It’s just one week to go until this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
‘Eurovision Week’ begins on Monday and will officially kick-off with the first semi-final on Tuesday 14th May.
I am an unashamedly big fan of Eurovision. A huge fan. Although these days it mostly gets written off for its camp, comedy value, Eurovision has impacted a lot of change in Europe. While we Brits moan and groan that ‘pfft, we’ll never win’ (something more to do with the quality of our entrants than the illusion that Europe hates us), there are a lot of countries where Eurovision has affected real change in recent years.
Fair enough, Eurovision hasn’t brought about world peace or ended famine, but below are just a few ways it’s helped change Europe, and the world today.
Gay rights
This is an obvious one. Eurovision has become a gay cult phenomenom in recent years and hosting Eurovision is one of only a few sure-fire ways to shed light on a country’s gay rights record. Eurovision deftly avoids any confrontation on these issues by insisting it is an apolitical event, and thus does not comment, but questions were definitely raised when Azerbaijan took home the crown in 2011. Not much action took place, but a conversation was definitely started.
Gay rights: the dark side of Russian culture
More concrete, however, was Moscow Pride in 2009. This event was of huge significance for gay rights in Russia, as gay pride events in the largest country in the world have annually been banned and violently suppressed since 2006. The 2009 event was staged on the day the Eurovision final was held in Moscow. The police break-up of the parade was televised, and featured on the news across Europe, shedding light on Russian oppression. Though this may not sound like a success story, organisers previously said their aim was a ‘strategy of visibility’ and to cause ‘maximum embarrassment to the government’ if they broke up the pride rally.
Depressingly, Russian parliament announced in August it would be banning pride events in Moscow for the next 100 years. Idiots.
Travel
One classic feature of Eurovision is the showing of ‘postcards’. These are random little 30-second montages which appear before each performance and are designed to show off different parts of the hosting nation. The main benefit of hosting Eurovision is said to be exposure for tourism. This is probably most true of Eastern European nations that are firmly off the tourist map. One prime example would be Azerbaijan. However, one expat blog suggested that only 800 tickets were sold to foreigners out of an expected 40,000[1]. Somehow these figures don’t seem right to me, but who knows? Maybe Azerbaijan was just a bit too far-flung to reap the benefits of any potential Eurovision tourism influx?
Eurovision has definitely broadened the horizons of at least one country: Ukraine. Ukraine won Eurovision in 2004, and named Kiev the host of the 2005 competition. In order to gain as much from tourism as possible, the government announced they would be temporarily dropping visa requirements for British and other EU passport holders from May to September of that year. The plan was clearly a success, as visas requirements were never brought back in and EU passport holders can still travel to Ukraine visa-free to this day.
International relations
A classic staple of Eurovision is bloc-voting. Cyrpus’ 12 points will always go to Greece it seems, and you can count on Russia receiving the highest number of votes from Belarus. Yet this neighbourly voting proved poignant in 2007, when Serbia took home the crown.
2007 was the first year Serbia competed as an independent country. (Serbia previously competed as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1961-1991, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992 and Serbia and Montenegro 2004-2006). Serbia is the only country to date to win on its debut, yet of greater important is the fact that all former Yugoslav nations gave the country the maximum twelve points –a significant act considering the actions of the Yugoslav wars. This somewhat-surprising turn of events has been seen by some as signs of healing wounds in the Balkans.
Tense international relations have also been highlighted by the competition, including tensions between Russia and Georgia leading to latter withdrawing from the 2009 competition, and the relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan being cited as the reason Armenia didn’t participate in 2012.
Eurovision: bringing Europe together
Don’t get me wrong, Eurovision can definitely be taken too seriously, and no-one should think for a minute that international views and biases can be assumed from whether Malta give the United Kingdom any points (which they haven’t done in ages, mind you), but I think it’s important to enjoy Eurovision for the fun, friendly and – yes, OK – camp event that is, as well as respecting the changes the competition as an institution has helped bring about.