The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: The Grand Final (Part 2).

http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-2015-eurovision-song-contest-grand.html

In my post that can be read via the link above I took an overview of the positions regarding the civil war in Ukraine that dominated this year's Eurovision Song Contest. However there were also two other large and important issues present year.

The first of these is the 100th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. Rising from the ashes of World War Two the primary purpose of the Eurovision project - of which the song contest is just the tip of the iceberg - is to promote peace by furthering tolerance and cultural understanding. As such you would expect it to take a strong stance against genocide. Rather then crowning Sweden as winners.

Armenia: This year they were represented by "Genealogy" who are almost a full choir made up of six members of the Armenian diaspora from as far-a-field as the US, Australia and some unspecified African nation. The reason why the Armenian diaspora is so large and widely spread out is because the Armenian people were forced to flee the genocide. The video featured sepia effect family photographs from around 1915 and the song "Face the Shadow" featured lyrics about ticking clocks and a chorus about the importance about not denying things. As a result I don't think you'll win any prizes for working out that Armenia's entry was all about getting Turkey to acknowledge the genocide.

Eurovision actually has a rule that entries can't be overtly political. For example in 2009 Georgia was actually expelled from the competition because their proposed entry "We Don't Wanna Put In" was viewed as a direct personal attack against Russian President Putin rather then a coded criticism of Russia's position generally. So although they were required to change the title from "Don't Deny" Armenia were very close to breaking that rule. As such, given the importance of the year, I think they should count everyone who didn't raise an objection as showing their support to Armenia equivalent to giving them at least one point each.

The true test of everyones feelings on the issue though would have been how Turkey's entry was received. Unfortunately Turkey got scared and ran away.

The fact that on the centenary of the Armenian genocide the contest was being held in Austria rather then Armenia was slightly awkward - not least for the hosts. By invoking Kim Kardashian Austria's 2014 winning entry was really an attempt to get everyone to vote for the 2015 competition to be held in Armenia to mark the anniversary. Unfortunately in the process Austria ended up producing possibly one of the greatest Eurovision entries in competition history.

Although I was keen to see this year's competition held in Armenia not even I could come up with a valid reason to explain why Conchita Wurst didn't deserve to win. Even the song "Rise Like a Phoenix" was intended as a constructive criticism of the way Eurovision's gay fans screwed up the opportunity of using the Sochi Winter Olympics as a way to further gay-rights in Russia.

Austria: Although "The Makemakes" take their name from a dwarf planet similar to Pluto Austria's entry this year "I Am Yours" was just a bland and inoffensive pop song. It was inspired by the band "Kings of Leon" and made frequent references to the fires of sexuality from which the Phoenix was supposed to rise. What I found really interesting though is that Austria's press team who are supposed to support their entry through the week of competition spent most of their time pointing out how bad the song was. The message they were trying to convey being that not only didn't they want to win this year they didn't even want to win last year.

Azerbaijan: While I'm not going to pick sides since 1994 Armenian troops have been present in Nagorno-Karabakh which is a region that Azerbaijan considers part of its sovereign territory. As with India and Pakistan's dispute over the Kashmir region the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is what is termed a "frozen conflict" in the sense that nothing happens for years and years until suddenly there's a big outbreak of fighting and then almost as suddenly the cold stand-off returns. Unless Kiev fully implements the Minsk agreement this is really the best Ukraine can hope for in its civil war.

Obviously this put Azerbaijan in quite a difficult position. On the one hand they wanted to make it quite clear that they are opposed to genocide and think that Turkey should acknowledge their responsibilities. However at the same time it was also important for them to make clear that they are not suddenly Armenia's best friends because there are still issues to be resolved. I think their entry "Hour of the Wolf" by "Elnur Huseynov" more then succeeded in accommodating those to conflicting aims.

Also I should point out that Azerbaijan is located between the mayhem of ISIL in Turkey to the south and Georgia's desire to provoke a war with Russia to the north. That's the sort of location that would give me sleepless nights too.

The other tense issue at this year's contest was Albania and their seemingly insatiable appetite. You may remember that back in 1999 US President Bill Clinton was embroiled in a sex scandal. So as a distraction he sent NATO forces to help Albania steal Serbia's southern Kosovo province. It turns out this wasn't enough for the Albanians who now also want to expand into what they term "Greater Albania" including the Serbian provinces that surround Kosovo and the Kumanovo province of Macedonia.

In Macedonia in particular this has created a very volatile situation with someone leaking extremely damaging information about the government which has provoked mass protests similar to those seen in 1991 when the US provoked the Yugoslav civil war. Things have been even worse in Kumanovo where armed Muslim groups that claim allegiance to "Greater Albania" have been flexing their muscles. On May 9th (9/5/15) the Macedonian police conducted a raid against one such Muslim group which led to two days of gun battles in which 8 police officers and 14 terrorists were killed.

Albania: Their entry "I'm Alive" by Elhadia Dani seemed intended to fan the flames of the "Greater Albania" movement by expressing a yearning that things will come to them. However they attempted to disguise it as a discussion about people trafficking - particularly sex trafficking - which due to the Mediterranean migrant crisis should have been a bigger issue at this year's contest. Whenever sex trafficking is discussed the pop-culture reference that everybody makes is the film "Taken" which portrays Albanian sex-traffickers.

The video showed Albanian women doing normal jobs such as firefighter, nurse, police officer, chef etc in an effort to make the valid point that not all Albanians are either thieves, prostitutes or sex traffickers. This appears to have prompted the Mayor of the US city of Baltimore "Stephanie Rawlings-Blake" to spend the day of the first semi-final (19/5/15) visiting a Fire House to meet with Baltimore firefighters before signing a bill to protect those who speak up against sex trafficking.

Macedonia: I actually thought their entry "Autumn Leaves" by "Daniel Kajmakoski" was very clever because it was clearly a break-up song. However it could equally be interpreted as the protesters desire to break up with their unpopular government or the Kumanovo Muslims desire to break away from the country. I think what kept the song out of the final was that given the volatility of the situation there was a concern that one too many performances could provoke someone into doing something stupid and there was already a high level of concern over Ukraine.

Serbia: With Macedonia being allowed to take their rising sun inspired flag and melt into the background it fell to Serbia to provide a counter-balance to Albania in the final. They were represented by Bojana Starmenov who I think would be described in Internet pornography circles as a "Big Boned Woman (BBW)." On the face of it her song "Beauty Never Lies" was about how despite her not conforming to the classical stereotype of beauty she still burns with all the sexual passions and desire for love of any other woman. Along with the Dutch examination of female sexuality as women age this the type of entirely valid social discussion point on which Eurovision thrives.

However it also provides a trigger for some cheeky jokes along the lines of Starmenov being a woman with very big appetites or being the sort of woman who's not happy unless she's got something in her mouth *suggestive wink* From there it's not difficult to draw a comparison with Albania's seeming desire to gobble up all its neighbours. Also long before the Kosovo invasion and "Taken" on the diplomatic level Albanians have had a reputation for being liars and thieves.


Finally I should point out that I've decided that with me apparently emerging as a theme I will have to treat the UK and associated entries separately from the stand-out acts such as Romania that simply impressed me. As such this should be considered part 2 of 4 and I now hope to be finished by Tuesday (26/5/15) evening.

16:55 on 25/5/15 (UK date).