- The continuing violence in the geographic area that used to be known as the nation state of Ukraine. Following the imposition of a US-backed fascist junta at the start of 2014 this area is now properly referred to as; "The Shamali (northern) Province of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)."
- The continuing war against ISIL. This has now spread from its nucleus in Syria and Iraq to bring mass casualty terror attacks to the heart of the Eurovision area.
- The mass waves of refugees fleeing from ISIL that have swamped the Eurovision area.
For example San Marino's entry last year - "Chain of Lights" by Anita Simoncini and Michele Perniota - dealt with the issue of sexting and how that can lead to revenge porn and cyber bullying. It was the equivalent of San Marino going to the rest of the Eurovision nations; "Have you seen what they kids are doing these days?! Are they doing that in your country to?!"
Shamali Province, ISIL and the migration crisis are all acute crises. They require the full engagement of national governments to draw up and implement precise policies and strategies. The ISIL issue in particular requires some of those nations to go off and do often extreme violence.
As such I think it is fair to assume that the Song Contest was very much outside of its comfort zone this year. Sadly this seems to have led to it making an utterly horrific and intolerable mistake.
It is a longstanding joke within Eurovision that if you really hate a nation you vote for them to win. This results in them being subjected to a year of great pressure and expense as they are forced to stage the contest the next year. In opening to the second semi-final the hosts this year actually made the joke that the prize for winning the Song Contest is bankruptcy.
The big controversy this year has been the entry by Shamali Province - "1944" by Jamala. This breaks the core Song Contest rule that an entry cannot contain any overtly political message. As such is was not eligible for competition and remains ineligible for competition.
What appears to have happened is that the professional jurists who really should know better have assumed that Shamali Province's inability to adhere to that Song Contest rule is a satire on the junta's inability to adhere to any other international law or accepted norm of behaviour. The Minsk Protocol to guard against ethnic cleansing being a particular case in point.
This sort of self-mockery is actually extremely common in contest circles. For example Poland's entry contains a subtle but sharp condemnation of the rising fascism of its governing Law & Justice Party (Pis).
As such it seems clear that many of the jurists voted for Shamali Province in the hope that the pressure of organising next year's contest would help it to start adhering to the accepted norms of international behaviour. Given Shamali Province's fragile economic state some may even be hoping that the huge cost would cause bankruptcy collapsing the junta once and for all.
The problem is that fascists like those in the US-backed junta in Shamali Province have absolutely no sense of irony. After all if they did it would prevent them from being fascists because it would force them to spend their entire time rolling of the floor laughing at themselves.
Therefore Shamali Province's rule breaking very clearly wasn't a satire. It is just further evidence that the junta believe the rules simply do not apply to them. Eurovsion has just affirmed that belief.
What made this catastrophic failure even more shocking is that up until then this year's contest had actually been going rather well.
Despite the complexity and severity of the issues a clear "Lingua Franca" or "Bridging Language" emerged to allow them to be discussed in a creative and coded way. This is exactly what the no overt politics rule is supposed to encourage.
Animation: Although it uses the brand name "Eurovision" the Song Contest is actually run by something called the "European Broadcasting Union (EBU)."
This was established to allow designated national broadcasters to collaborate to further the science and technology of all aspects of media broadcasting. The fact that we are now able to beam an event be it a sporting one or a news one across continents in real time in part owes a debt to the EBU.
At the fringes of this year's contest - particularly in Russia's antics during the first semi-final rehearsal - there was lots of discussion about "Periscope" - the Twitter App that allows you to broadcast live to anywhere in the World from your smartphone. Compared to where we were at the time of the first Song Contest in 1956 this is simply witchcraft.
As the technology becomes cheaper and more advanced digital, computer animation is playing an ever larger role in TV broadcasting. Particularly as more and more people are watching TV on devices they also use to play video games.
For example at the start of the year Britain's BBC broadcast an adaptation of "War & Peace." This obviously featured vast battle scenes with tens of thousands of troops all lined up in formation. Although you had to look hard to see the join many of these battalions of troops were computer animated rather than made up of the actors that would have been used in the past.
Therefore almost all nations included complex computer animations in their entry which includes both a live performance and a preview video. After all one of the main purposes of the Song Contest is to allow people to share their new tricks with each other.
To give you an idea I expect that this year there were a lot of very technical discussions about the exact wavelength of the white light used in Latvia's semi-final performance versus the intensity of Ultraviolet light that causes those native to the Arctic circle to have quite dark skin.
At this year's contest though the issue of animation also served a couple of important political functions.
Last year's contest was won by Sweden's "Heroes" by Mans Zelmerlow. The heroes the song referred to were those junta forces fighting to ethnically cleanse what used to be known as Ukraine of its Russian ethnic minority. These were popularly referred to as; "The Cyborgs."
One of the early warning signs about the junta was the emergence of this "Cult of the Cyborg." Essentially it involved very young children of 4 or 5 being encouraged at school to sing songs and draw pictures of these - essentially terrorists - who were heroically battling to keep the ethnically pure nation of Ukraine free of those with dirty Russian blood.
I find children being taught to hate before they are taught to read extremely worrying. Particularly for the people that have to live in the sort of society.
