Eurovision and camp… May 24, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
Watching the Eurovision this evening – or at least the parts between Russia, the round up of the lucky lucky contestants who made it to the end, and the start of the voting it struck me just how pointless Ireland’s tilt against the windmills was when faced with the sheer brilliant madness of the show.
Russia, well kudos to them. It ain’t my cup of tea three men kneeling for most of the performance, lead singer – impassioned, violin player – impassioned, blond roller skater (roller skater?) – impassioned!
Bosnia and Herzegovina which I caught during the week. Genius like in their theatrical craziness.
Finland. Land of metal. Operatic, horrible horrible metal. Teeth-grinding for those of us who like the real thing. And yet… obviously hoping lightening would strike twice for them with rawk… lite.
Iceland. Techo-pop put through the camp filter. Difficult when techno-pop is already camper than a very camp thing indeed.
But here’s the thing. In that respect Ireland’s ‘knowing’ campness was always bound to crash against the rock of bonkersness that is the Eurovision. You can’t outcamp camp. It just doesn’t work. And switching briefly from Terry Wogan on BBC who as ever appears to forget he originated somewhat to the west of where he now works, who was on RTÉ but ‘Dustin’. Christmas time, methinks.
Fair dues to Serbia as well. I don’t know how they did the imagery on the screens directly behind the stage, projection of some sort I presume, but it looked remarkable for some of the acts.
And although I can’t stand much (all) of the music I came away sorry that I hadn’t seen the whole show this evening. That really can’t be good 
For more on the political aspects of voting, and the carping tone of Wogan, see here at Splintered Sunrise.
Sebastian Tellier tried the same thing really,to outcamp the un- outcamp-able*, but with a decent song – and still got nowhere……
*not a word
Yeah, I forgot about him. He’s usually reliable. Clearly went to his head.
Ice-skater. World figure skating champion, apparently.
Like an idiot, I actually thought our song might do quite well this year. Of course, not having any natural allies apart from Ireland(!), we did dreadfully badly (Cyprus, what happened? Malta, where were you?) We were outpolled mightily even by France and Finland – even by Spain FFS.
Welcome to the new Europe Phil! National ties, history, etc still loom larger than song writing… meanwhile what of the Turkish Manic Street Preacher lite alikes ?
SOS – Tellier did manage to get somewhere in the French media thanks to his singing in English – which caused a bit of a furore.
Apparently he bunged a token line in French in to try to placate them (with little enough success).
Didn’t see any of it at all as 1/ was getting sloshed thanks to Munster 2/ the bar I was in had the very uncamp (and extremely tedious) French Cup Final on instead….
Tellier is okay in general. Not sure whether you had the better time of it…
I dunno – will the Eurovision ever have an equivalent of Paris Saint Germain – a lite verion of an Oi! band ?? That absolutely f@**ing no-one votes for..
A cultural elitist writes: it’s a load of shit, and everybody knows it.
The Eurovision is shite alright, but Dustin’s joke still backfired. As seven time winners, sending a puppet turkey to sing about bias in the voting system came across as, well, sour grapes. At best, it was childish. Ireland’s version of “I didn’t want to play anyway.”
It seemed like Ireland was trying to tell itself that, these days, it is above the campness of the Eurovision, that it has outgrown the competition. Drinking Tesco wine on your overpriced decking does that to you, I suppose.
Well, darnit, I missed it.. as I bought tickets to see a one-off show of the work of the American photographer Nan Goldin put to music. And yet I missed such a cultural event as Eurovision ….utterly remiss of me.
And rumour has it that Terry Wogan has had enough of all the political voting shenanigans. Seemed like nul point for the UK entrance (bit too serious). Though Andy Abraham woz robbed of the X-Factor title in 2006.
But nowt can beat that kitch and camp 2007 UK entrance, Scooch.
I can’t really work out Wogan’s game harpymarx. Of course Eurovision is rubbish, it was everthus. But the idea that politics was the only determinant seems a bit much. The Russians were giving it loads… quite impressive in a weird sort of way. I think they actually deserved to win… not least for managing to keep singing during a ferociously energetic routine (although granted there was all the downtime while the singer crawled back and forth on his knees…).
Conor, got to agree with you re Dustin…
“Drinking Tesco wine on your overpriced decking does that to you, I suppose.” classic….
[...] More on this at Cedar Lounge. [...]
[...] distaste that the western European countries have for the new expanded Eurovision was summed up by the open mockery of the Irish entry. It is all somehow beneath us [...]
And I think that’s an important point about knowing campness. IIRC Russ Meyer used to say that if you were going to pull off camp you had to play it dead straight. And he would know…