3
Europe, with Feeling: The
Eurovision Song Contest
as Entertainment
Mari Pajala
No other programme in the history of international TV in Europe can
match the nearly 60-year-long unbroken tradition of the Eurovision
Song Contest (ESC). Many factors have contributed to the contest’s
longevity: the members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have
been committed to producing a flagship programme for their Eurovision
network; the organizers have developed the contest to keep up with
changes in media culture; and individual broadcasting companies have
been eager to participate, in some cases partly because of the symbolic
value that the contest has gained as a sign of European belonging.
Another important reason for the ESC’s survival is that it has worked
as media entertainment, inspiring a wealth of feelings: viewers have
been moved by singers’ powerful performances and uplifted by energetic
choreographies, empathized with winners’ emotions, laughed at
failed performances, enjoyed an ironic distance from the whole spectacle,
celebrated their country’s victory and been outraged by ‘unfair’
results and other controversies. Often these feelings draw strength from
national loyalties, but they also construct different kinds of relations to
Europe.
This chapter discusses the affective qualities of the contemporary
ESC, asking what kind of relations to Europe emerge in the affective
intensities generated by the contest. My starting point comes from Sara
Ahmed’s work on the cultural politics of emotion, which has drawn
attention to the role that affect plays in the process where individual and
collective bodies take shape. She argues that the boundaries of ‘us’ as a
collective are shaped in contact with others. Naming others as a cause of
‘our’ emotion forms a boundary between us and them, shaping both as
77
K. Fricker et al. (eds.), Performing the ‘New’ Europe
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
78 Feeling European
separate categories (Ahmed, 2004: 1, 10). Ahmed’s theorizing provides
a basis for considering how boundaries outside and within Europe are
formed in affective relations with the ESC. In order to study these relations,
I focus on the ESC as entertainment. As film scholar Richard Dyer
(1992: 2–3) points out, studies on entertainment have often been concerned
with showing that entertainment is actually about something
else, such as important historical or social issues. Likewise, ESC research
has concentrated on questions of national representation, European
belonging and sexual politics, which the contest arguably foregrounds
(e.g. Raykoff and Tobin, 2007; Tuhkanen and Vänskä, 2007; Georgiou
and Sandvoss, 2008). However, if we focus solely on these issues, we
may not learn much about how entertainment works and how it affects
us (Dyer, 1992: 3). Following recent work on affects and media, my focus
here is on significance more than signification (Skeggs and Wood, 2012:
41; see also e.g. Kavka, 2008; Paasonen, 2011). I hope to contribute to
existing research on the ESC’s role in the cultural politics of Europe but
move the emphasis from representations and discourses to feelings.
Research on the ESC has studied the contest as an occasion for
the strategic representation of the nation (Bolin, 2006; Baker, 2008;
Mitrovi´c, 2010; Jordan, 2011) and analysed understandings concerning
nationality in the audience and media reception of the contest (Pajala,
2006; Christensen and Christensen, 2008; Coleman, 2008; Georgiou,
2008). This has made an important contribution to the study of the
cultural politics of contemporary Europe. However, some studies discuss
the ESC as if it were a strand of state cultural diplomacy with the result
that the contest’s specificity as popular media entertainment is in danger
of getting lost. For example, Marijana Mitrovi´c’s article about the construction
of Serbian national identity in the ESC analyses the contest as
an event where nation states put themselves on display (2010: 172–173).
Yet the ESC is not organized by states but by broadcasting companies.
While in rare instances the state may have a say in the choice of the
Eurovision entry, in most countries, broadcasters enjoy considerable
autonomy from the state. Viewers often interpret Eurovision performances
in relation to national stereotypes (see Georgiou, 2008), but
nationality does not exhaust their meanings or attractions.
