063/ So what do we do about Eurovision?
At lunch with a Good Comrade, they mention how excited they are for the Eurovision Song Contest, and I’m taken aback. I’m proper surprised this friend isn’t just naturally boycotting it.
But my pal doesn’t have a centrist-mollifying bone in their body: they’re an activist who does real work, including hands-on at a grassroots level, for all sorts of causes. They speak out. Including unflinching support for Palestinian liberation. They’ve taught me a lot over the years.
So, I’m the arsehole in the café. I mention the political context in that conversation. I mean, I don’t have a pop or anything, but I need to acknowledge it, and acknowledge my surprise.
If you’re ideologically driven, you know that feeling: someone is chatting about something fun and nice and you’re overwhelmed by the Hokusai great urging to add the (crucial! true!) political dimension that adds a bad taste for everyone. Nowhere is that stronger than when injecting political reality into excited conversations that live inside the bubble of Eurovision’s fantasy universe.
We’ve had Kneecap shouting. Jonny Greenwood whining. We’ve had the Boiler Room boycott (and their — to be fair — impressive statement about it) and we’ve had half the best midsize festivals in the UK purchased by the scumbag investor KKR, via global events giant Superstruct. We’ve seen bands we really like, who last summer loudly pulled out of stuff on behalf of Gaza, now doing stages at festivals on that same shit-list. I won’t name any but I’ll list some of the festivals at the bottom of this piece. Now, in rolls the biggest party pooper of all...
Because there is just something about the fervency of cross-cultural, cross-generational excitement for Eurovision. It’s hard to pin down. This show has — both at once — a kind of innocent softness, and a wry, knowing cynicism, which together make it far more difficult to plop into the ‘toxic’ box.
Why though? Why is this very last century-ish, anachronistic, television pop song competition so damn difficult for people to set aside? Including many of us who are otherwise determinedly boycotting anything that we think enables or whitewashes mass murder?
How is this huge TV show so gluey, so addictive? And what should we do?
Woo. ‘Should’. Always an itchy word.
I will not make a case for boycott here, nor re-litigate Israel’s crimes against humanity. This won’t get gory, I promise. It goes without saying, I support BDS / PACBI wholeheartedly, however if you’re ‘on the fence’ or ‘neutral’ about what’s going on in Gaza and the West Bank, this is not a salvo to start an argument with you: you’re very welcome to simply not read the piece (and to unfriend / unfollow me if that helps). I shall assume my reader is open-eyed, knows what’s going on, perhaps a little bit of history, and generally opposes killing thousands of children.
However. People fucking adore Eurovision. They live for it.
Even if you’re not planning to watch, it’s hard to avoid, because in each country it is run by the national broadcaster, which equates to maximum publicity everywhere. The BBC goes all out. Buckets of warm-up content, promo across all channels and platforms, big stars, they’ll throw everything at it, to make the show a smash. That includes a steep news-desk editorial slant towards positivity-only, and a minimising or belittling of narratives that conflict with that normalcy. Despite taking place in Switzerland, it’s kind of like the Boat Race or Glastonbury. No dissent.
Eurovision is also a bit like Strictly, in that it has a mainstream, small-c conservative heart, yet it has become a deeply LGBTQ+ space. So critiquing it has this other nuance of discomfort, in risking minimising the needs of those communities at a rare major outlet where they are fully ‘embraced’ (at least performatively) by the popular mainstream.
These things kind of butt up against each-other.
Meanwhile, I think there’s a strong drive to watch Eurovision in hopes of something going wrong. For my part, I’d genuinely, sincerely, love the live show to get properly sabotaged, for someone there to find a brilliant, creative and un-silenceable way to make a powerful protest that collapsed the format altogether. Especially because I just watched Andor. But then, of course, if I’m not actually watching Eurovision because I’m boycotting it, and they manage to achieve something like that — someone literally brings the house down — I’ll miss it all. It’s very unlikely of course. The live event is extremely slick, with the show relentlessly rehearsed, compared to other major global entertainment products. Eurovision is more tightly stage managed, with less capacity for spontaneity or mishap — more risk averse — than any other big television extravaganza in the world.
