Blame Kathryn, clearly. So, I went to read Mike Atkinson's articles on the Eurovision Song Contest for Slate on the advice of Kathryn, and ended up at his blog, and discovered Iceland's amazing entrant, Silvia Night. Now, for someone who loves camp-with-a-capital-C Camp as much as I do, well, hell -- "Congratulations" is a carnivalesque dream come true. No mere mp3 would do here, you have to watch the video! This, my friends, is about as close to perfection as trash pop gets. Seriously. (N.B. -- It's so meta, she's exhorting the voters to chose her by celebrating her victory in advance. Brilliant!) [ETA: Apparently, she didn't make it into the final, though and caused quite a stir with the media who didn't realize her histrionics were all part of the joke.]
posted by cindy hotpoint at 5:11:00 PM
2 Comments:
I guess as an ugly American, I'll never understand the politics of the event, but it does seem like people take it just a leeeetle too seriously! (;
The countries who take it most seriously are the smaller and/or emerging new Europe states, looking to build up patriotism and some national self esteem. I'm Irish and it used to mean a huge amount to us (and secretly still does), especially in the 80s and 90s when we were on a winning streak. We've won it the most often, seven times in all. It sounds silly but the whole country really cared about it because it was when we didn't have a whole lot else to be proud of, we weren't much good at anything else but writing slightly schmaltzy ballads :) But since our economy has taken off and we've gained more confidence as a country we're not as outwardly (outwardly!) bothered about it as we used to be.
Now the most fervent Eurovision enthusiasts are the former Eastern Bloc states because they're just building their sense of self.
Anyway, this year's contest was the best in years and I was gutted that Silvia didn't get through to the final but at least Lordi put on one hell of a show. You can always rely on the Scandinavians for a wry sense of humour.
It should be interesting to see if the format translates to America but I doubt you could be as tacky as us Eurotrash!
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