My discussion of the affective intensities of the ESC draws on Dyer’s
ideas about feelings and entertainment (1992: 17–34). He stresses the
sensuous and non-representational qualities of feelings as well as their
culturally constructed nature. Feelings may then be difficult to capture
in words, but they are not outside culture. Building on Gilles Deleuze
and Baruch Spinoza, Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood emphasize the
Mari Pajala 79
power of affect to move us and make us do things, defining affect as
‘the feelings that produce an effect’ (2012: 5–6). Like them, I am interested
in ‘the resonances and intensities produced between the TV and
the viewer that make us do things and do nothing, creating connections
as well as refusals’ (Skeggs and Wood, 2012: 135). In this chapter
I focus on three kinds of situation where feelings engendered by the ESC
result in action: voting, complaining, and singing along. These actions
relate to different aspects of the ESC as a TV programme. Voting is a
response to a performance, a moment of live TV. Complaining follows
the dramatic structure of the ESC, when the results are experienced as
unsatisfying. And, finally, singing along is enabled by the repetition of
Eurovision songs as recordings that carry with them the memory of their
performance on TV. The chapter is based on textual analysis rather than
audience research, but the starting point for my discussion comes from
observing reactions to the ESC: voting results, public complaints, and
Eurovision parties. I will begin by considering how a TV programme
like the ESC may contribute to producing a sense of Europeanness.
Feeling European through transnational TV?
The possibility that transnational TV programmes such as the ESC might
contribute to a sense of European belonging has been a point of some
debate. Writing about the history of the EBU, Jérôme Bourdon argues
that international broadcasts ‘have repeatedly failed to promote, let
alone create, a sense of belonging to a common Europe’ (2007: 263). He
recounts the history of international broadcasts, news exchange, and
attempts to launch European TV channels, suggesting that they have
represented a conscious attempt to promote European identity but have
failed to create a truly European audience.1
Bourdon considers the ESC
to be an example of this failure, as the programme is domesticated by
local commentators for national TV audiences and does not attract viewers
equally all over Europe (2007: 266). While it is true that the ESC
has been a different show for viewers in different countries, his argument
is made problematic by its underlying assumption of a uniformly
shared European culture. Bourdon (2007: 263) seems to posit the nation
state as a model for European identity, asserting that pro-Europeans
have failed ‘where their 19th-century “nationalist” predecessors succeeded’.
As a result, he describes Europe as an entity with clear (yet
undefined) boundaries between insiders and outsiders.2
He considers
it worrying that enthusiasm for the ESC comes ‘mostly from outside
Europe’, arguing that outsider participants, such as Israel and Russia,
80 Feeling European
share ‘an aspiration to be part of “the West” ’ rather than ‘a common
European culture’ (Bourdon, 2007: 266). In Bourdon’s argument, feeling
European is tied to a shared European culture and, accordingly, remains
an impossibility.
An assumption of a shared European culture is a problematic starting
point for an analysis of the ESC. As Gerard Delanty points out in his
historical study of the idea of Europe, the region is a kind of constantly
redefined ‘discursive strategy’ (1995: 8). Europe has been constructed
through appeals to shared culture and community but also through
exclusions and the negative evaluation of difference. While the constitutive
outsides of Europe have changed over time, the question of
where to draw its eastern boundaries has remained central (Delanty:
1995). In a later study (2005), Delanty and Chris Rumford attempt to
offer an alternative vision of Europe that would not be based on an
assumption of shared identity or strictly defined boundaries but instead
on Europeanization as a process of becoming that is built on encounters
rather than shared culture. In Delanty and Rumford’s formulation,
the essence of Europeanization lies in cosmopolitanism as ‘the transformation
of cultural and political subjectivities in the context of the
encounter of the local or national with the global’ (2005: 22). This view
of Europeanization is normative, perhaps even utopian. Delanty and
Rumford’s ideas are valuable in separating the idea of Europe from a
demand for an already existing shared culture. However, their idealization
of cosmopolitanism does not adequately describe contemporary
reality in Europe. (For a critical discussion of cosmopolitanism see
Katrin Sieg’s contribution [Chapter 11].) Rather than seeing Europe or
Europeanization as a value in itself, I am here interested in the different
ways in which the contemporary ESC imagines Europe.
Following Jostein Gripsrud’s discussion of transnational TV, the
ESC could be seen as an occasion for feeling momentarily European.