Yet still, I think many people who watch Eurovision actually do so in the same spirit that I’d watch it, if I watched it. That is, even if they don’t really say so, they’re also hoping for drama and comedy unintended by organisers and performers. This is a baseline of high camp, like looking for the ‘real’ moments in wrestling. Phoney ‘art’ in phoney ‘competition’.
I think they’d welcome some huge mishap.
And if the whole shebang is filtered through a lens of distance and irony, as well as that odd uncanny valley of ‘the guilty pleasure’ (not quite ‘car crash TV’ but something akin to an affectionate version of it) then it’s harder to persuade oneself that it’s worth boycotting. Because watching it isn’t truly supporting it. Its very meta-ness becomes an excuse to stay engaged.
Okay, so I acknowledge the universality and multi-dimensional nature of the lure.
Huge hats off to those people and organisations who’ve disassociated themselves in recent years.
And people who I know, trust me: if you used to be a public Eurovision addict and you’ve given it up, or even, you continue to watch, but you’re being quieter about it, took your mentions offline, moved your viewing party to WhatsApp, so you’re not publicly signalling your continuing endorsement, I want to say you are seen: I know who you are, I’ve noticed, I salute you and thank you for it.
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What “should” I do?
Option one. Yeah, in the end, I’m just fucking boycotting, as per. Of course. In real life, I’ve not watched a second of it since Israel was admitted in the first place. Already, back then, long before this current catastrophe, that apartheid nation’s occupier crimes were too severe and numerous for me to go near. Also, it’s not in fucking Europe. The foghorn of white supremacy that happily incorporates Australia and Israel into an otherwise European competition is loud and honking.
I must admit, I currently use people’s social posts about Eurovision as a kind of challenge for myself, to assess my admiration for (and friendship with) them personally. Each year, a majority of folks trilling on about the ins and outs of the contest will get muted, or dropped from my feeds and FB and such. Kind of like J.K. Rowling fandom, but for genocide.
Option two. Okay, so there’s the back-up plan: watch it live on telly, bring your snacks, but shut the fuck up online about it. However, if you’re watching, and then second-screening, I can imagine it’ll get incredibly tempting to join in that conversation. It flows so freely! You’ve got so much to say!
Option three I guess. Yeah, watch and, yeah, chat shit online all night about it, but also post a decent wedge of content in those same online spaces about the tragedy of what’s going on in Gaza. Sort of compensation.
Option four. Ignore me and do what the hell you like.
Perhaps another good thing would be for friends who never gave a shit about Eurovision in the first place and aren’t remotely tempted to watch, to post loudly that they’re boycotting this year, so at least everyone around them might think about it for a second.
Awareness raising, without peril. The establishment hates boycotts because they work. They’re effective and impactful. They’re a very safe form of non-violent direct action. You can’t exactly get targeted or arrested for not participating in something, or for withdrawing your custom. Not yet, anyway.
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p.s. here’s a partial list of those music festivals I mentioned earlier, owned by KKR. Probably we “should” be boycotting all of these beauties.
Boardmasters
Cross The Tracks
Field Day
Kendal Calling
Lost Village
Sonar
Snowbombing
Tramlines
Truck Festival
Victorious
Y Not
There I go again: the arsehole in the café.
icymi —
• I’m doing a rare-ish DJ set of folk-ish material in support of the great vocal trio Young Uns at the Komedia Theatre, Brighton, on Wednesday 28th May.
• Ian Penman’s new book Erik Satie Three Piece Suite (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is totally brilliant.
• Beth Gibbons does a wonderful Tiny Desk. Spotted Jason Hazeley (off of Ben & Jason and Ladybird Books for Grownups / Charlie Brooker comedy writing fame) on the piano, then discovered he’s been Gibbons’ pianist for over a year.
• Kate Nash full-length conversation on Adam Buxton’s podcast.
• Laura Marling full show film (self-directed) at Albert Hall Manchester, she’s just chucked it up on her YouTube.
• Springsteen’s three prepared political statements during his Manchester show, first UK date on the ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’. Quotes Baldwin. Broad strokes, but pretty good stuff.