians chose the rather obscure rap-band “Greenjolly” to represent their country. The song paid homage to the newly appointed President, Viktor Yushchenko, and the triumph of the orange revolution.

Most well-known, however, is perhaps the supposed Georgian entry of 2009 entitled: “We don’t wanna Put In”. Because of its blatant attack on the Russian Prime Minister in the aftermath of the armed conflict in Georgia the summer of 2008, Georgia was expelled from competition that year (they were actually given a choice to change the lyrics but refused).

The Georgia-Russia crisis is however far from the only regional conflict which has been reflected in the competition. The worst scandal associated with these conflicts occurred in 2009 when the competition definitely left its imprint on the ongoing Ngorno-Karaback conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azeri television was accused of leaving out the Armenian entry in their broadcast while showing another country’s representative instead. Equally distressing was that several of those few Azeri citizens who chose to cast their vote on the Armenian contestant subsequently were paid a visit by the Secret Service. Some of the victims of the contemptible act of government oppression were even interrogated and charged with “unpatriotic behaviour”, and accused of being a threat against national security.

Though the old EU member states has grown increasingly disenchanted with the competition against the backdrop of increasingly poor results and enlargement fatigue, the line of development has, with a few exceptions, been the complete opposite in the majority of post-communist countries and accession states. As for being considered as the periphery of Europe, many of these states views participation in Eurovision Song Contest as an opportunity to open up a window towards Europe, and a chance to share something of themselves on an international arena which is regularly overcrowded or even closed for them. Consequently, scoring a victory in the competition has, time and again, proven to boost confidence and fuel support for Europeanization.

This was certainly the case with Estonia, Latvia and Turkey when they won in 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively. In the aftermath of the victories top-level politicians in all three countries emphatically declared that they now found themselves on the threshold to Europe and was banging on the door to Brussels. These statements shortly proved to be more than wishful thinking in the case of the former two.

Belarus has arguably been most obsessed among the post-communist states with winning the competition. In fact, the political establishment has stopped close to nothing in order to ensure victory, and it is obvious that the regime is attracted by the international prestige and recognition that follows from organizing the event.

The conspicuous efforts to promote the country’s representatives have been growing increasingly bizarre over the years, and have so far not been crowned with success. When the competition was held in Moscow in 2009 the Belarusian delegates brought with them huge amounts of various merchandises to be distributed among international journalists, including Belarusian vodka named after their singer, Pjotr Elfimov, which came complete with his picture printed on the bottle. Not everything went according to the plan however. The three tons of ice cream, specially produced for the occasion, melted away shortly after arrival in Moscow as the Belarusian delegation had failed to attain proper freezers and cooling equipment from the Russian organizers.

Moreover, the accession process in Estonia, which suffered a complete standstill in the beginning of 2001 because of the declining public support for the EU, regained momentum as a result of the unexpected victory in Eurovision Song Contest in 2001. The amount of voters who claimed to be in favour of EU accession was roughly 52 percent in the beginning of 2001, while the tables had turned to such an extent that approximately 64 percent of the population declared that they were going to vote yes in the 2003 referendum in the aftermath of the 2002 Estonian organization of the contest.

What we have seen in recent years is the total transformation of the competition from a fairly nominal Western European music event (notwithstanding the fact that Yugoslavia was represented in the competition since 1961) into an increasingly unwieldy but colourful European integration project. This development has naturally enough not been applauded by everyone, and has gradually become the subject of fierce debates in Western Europe, especially in the wake of the immense successes on behalf of Eastern Europe in the competition during recent years.

It is interesting to note that the criticism or downright opposition against the enlargement of Eurovision Song Contest, by and large, follows the pattern recognizable from the debate about EU enlargements. Here, too, the large EU states are spearheading the formation of resistance against European expansion. While these states has been able to safeguard their prerogatives within the EU through the voting system which reflects the size of their population, their self-proclaimed role as the overseers of the competition has been guaranteed as the rules stipulate that Spain, Germany, France and the UK are directly qualified to the final together with the previous year’s winner.

This may sound harsh. To be true, although “the big four” in general and the UK in particular are the main proponents of a division of Eurovision Song Contest into one Western and one Eastern European camp, their claims has, time and again, been backed up by those few Western European states which still, by and large, takes the competition seriously; namely Sweden and Belgium. It is, of course, also fairly easy to read too much into the politicization of the event.