Gripsrud criticizes Bourdon for setting unrealistic expectations for a
sense of European belonging by predicting that European identity would
become as strong as national identities in a few decades. Rather, people
may begin to see themselves as European in addition to their national
and other identities (Gripsrud, 2007: 489–490; see also Passerini, 2007:
97–103). He argues that transnational TV – such as Eurovision news
exchange and programme activities, international cable and satellite
channels, and the habit of watching TV from neighbouring countries –
has contributed significantly towards establishing a European public
sphere, ‘albeit multilingual and seriously limited in many ways’ (2007:
491). Gripsrud suggests that ‘a sense of belonging somewhere’ is created
Mari Pajala 81
by habit, ‘the experience of the usual and the well-known over time’.
He concludes that TV’s main contribution to the development of a
European public sphere is ‘as a source of such feelings of belonging to
this continent and not others’ (Gripsrud, 2007: 491). While I am not
specifically working with the concept of the public sphere here, I find
his emphasis on habit useful for describing the ESC’s potential for creating
a sense of Europeanness. However, the contest often emphasizes
boundaries and conflicts in Europe (see e.g. Pajala, 2006: 134–139) and
as such does not create a sense of uncomplicated belonging.
The ESC has been organized annually since 1956 and, as such, while
it has not been televized in every participating country for this length
of time, it is an unusually long-lived European media event. It has been
associated with the concept of Europe through its name, Eurovision;
and through explicit references, such as the habitual greeting, ‘Good
evening, Europe’. As conceptualized in the ESC, Europe does not have
clear external boundaries, and the contest’s image of Europe has grown
wider over the years, greatly surpassing the boundaries of the EU, for
example. In the contemporary ESC, Europe covers the same area as the
Council of Europe (with the addition of Israel), although it may extend
further in the future. The regular, annual pattern of the ESC has enabled
it to become a habitual part of the European media landscape in the
spring. The experience of the ESC varies as a result of differences in
nationality, gender, sexuality, generation, histories of migration, musical
preferences, and many other factors. Yet watching or hearing about the
ESC can become a habit that creates a sense of belonging in Europe or
feelings associated with Europe. These feelings can be positive, hurtful,
and mixed.
Eurovision performance and utopian feeling
The ESC has traditionally been live TV entertainment for Saturday night,
now extended to a short serial format with semifinals during the week.
Throughout its history the contest has also been a media event that
spreads outside TV, attracting intensive press interest in many countries.
The contemporary ESC has a large online presence, which lengthens
the duration of the event, as official and unofficial Eurovision websites
report from the rehearsals weeks before the final. In the contemporary
media environment, live TV entertainment is geared towards the
production of moments that will be talked about, remembered, and
circulated elsewhere in the media (see Evans, 2011: 117–119). In the
ESC, these moments are typically standout performances or spectacular
82 Feeling European
victories, such as monster metal band Lordi (Finnish winners in 2006),
the Russian grandmothers Buranovskiye Babushki (second-place finishers
in 2012), and Dima Bilan’s performance with the figure skating
champion Yevgeni Plushchenko (the 2008 winner for Russia).
Dyer provides a framework for thinking about the role of feeling in
entertainment in his classic article ‘Entertainment and Utopia’ (originally
published in 1977). He identifies utopianism as a central feature
of entertainment. Entertainment offers a more attractive alternative to
everyday life, not by representing an ideal world but by suggesting ‘what
utopia would feel like’ (Dyer, 1992: 18). Utopianism is produced by
both representational and non-representational signs, such as colour,
rhythm, movement, melody, and camerawork. Dyer stresses that nonrepresentational
signs are in no way less structured or historically specific
than representational signs. Rather, non-representational signs are
part of an affective code that is specific to a particular mode of cultural
production. He identifies five categories of utopianism: energy (power,
activity, potential), abundance (enjoyment of material plenty), intensity
(authentic and unambiguous emotions), transparency (a quality
of relationships between fictional characters, and between performers
and audience), and community (a sense of togetherness and belonging).
These are not universal categories but responses that commercial entertainment
offers to real problems in capitalist societies, such as unequal
distribution of resources (vs. abundance), exhausting work (vs. energy),
and social fragmentation (vs. community) (Dyer, 1002: 18–26). Dyer’s
discussion of entertainment is based on the analysis of Hollywood musicals
where musical numbers are central in the production of utopian
feeling. As such, it provides a good model for studying the ESC as
entertainment.
