United Nations of kitsch

The Eurovision Song Contest  has come to represent the ne plus ultra in pop fromage. Casual observers often dismiss this annual competition as a showcase for performers who demonstrate more of an allegiance to camp spectacle and sentimental balladry than anything resembling current trends or good taste. But that doesn’t stop over 100 million people worldwide from watching the show every year.

Peel back a few layers of gold lamé, and Eurovision reveals itself to be a microcosm of tension and inequity.

The winner of the 2009 Eurovision contest will be determined this Saturday, when the 25 finalists will sing their spandex-clad hearts out in Moscow’s Olympic Indoor Arena. On the surface, Eurovision can seem like the live-action equivalent of Disneyworld’s  It’s A Small World  ride – a dizzying, Technicolour mess of broad caricatures, token regionalism (a jaunty accordion here, some dirndls there) and pasted-on smiles that suggest nations living together in note-perfect harmony.

Yet peel back a few layers of gold lamé, and you’ll discover a microcosm of tension and inequity. For one thing, the definition of "Euro" is fairly broad. The member states of Eurovision are actually based on something called the European Broadcasting Union, not the 27-state geopolitical grouping, which is why Israel has participated since 1973, and this year’s host country, Russia, since 1994. As for the show’s dream of unity, Eurovision has been rocked by controversies like contestants with neo-Nazi pasts, debates over Israeli-Arab relations, shocking displays of homophobia, frustration over Eastern bloc voting and allegations of jury corruption – and that’s this year alone.

According to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, who composed the U.K.’s 2009 song entry (It’s My Time), the mayor of Moscow was opposed to hosting Eurovision this year; Webber claims, "he doesn’t like foreigners at all." (No less a figure than Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, apparently a fan of schmaltz, stepped in to smooth things over.)

Webber will accompany singer Jade Ewen  on piano when she performs It’s My Time (co-written with Diane Warren) in Moscow this weekend. Ewen has the good fortune of being from one of the "Big Four" countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain), each of which receives an automatic pass to the finals every year as a sort of honorarium for being the biggest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). An additional spot in the finals is granted every year to the host country.

Eurovision was founded in 1956, the same year Elvis Presley shocked Americans with his pelvic gyrations and Nikita Khrushchev heightened Cold War tensions by warning Westerners, "We will bury you." For a continent badly scarred by the Second World War, Eurovision represented a rosy vision of a collective, good-natured competition, where cultural exchange would facilitate communication — this was just over a decade after the formation of UNESCO (the United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization).

For all that talk of peace, love and understanding, the show’s pragmatic purpose was to build broadcast networks between countries. The contest was the brainchild of an EBU employee named Marcel Bezençon, who saw it as a way to challenge the limits of live TV. In order to participate in the contest, a country had to be a member of the EBU. In those pre-satellite signal days, individual public broadcasters in each region had to sign on as part of the network, which transmitted the program through microwave radio relays.

In that inaugural year, participating countries sent their musical envoys to neutral Switzerland – the HQ of the recently established European Broadcasting Union – where the performers vied for votes to secure the top spot. Each one of the 14 original countries was allowed to vote for any song but its own; two points were awarded every time a tune received a first-place vote.

Since then, the so-called rules and regulations have become something of a farce. For example, the show re-introduced national juries  of "music industry experts" this year to offset alleged strategic voting among Eastern European countries. For the final, members of the jury will determine 50 per cent of each country's votes; the other half will come from popular votes collected via telephone and texting submissions.

At various times in Eurovision’s 53-year run, the rules about whether participants must sing in their native language have been relaxed and tightened and relaxed again. These days, any tongue goes: since the winning song is partly determined by "popular vote," many acts opt for English, the language of cultural imperialism. Over half of the 25 songs in this year’s final will be sung entirely in English; an additional six include English excerpts.

Eurovision also places no restrictions on the nationality of the competitors onstage — which explains how Céline Dion wound up singing (and winning) for Switzerland in 1988. This year, Russia is represented by a Ukrainian girl, Anastasia Prykhodko, who was disqualified in Ukraine for singing a previously released tune, but got a second chance by offering another song, the maudlin Mamo (Mama), to the Russians.

More than a couple of this year’s selections have attracted attention. Israel’s submission is a duet between a Jewish Israeli and an Arab Christian titled There Must Be Another Way. Georgia was banned from competition because their entry, We Don’t Wanna Put In, was viewed as a dig at Russian PM Vladimir Putin. But such politicized offerings are actually the exception at Eurovision. The songs that make it through to the finals typically have vaguely aspirational lyrics (themes like love, hope, mothers, dreams coming true) and uplifting melodies that wouldn’t be out of place in an American Idol finale.  

Other notable competitors this year include Malta’s Chiara, a three-time Eurovision competitor who looks like a genetically engineered cross between Rita MacNeil and Enya; Niels Brinck, a chiselled heartthrob from Denmark whose song,Believe Again, could be a revamped version of Cher’s Believe; and Sasha Son (Love), a fedora-happy piano man who comes off like the long-lost, Lithuanian brother of Alicia Keys. Then there are the salacious, Shakira-worthy hip-shakers: Romania’s Elena Gheorge (The Balkan Girls) and Turkey’s Hadise (Dum Tek Tek).

This year’s lineup doesn’t include anything as genuinely unique as Finnish heavy metal band Lordi, who, looking like hellions from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, destroyed all Eurovision competitors in 2006 with their song Hard Rock Hallelujah. The rather dire quality of most Eurovision selections has caused a bit of a backlash in some circles. ABBA’s Benny Andersson, whose song Waterloo was voted the best song in Eurovision history in 2006, recently claimed  that he stopped watching the show altogether because "it means nothing for music."

The BBC’s long-time Eurovision commentator Terry Wogan opted out of his presenting duties this year, citing frustration over voting corruption in the contest. But even Wogan admits he’ll still be watching the "triumph of appalling taste" on his telly this Saturday. And therein lies Eurovision’s strange appeal.

The 2009 Eurovision Song Contest final airs May 16.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.