However, the parallels between the opposition against an eastward EU-enlargement and the supposed Eastern European domination in Eurovision Song Contest nevertheless show some substantial similarities. Terry Wogan, UKs legendary host, renown for his sarcasm and wittiness, who commented the competition for British broadcasting for 38 years, bitterly asserted prior to Russia’s win in 2008 that: “If we (the UK) don’t do well this time, a new musical iron curtain will fall down past the Danube”.Although Terry Wogan and his followers have presented various explanations for the existence of a conspiracy-like Eastern domination of the competition and reasons to why the alleged Eastern European usurpation of it has to be effectively thwarted, these does mainly fall behind three distinct categories which, taken as a whole, is reminiscent of the critic that has been, and still is, targeted against the EU-enlargement:
The first argument against the enlargement of the competition is of course that of money. Eurovision Song Contest is today largely financed by “the big four”: Germany, Spain, France and the UK whose generosity has been awarded with a permanent place in the final. Why, then, should economically undeveloped countries in the margin of Europe be allowed to participate when these states, if they would win, hardly have the resources to organize the contest? Why should British and French taxpayers finance a grandiose PR event for a remote country of which they have little or no interest in? However, if it is to any consolations to the poor taxpayers, the greatest share of their money is not earmarked for the organizer itself, but goes to pay of engineers, choreographs and camera men involved in making the competition an eye-catching TV-event. Since the majority of them are from the Nordic states, at least the money stays within Western European pockets.

Then we have the cultural immaturity of the new participants. Some commentators seems to believe that decades of seclusion, when the Eastern European states were firmly looked behind the Iron Curtain, has ensued in a cultural degeneration, and that they therefore lack the capacity to see the beauty and virtue of Western styled music. After all, if one are to judge on the basis of the voting patterns, Eastern Europeans seems fairly indifferent towards the legacy of ABBA, Celine Dion, Domenico Modugno (Volare) and other revered apostles of (Western) European music. Consequently, their common inability to follow in the footprints of the masters should not be considered as nothing short of blasphemy.

Finally, what has been anathematized by most offended Western Europeans is the alleged bloc-voting apparent in the Central and Eastern Europe region, which, the saying goes, has made it virtually impossible for Western European states to obtain the appreciation they so well deserve. Furthermore, the strong cultural and political bonds between post-communist countries has ensued in that they almost certainly vote for each other, and the cultural powerhouses of the region such as Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in particular, while leaving Western European participants with some mere scrap points.

Sure, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey can usually be found among the top-ten in the final result, and the Slavic post-communist states definitely has some kind of cultural love connection judging from the previous years voting patterns, while Cyprus has awarded Greece the highest point possible since 1996. However, is this really that different from the traditional reflection of national affiliations between Western European states? The bonds between, for example, Ireland and the UK or Sweden and Norway have been proven to be more or less equally strong and perennial throughout the history of the competition.

Indeed, in 2008, Alan Howard, an expert on Human Geography from the University of Reading asserted, after having analyzed tactics and voting patterns from previous years competitions, that: “In general it seems that culture rather than politics is most important. Countries in Eastern Europe may well share a cultural affinity but in recent years the contest winner has garnered support from both East and West.”

When Norway won the competition last year most critics were silenced. After all, Norway is firmly located in Western European soil unlike Finland which, when managing to the bring the festival to Helsinki for the first time in Eurovision history in 2006, was characterized as being a Eastern European state with a Western façade. However, this was not enough for the antagonists of enlargement whom, in this years competition, reintroduced jury voting. The reason for this, they explained, was to crack down on bloc-voting. Nevertheless, one can also interpret the change of rules as a strategy employed to circumvent the impact of direct voting, and especially those votes emanating from Central and Eastern European states. At any case, the final result was that Germany became the first of “the big four” to score a victory since 1997.

This has so far been an exclusive Western European debate and voices from the other side of the “musical Iron Curtian” have been fairly absent. Those who have scolded the alleged omnipotence of Eastern Europe in the competition even found a mascot in the 2008 Irish Eurovision entry Dustin the Turkey, a puppet doll, which deliberately tried to make a mockery of the development. Yet Eastern Europe remained silent. However, this year Lithuania, the only Baltic State that so far has failed to score a victory in the competition, participated with a song that, though highly ironic, managed to touch upon the issue. In their own sarcastic way the Lithuanian entry, InCulto, sang that:  “No Sir we’re not equal no, though we are both from the EU. We build your homes and wash your dishes, keep your hands all soft and clean. But one of these days you’ll realize Eastern Europe is in your genes”. The Lithuanian performance pretty much sums it all up: irony, politics, camp dancing and silvery underwear all in one eye-catching mixture.

Fredrik Rydström is a distinguished academic from Sweden who graduated Vilnius University in Spring 2010. He has lived for almost two years in Lithuania where he ound true love: the kibinas. Fredrik has held several lectures about and specialized in Baltic-Nordic relations.