The contemporary ESC is very much geared towards producing a
feeling of community and abundance. It has always addressed an international
audience sharing a live TV event, but the formal audiences of
the past did not produce a particularly affective image of community
on TV. Since the late 1990s the focus on the fan audience on site has
provided a much more tangible vision of community (Singleton et al.,
2007: 15, 19; see also the discussion of the ‘Share the moment’ slogan
in Marilena Zaroulia’s contribution [Chapter 1]). The feeling of abundance
comes from the extravagant staging and TV technology. At the
2000 ESC in Stockholm it became possible to customize the setting
for each performance, and the staging has become ever more elaborate
since then. Multiple screens, a wealth of camera angles, and huge
audiences provide a feeling of plenty. The cost of arranging the ESC has
Mari Pajala 83
Figure 3.1 The lavish and electronically sophisticated stage presentation of the
2009 ESC in Moscow
Source: Alain Douit.
soared at the same time as reports of an economic crisis have dominated
European news (Figure 3.1). The 2009 contest in Moscow broke previous
records, reportedly costing 30 million (Jordan, 2012). Norwegian
TV scaled down the production of the following year’s contest, but the
2011 show in Düsseldorf was a more extravagant affair again, held in a
huge football stadium. At a time when countries such as Ireland, Greece,
and Portugal were undergoing severe economic problems, the lavishly
staged 2011 contest underlined German economic power. Azerbaijan
seems to have broken all previous records with reported government
funding of 48 million and a newly built arena for 2012 (ibid.). During
an economic downturn, the increasingly lavish ESC productions
associate Europe with limitless material abundance, offering a capitalist
solution to capitalism’s problems. At the same time, the spectacular productions
emphasize economic inequalities between European countries,
as all participating broadcasters might not be able to take on arranging
the ESC in its present form.3
Successful Eurovision performances able to attract votes from all over
the Eurovision area are often characterized by a utopian sensibility
(Figure 3.2). As an example, we can look at Alexander Rybak’s ‘Fairytale’,
the winner with the most points in Eurovision history. Of Dyer’s categories
of utopian sensibility, Rybak’s performance embodied energy
and intensity in particular. While ‘Fairytale’ as a title already suggests a
84 Feeling European
Figure 3.2 2009 ESC winner Alexander Rybak performing ‘Fairytale’
Source: Indrek Galetin.
certain utopianism, the utopian feeling of the performance came mainly
from non-representational elements. His performance produced a powerful
sense of energy. The rhythm of the song is clear and strong, and
the broken hairs of his bow (ripped before the performance, for the
effect) drew attention to Rybak’s emphatic style of violin playing. Three
male dancers contributed to the feeling of energy with their physically
demanding and masculine performance. Intensity, on the other
hand, came from Rybak’s style of singing and playing. ‘Fairytale’ draws
stylistically on folk music, which already carries with it connotations of
authenticity. In the chorus in particular, Rybak’s voice had a very open
quality. His violin playing similarly produced an open sound, owing to
the use of open strings, the lack of vibrato, and vigorous use of the bow.
The performance style emphasized the meaning of the lyrics: he put his
hand to his chest as he sang about liking a girl, touched his head as he
sang about hurting, and threw his arms open as he declared: ‘I’m in love
with a fairytale.’ As a result, the performance and the lyrics supported
each other, with no sense of ambiguity or contradiction. These qualities
produced a sense of unambiguous emotion expressed ‘without holding
back’, which characterizes Dyer’s category of intensity (1992: 21).
Runaway victories such as ‘Fairytale’ can produce a utopian feeling
of European community when seemingly everybody agrees to celebrate
Mari Pajala 85
a common favourite. Unusually, ‘Fairytale’ received points from every
participating country, ending up with 387 points, almost 100 more than
the previous record. If, as Dyer argues, entertainment responds to real
problems in society, the ESC could be characterized as a response to
the many conflicts and divisions in Europe, such as symbolic divisions
between East and West, conflicts between some neighbouring countries,
and economic tensions within the EU. While these conflicts are played
out in the ESC, there are also utopian moments when they fade to the
background. Runaway victories, when viewers in every country appear
to be in agreement, produce a utopian image of momentary European
unity.