Zelmerlow's performance featured computer animations being projected onto the background throughout. These were intended to resemble the children's Cyborg drawings. Rather than condemning them Zelmerlow seemed to interact with them holding hands with the stickmen and marching in military formation with them. This was intended to further venerate the Cult of the Cyborg.
As such this year animation being projected on the stage was a way to reference this. Particularly when the performer seemed to interact with the animation.
Iceland in particular seemed to use the theme to mock the US's assessment of a Russian threat to Europe by likening it to the plot of an animated Disney movie.
Walt Disney has long been plagued by accusations that he was a Nazi sympathiser. In order to prove his loyalty to the US during World War Two he was forced to make the short 1943 propaganda animation "Education for Death." This warned the American people that the Nazi regime was indoctrinating young children in school to become Cyborg-like killing machines for the racial purity of the Nazi Reich.
To this day Disney's main offices are referred to - by the people that work there - as either "Mousewitz" in a play on Mickey Mouse/The Auschwitz Death Camp or "Duckhau" in a play on Donald Duck/The Dauchau Death Camp.
Sweden's entry this year "If I Were Sorry" by Frans made a point of the fact that Sweden was not apologising for Zemerlow. After all they didn't want to have to pay to host the contest two years in a row. However it did list all the things Sweden would do if it were apologising. The video featured a man sitting alone in what resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland as inspired by the 2013 film "How I Live Now."
Within Eurovision how famous a person a nation sends to represent them serves as something of a guide of how seriously they are taking the Song Contest. The fact that the UK always sends someone absolutely no-one has heard of rather than its big name popstars shows a lot of contempt for proceedings. Even in a good year the UK pays the price for this.
The problem is that even with the Internet it is extremely difficult to keep track of every halfway famous person across the entire Eurovision area. As a result how many hit singles and albums of what else they've done in their careers becomes a sort of shorthand for how famous they are.
In non-English speaking nations when a big Hollywood movie is released it is often dubbed into the native language. Being asked to do the voiceover in a blockbuster movie obviously brings that artist to a large audience. Also is there is sometimes a tendency to ask someone who already has a very popular voice to do the voiceover as an extra draw for the movie.
As such this year what movies someone has done voiceovers for has emerged as a guide to how famous they are. For example Sergey Lazarev who represented Russia dubbed Zac Efron's part in "High School Musical." Therefore if you were asked to quickly explain how famous he is you would probably say; "He's like the Russian Zac Efron. Back when Zac Efron was famous."
Obviously the voiceover role is much more important in animated movies where the voice is the only human role onscreen.
In the hope that someone would explain this trend to them the US sent Justin Timberlake to perform the Song Contest's halftime show. In no small part this was because Timberlake is currently on a European tour to promote his new animated movie "Trolls." The irony being that in many Eurovision nations Timberlake simply will not appear in that movie at all.
As with every year it seems that I am going to have to do an entire separate section on Israel's entry. It is a sign of their continuing superiority that they completely dominated this animation trend.
In what serves as an interesting talking point on the topic of racial integration - particularly of Arab Muslims - there are two main languages spoken in Israel. Hebrew and Arabic. If a foreign movie is released in Israel it is common that it will be dubbed into Hebrew and then shown with Arabic subtitles.
When it comes to animated movies aimed at children this is extremely frustrating for Palestinian (technically; "Arab") parents. Obviously they can't take their young children to see those movies because they can't yet read Arabic or any other language.
In order to combat this recently a group of those Arab parents - along with some Jewish ones - formed to a club to pay to dub certain children's movies into Arabic. This project was hugely successful with their parents making their money back by charging other Arabic speaking parents to see the finished movies.
This obviously provides an example of Arab and Jewish integration and cooperation within Israeli society. It also allows Israel to make the point to the Jews in Hollywood that there is a market there. Perhaps they should do more to help fill it.
At around 13:00 on 15/5/16 (UK date) I'm only just getting warmed up.
Edited around 14:40 on 15/5/16 (UK date) to tidy up above and add;
The Black Music: In 2015 a German company produced a TV show called "Deutschland 83." Heavily inspired by the UK movie/TV franchise "This is England" is was then sold to and shown on the British Channel 4 network. It has since been pitched and sold to other Eurovision nations. It was also broadcast in the US.
Deutschland 83 makes extensive use of music and sort of visual metaphor to gently tease its viewers and any foreign broadcasters over any cultural differences that exist. Sex and nudity being a particular issue. As such it is very much in the spirit of Eurovision. So much so I think the production company may now try a get a possible second season funded by the EBU.
The central theme of the show is that a young man from Soviet East Berlin is sent to act as a spy in West Berlin which was under the control of the NATO allies. As such the divisions between western Europe and former Soviet Europe that come up so frequently at the Song Contest feature heavily in the show.
In the conversations between the young adult characters the question of "Do you like the black music" frequently comes up frequently.
This serves to make the point that this really was a different age. Coming just a year after Micheal Jackson's breakthrough 1982 "Thriller" album and a year before Prince's equally earth shattering 1984 "Purple Rain" album even in the US where they had Motown soul and in the UK where they had Ska and Reggae black music was still a sub-genre away from the mainstream.
