Doug PollardCamp, kitsch and politics, aka Eurovision
May 3rd 2009 04:44
There is a great Dr Who story waiting to be written, about an alien race who conduct their wars through music arriving on Earth to enter the Eurovision Song Contest, thereby conquering the planet. Indeed, anyone who saw Finnish group Lordi take it away with Hard Rock Hallelujah in 2006 might imagine they’d already tried it.
Dr Who’s aliens would fit right in. Wars among former soviet republics and ex-communist bloc countries already infect the contest, as sworn enemies in sequins and bad haircuts massacre music, which I suppose has to be marginally better than massacring each other on the ground, even if the latter does make for better television.
This year Georgia pulled out because host country Russia objects to the lyrics of the Georgian entry criticising the Russian invasion of their country.
Beyond the ‘Eastern bloc’, the British press are perpetually ‘scandalised’ at the way these countries all persist in voting for each others music, no matter how bad, thus consigning the rightful winner, the Brits, to somewhere down the bottom of the ladder year after year.
(This ignores the fact that, as usual, the UK has miscalculated as badly an Emirates pilot, entering a ponderous number by Andrew Lloyd Webber that scrapes along the runway with barely enough power to get airborne, only to circle aimlessly before turning right back round and landing again.)
When Britain doesn’t win again this year they could always appeal to their gallant ally Australia to come to the aid of the motherland again. I’m sure Kevin will be only too happy to oblige and send Peter Garret.
All this is as nothing to us, of course, who only watch this lumbering mash-up of camp and kitsch for the laughs - like watching wedding videos of your Dad in his bell bottoms, dancing. As the great sage Bart Simpson once put it, “I didn’t believe it was physically possible, but this both sucks AND blows.”
But this year what happens at Eurovision really matters. The contest coincides, more or less, with the International Day Against Homophobia. The organisers of Gay Russia are asking all Eurovision participants to wear gay pride insignia. They plan to stage a gay pride parade during the contest, even though official permission has as usual been refused by Moscow’s mayor.
He’s not pleased at the thought of gays from all over Europe taking time out from attending Eurovision to parade the streets of his city in front of the world’s TV cameras. Foreign gays and lesbians will be allowed to freely enter Russia like anyone else, said Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. 'Come and relax,' he said, 'There is no problem with that. But not on the streets and the squares.'
In May 2006, more than 120 people were arrested when they tried to hold the capital's first gay rights rally. Many more, including some members of the European Parliament, were beaten by right-wing thugs. We’re likely to see the same again this year. Now that really sucks.
[Doug will be interviewing the organiser of Gay Russia, Nikolai Alexeev, live from Moscow, Thursday May 14, 7-8pm on The Rainbow Report, Joy 94.9 Melbourne, streaming worldwide via www.joy.org.au]
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