Dealing with disappointment
Even the most overwhelming victory will never please everybody. Consequently,
ESC results always leave many people disappointed. For the
avid follower, the Eurovision season offers the potential for a whole
string of disappointments: wrong songs are selected for the ESC, the
performance of your favourite song fails to live up to its potential, your
country does not advance to the final, and your favourite entry ends
up at the bottom of the scoreboard whilst some horrid performance
wins the whole thing. The voting is an important part of the ESC entertainment,
providing suspense, surprises, and an emotional celebration
of the winner. The results also offer material for media controversies.
Complaints by artists and viewers, for example, in the popular press are
a conventional part of Eurovision entertainment in many countries (see
Pajala, 2007a: 76–80).
Disappointment occurs when experiences do not live up to prior
expectations. Accordingly, if you do not expect anything, you cannot
be disappointed. A feeling of disappointment requires that you have
affectively invested in an object – in the case of the ESC, a participating
song, performer or country. The strength of disappointment as an
affective state can be seen in the reactions it engenders, as disappointment
is often expressed through conspiracy theories. In the moment of
disappointment, it seems to be hard to believe that other people have
different tastes than you do; hence the speculation about voting scams
that frequently occur not only around the ESC but also programme formats
such as Pop Idol and Big Brother. These kinds of programme invite
audience engagement by asking viewers to perform judgements of taste
or morality. As such they also encourage outrage at perceived failures of
judgement.
86 Feeling European
The most famous conspiracy theories in the contemporary ESC concern
bloc voting and exchanging votes. Following the successes of new
participating countries from the former East, accusations of neighbourly
voting have been rampant in countries of the former West (see e.g.
Björnberg, 2007: 17–18; Coleman, 2008: 135–136; Vidmar-Horvat, 2010:
35–36).4
The 2007 contest in Helsinki was particularly controversial.
Apart from Turkey, the ten countries that qualified from the semifinal
were all from the former East.5
In the final, the top ten was made up of
Greece, Turkey, and eight countries from the former East. Many would
argue that the highest-scoring entries deserved their place with strong
songs and professional performances. However, the absence of former
West European countries at the top of the scoreboard led to intense
complaints.
The reactions to Eurovision results are particularly strong on site,
where people have invested a great deal in the ESC as travelling fans or
members of delegations, materially as well as affectually. These reactions
also filter through to the wider audience through TV, press reports and
internet fan sites. Booing was audible in the 2007 semifinal as the results
were announced. Keith Mills of All Kinds of Everything, a well-known
Irish fan blog that follows Eurovision rehearsals on site, described a sense
of shock after the semifinal:
Once I heard the dreadful result I decided to avoid the Winners’
Press Conference. I’d seen enough Eastern European back slapping for
one day. There’s really only one story in town and that’s the Eastern
European walkover. The majority of them may have deserved to qualify
and I think Latvia and Hungary may well have made it on Western
rather than Eastern votes, but this result stinks.
No one can tell me that the best ten songs or performances made it.
Neighbourly voting ... has always been a problem in the contest, but
it has now gone beyond a joke.
(Mills, 2007)
Here we can see how emotions construct boundaries between self and
other (Ahmed, 2004), as the writer reads others as a cause of his own
disappointment. Even though Mills acknowledges that the majority
of deserving songs qualified, he describes the results as an ‘Eastern
European walkover’, imagining a coherent Eastern European bloc that is
able to dominate Western Europe. Controversies over voting construct
an image of Europe as divided into separate blocs with little sympathy
for each other.
Mari Pajala 87
These kinds of reaction tell us less about actual bloc voting practices
than about the workings of affect in watching televized competitions.
In their study about audiences’ affective reactions to reality TV, Skeggs
and Wood note a movement between immediate affective reactions
and later judgements based on cognitive rationalization (2012: 154,
209–210). Complaints about neighbourly voting are typically immediate
reactions that follow a strong affect. In the moment of affect, a
stereotypical notion of Eastern European bloc voting provides a quick
explanation for the disappointing results. Following Spinoza’s observation
about how affect becomes attached to ideas, Skeggs and Wood point
out that affect is ‘often speedily connected to passing moral judgement’
(2012: 150). Similarly, in the ESC the success of ‘undeserving’ entries
quickly surfaces suspicions of corruption, but these accusations are not
supported by rational consideration. Analysis of ESC voting patterns has
shown that voting blocs where countries favour each other have existed
long before the arrival of participants from the former East (Yair and
Maman, 1996). Consequently, the arrival of new participants has not
made the ESC less fair than it was, but it has undermined the hegemonic
position of Western Europe (see Estonian Human Development Report,
2000: 66–69). Succeeding in the ESC is not as easy for countries in the
former West as it once was, which can lead to frustrated expectations
and intense disappointment.