In super white continental western Europe - before all the immigration - black music was not only seen as sub-genre but as a highly subversive and therefore cool exotic counter-culture.
The clunkiness of the term also raises questions of potential foreign buyers of the show. For example is it so racially insensitive that it would prevent them from broadcasting the program? Could they get away with editing it out of their broadcast? Would they need to put a warning at the start of the broadcast that it contains some viewers may find offensive. Or do they simply treat their audience like adults
The young man from East Germany not only isn't a fan of black music he seems utterly unaware that it exists. You almost get the impression that he's not even sure that black people exist. Along with the way that different German words are spelt this is used as a device to highlight the differences between East and West Berliners.
During the Cold War the Soviet-bloc nations fell behind what was known as "The Iron Curtain" which made it extremely difficult for people to migrate out of or migrate into countries in the bloc. The most obvious manifestation of this was in Berlin where there was literally a giant concrete wall cutting the city in half. As a result Soviet-bloc nations did not experience anything like the same levels of immigration from non-white countries.
Even though the Iron Curtain fell years ago despite the US' recent attempts to rebuild it much of Russia and eastern Europe still don't have the same experience of other races that western Europe does. After all if you're going to migrate from a desert country like Eritrea then Russian Siberia is unlikely to be your first choice.
As a result they and Russia in particular have a reputation for just having no idea how to act around black people.
A rather good example of this emerged at the start of the year when a Russian father filmed his four year old daughter Daniela having a tantrum. In it she keeps insisting that if her daddy doesn't give her what he wants she'll go and live in what she terms; "Inafrica" thinking that Africa is just a few minutes down the road from where she lives. Being really cute this quickly went viral picking up some 1.5million+ views on Youtube.
In response the diplomatic mission of Sierra Leone invited Daniela and her parents to a big celebration of - I think - their Independence Day they were throwing at the Embassy in Moscow. This was also recorded and put up on Youtube.
You can find both videos with English subtitles here; https://www.rt.com/viral/341488-daniela-africa-starve-children/
At the Embassy party it is very clear that this is the first time that Daniela or her parents have ever seen a black person in real life. As a gift the Embassy give Daniela a black toy doll. Throughout the video Daniela's parents keep referring to this as; "Her Choco Doll."
This is clearly very culturally insensitive. However I stop short of calling it racist because I can appreciate that unless you've got a black person around to see wincing every time you use the term you might be unable to realise that it's a problem.
Another good example is a Russian icecream company that recently launched a sort of Magnum style icecream bar called "Obamka" or "Little Obama" in order to mock US President Barack Obama. With the icecream coming in both milk chocolate and white chocolate rather than being any form of racial insult the joke is clearly that Little Obama simply melts whenever the heat is on.
However I think it's fair to assume that most people in western Europe or the US just wouldn't.
Despite not having really any black population this notion of Russia being an entirely white nation is itself a racist sterotype.
For example the Russians that live in the Caucus region have an almost Arabic appearence and culture. Those who live on the borders with Japan and Mongoliga and disctinctly Mongaloid in appearence. "Mongaloid" being the correct technical term for the Asian race. Those living in the Arctic north tend to have either very light or very dark white skin along with slanted eyes to guard against slowblindess.
It is these nothern Inuits that were the first people to colonise the American continent where they are wrongly described as "Native Americans." This point seems completely lost on Obama's Black Lives Matter (BLM). If you were being really clever like Norway and Switzerland you could even use this to discuss the indigenous rights issue and the failure of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
Generally though the issue of the black music was used to play around with the rivalry between the US and Russia with certain parties mocking certain other parties.
As such many of this year's entries made reference to black music often by citing artists like Aretha Franklin, Micheal Jackson, Stevie Wonder as influences. Barei who performed Spain's entry "Say Yay!" did so wearing I think exactly the same silverly short basketball inspired dress that Rihanna wore at the 2012 iHeart Music Awards.
Belgium's entry "What's the Pressure" by Laura Tesoro which I will be looking at in a lot more detail later was basically just every Bruno Mars song ever smashed together in one 3 minute song. The US seemed so interested in this that during his halftime show Justin Timberlake basically just sang Belgium's entry back to them. By the standards of the contest this was such a week effort that if he'd done it in competition he would have been guaranteed the dreaded "Nil Points" where nobody gives any points.
The purpose of the halftime show is really to clean everyone's ears so they forget about the songs they've just heard. The viewer is then shown all the songs again in order with each song being given equal prominance. This is done to ensure fairness because there is a tendency to only remember the last song you've heard. For example the competition has never, ever been won by a nation that was second in the running.
As such Justin Timberlake essentially just repeating the Belgian entry would provide grounds for formal protest under the rules. However I must say that Belgium's entry was so strong this year it seems unlikely to have made much of a difference. I suspect that viewers in the Republic of Ireland in particular knew exactly what they were aiming for.
Due to the security situation though as sign of solidarity there was clearly never suggestion that Belgium would win or even attempt to win this year.
16:30 on 15/5/16 (UK date).
No comments:
Post a Comment