Following complaints caused by the 2007 contest, the ESC reference
group reintroduced ‘expert’ juries to the contest in 2009 so that half of
the result is now made up of audience votes, the other half of jury votes.
Among the reasons given for this move was that juries would reduce the
role of neighbourly and diaspora voting, making the contest fairer. The
juries were also supposed to make the contest more entertaining by guaranteeing
less predictable results (Bakker, 2009). These justifications are
questionable, as voting blocs existed in the ESC even before the introduction
of televoting, when juries alone decided the results (Yair and
Maiman, 1996). In her discussion of the politics of happiness, Ahmed
draws attention to the unequal access to happiness:
If certain people come first, we might say those who are already in
place (such as parents, hosts, or citizens), then their happiness comes
first. For those who are positioned as coming after, happiness means
following somebody else’s goods.
(2010: 578)
In a similar way, the organization of the ESC prioritizes the happiness
of the ‘old’ participants in bringing back juries in response to
88 Feeling European
complaints from the former West. Culturally, this reflects a hierarchical
view of Europe, where Western Europe is prioritized over Eastern
Europe (Vidmar-Horvat, 2010: 35–36). The importance given to the concerns
of the former West also follows on from economic inequalities in
Europe. The large and wealthy broadcasters in Western Europe must be
kept happy, as their continuing participation in the contest is important
for the EBU.
Complaints about bloc voting are a paranoid way of dealing with
disappointment. They posit a grand theory where relations between
countries explain Eurovision results, regardless of the actual quality
of performances each year (Sedgwick, 1997: 23–24). Following Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick’s differentiation between paranoid and reparative
ways of knowing, it is also possible to find reparative ways of dealing
with Eurovision disappointments, especially in fan culture. A reparative
position does not look for grand theories or evidence of what it already
knows but seeks to turn threatening objects into sources of sustenance
and comfort (Sedgwick, 1997). As a reparative reaction to disappointment,
Finnish fans offered comforting hugs to people whose favourites
had failed to make it to the final at the post-semifinal ‘recovery afternoon’
during the 2007 ESC. Fan polls and alternative song contests, such
as the OGAE Second Chance Contest,6
offer a chance for fan favourites
to come out on top even if they did not succeed in the actual ESC. These
kinds of fan practices show that even disappointment can be turned into
something productive.
Singing along
The fan experience of the ESC differs from the experience of casual
viewers, as the relationship with the contest is cultivated over a long
period of time. A popular opinion in Eurovision fan culture is that fan
favourites often do not do well in the ESC (see Jordan, 2011; Spence,
2011). This discrepancy between fan favourites and Eurovision successes
is partly explained by the longer relationship that fans have with
Eurovision entries. Whereas casual ESC viewers hear the entries for the
first time while watching the show, fans are already familiar with them
and have firm favourites among the entries. A song may keep its position
as a fan favourite even if the performance in the ESC does not
live up to expectations. Each contest produces some songs that remain
in circulation in fan contexts after the contest is over. The following
discussion of fandom is based on observations of Finnish Eurovision
culture.
Mari Pajala 89
The 2011 Finnish Eurovision final was held in my home town, Turku.
After the show I went with friends to an after-party where the DJ played
a wide selection of Eurovision tunes, ranging from well-known classics
to more obscure songs from national finals, especially the Swedish
Melodifestivalen. My favourite moment of the evening came when the
DJ played the 2010 Serbian entry ‘Ovo je Balkan’, with the full dancefloor
singing along with ‘Beograd, Beograd, ja bezobrazan’ in a language
that few of them understood. It reminded me of the last time the
Finnish Eurovision final had been in Turku a few years earlier. For me
the most memorable moment of the after-party then was when people
sang together to ‘Neka mi ne svane’, the Croatian ballad from 1998.
It seemed like everybody knew the lyrics although, again, few probably
knew the language. Certainly it felt like everybody understood the
emotion in the song.
In moments like these the ESC provides a basis for a sense of community
that is based not on identity categories but on familiarity with a set
of songs, built through repetition over the years. In the fan reception of
Eurovision songs, language recedes in importance – it is not necessary to
understand the lyrics in order to sing along with feeling. The singalong
moments seem to be filled with shared emotion, although, as Ahmed
reminds us, you cannot actually know what other people feel. She suggests
that shared feelings are not actually shared; we do not know if
other people are really feeling the same emotion that we are or what
their relation to the emotion is. Emotions do not circulate among people;
objects of emotion do (Ahmed, 2004: 10–11). Popular Eurovision
songs are objects of emotion that circulate in fan culture, providing a
basis for a momentary sense of community. On the dancefloor, recognizing
these songs, knowing the lyrics, and perhaps borrowing some
moves from the original choreography can become the basis for a sense
of shared feeling.
Various musical genres can be popular in Eurovision fan culture,
but uplifting dance tracks and emotional ballads tend to be favoured,
whereas middle-of-the-road, radio-friendly pop songs and ironic comedy
acts are generally not as popular (see Vranis, 2011; OGAE, 2012).
In Dyer’s terms, then, Eurovision fan culture favours performances that
offer a sense of energy, intensity, and transparency. A sense of authentic
feeling does not require a stripped-down, untheatrical performance as in
some versions of rock music culture. Rather, the sense of intensity comes
from performing a carefully choreographed show with conviction. ‘Neka
mi ne svane’ is an example of a classic Eurovision performance, so
defined. The song is a ballad that starts quietly and builds to a powerful
90 Feeling European
crescendo. The singer, Danijela, a small blond woman dressed in a black
cape-like dress, began the performance in an introspective manner,
holding her hands close to her chest and at times closing her eyes. She
stood in the same place for the duration of the song, moving only her
hands and arms in graceful movements. At the culmination of the song,
Danijela’s cape fell off to reveal a figure-hugging white dress. As she
belted out the last choruses, her gaze was frank and her gestures had
lost their initial tentative quality. The performance formed a narrative
of overcoming emotional hardships that was understandable beyond
language barriers. The emotional drama of the performance stuck to
the song and can be relived on hearing it again (on the ‘stickiness’ of
emotions, see Ahmed, 2004).
Fan parties show that the ESC has created a European popular culture
that some people experience as very significant. This culture is not
homogenous but has local variations. For example, in the spring of 2010
I attended Eurovision events in the Netherlands and in Norway where
the set of popular songs was somewhat different from that in Finland,
featuring more Western European material. Factors such as geographical
and cultural proximity, language, and access to foreign TV channels contribute
to defining which Eurovision songs become popular in a local
fan culture. For example, the Swedish Melodifestivalen is familiar to
Finnish Eurovision fans because Swedish is taught at school, Swedish TV
has been available on the Finnish west coast for decades, and nowadays
Melodifestivalen is even shown on a Finnish TV channel. Geographical
and cultural proximity do not, of course, completely determine the
popularity of Eurovision songs. On the discussion forum of Viisukuppila,
the main Finnish Eurovision fan site, the entries from some neighbouring
countries (Sweden and Estonia in particular) attract more than
average attention. The amount of discussion generated by other countries’
entries varies annually depending on the song and artist.7
For fan
audiences, songs from all Eurovision countries are potentially equally
interesting, which makes the ESC an exceptional event.
The ESC’s internationalism has always been one of its attractions for
fan audiences. The programme has been a chance to see European countries
come together and to hear music from different regions performed
in a variety of languages (Moser, 1999: 59–60; Singleton et al., 2007: 18).
This aspect was particularly rare before the arrival of cable and satellite
TV, and the internet. Brian Singleton, Karen Fricker, and Elena Moreo
characterize the ESC of this era as a ‘spectacle of otherness’ (2007: 15).
The expanded Europe of the contemporary ESC means that the variety
of languages and musical styles on show has grown, even if many
Mari Pajala 91
choose to sing in English. At the same time the internet has made it easier
than before for fans to follow other countries’ Eurovision finals and
to familiarize themselves with the careers of the performers. Instead of a
‘spectacle of otherness’, the ESC may become a context where the geographically
distant can become intimately familiar. Whereas the old ESC
was dominated by Western Europe (see Yair and Maman, 1996), this is
no longer the case. Many new participating countries, such as Ukraine,
Romania, Serbia, and Azerbaijan, have put a great deal of effort into
their entries, which makes them more interesting from a fan culture perspective
than lacklustre, older participants, such as the Netherlands or
Belgium. Thus I would suggest that local Eurovision fan cultures produce
changing maps of Europe where different areas emerge as significant:
neighbouring countries; some large and formerly dominant Western
countries such as the UK; and countries, often from the former East,
that seem to take Eurovision seriously and produce interesting entries.
In the context of fan cultures, Europe in the ESC does not have one
hegemonic region or centre but, rather, many.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed three types of situation where the ESC
may engender strong feelings in the audience. These are, of course,
not the only possible affective relations to the ESC but they relate to
central features of ESC entertainment – winning, losing, and reliving
favourite performances. The case studies show that the ESC can engender
ambivalent feelings in relation to the expanded vision of Europe
that it represents. As a media spectacle, the contemporary ESC presents
Europe in terms of material abundance, giving precedence to economically
powerful countries. Although the contest provides a context for
playing out tensions within Europe, at times it also creates utopian
moments of European community. On the other hand, disappointed
reactions to ESC results in the former West typically make use of hierarchical
divisions between East and West, creating an image of Europe that
is separated into two rigidly separated areas. Local Eurovision fan cultures
often pay special attention to entries from neighbouring countries,
but it is also possible to become intimately familiar with entries and
performers across geographical and linguistic distance. In fan cultures,
the map of Europe evolves as new areas produce strong Eurovision participants.
In conclusion, then, the contemporary ESC both reproduces
historical divisions and tensions in Europe and provides opportunities
for new connections and affinities.
92 Feeling European
In this chapter I have foregrounded a reparative instead of a paranoid
reading of the ESC, although elements of both are present. In this
way I have attempted to make room for a discussion of the ESC that is
not wholly structured by the category of nationality. For example, my
own previous work on the ESC analysed the construction of nationality
in the ESC and its Finnish media reception, outlining the repetition of
certain articulations of nationality over the years (Pajala, 2006, 2007a,
2007b, 2011). While this sort of analysis describes an important aspect
of the ESC, I have also felt that it misses much of what is significant
about the contest. Eurovision performances or fan experiences of the
ESC are only very partially explained by an analysis focussing on nationality
as the main structuring category. As Dyer notes, contradictions in
entertainment forms are also a source of ideological ambivalence. For
example, in film musicals, musical numbers often contradict the narrative
(Dyer, 1992: 25), and the ESC is equally ambiguous. The structure of
the contest is based on the category of nationality: songs are presented
as national representatives, and national juries and televoters give points
to countries (‘Norway, 12 points’), not songs. However, this rigid structure
is contradicted at the level of performance. For instance, while
Rybak’s violin playing draws on Norwegian folk music, the appeal of the
performance of ‘Fairytale’ is not limited to a sense of ‘Norwegianness’.
A reparative reading of the ESC risks appearing naïve. We can probably
find reasons to criticize any Eurovision performance as stereotypical,
exoticizing, or sexist if we try. However, the risk of naïvety is at times
worth taking as it can draw attention to qualities that a more paranoid
critical reading overlooks. In order to grasp the full significance of the
ESC, research needs to pay attention both to institutions, structures, and
repetition, and to microlevel exceptions and experiences.
Notes
1. As Jostein Gripsrud (2007: 489) points out, Bourdon seems to exaggerate the
hopes that EBU founders and EU politicians had for TV in this regard.
2. Bourdon does not explicitly define the concept of Europe, making no clear
distinction between Europe, the EU and the EBU. This conceptual slippage is
problematic because the EU is not synonymous with Europe and the EBU’s
membership has always been wider than that of the EU, or its predecessor, the
European Communities.
3. The EBU promised in 2012 to address this problem, suggesting changes that
would enable all broadcasters to stage the contest, such as smaller venues
and less rehearsal time (see the Introduction and the panel discussion with
ESC broadcasters [Chapter 4]). Swedish TV network SVT’s decision to host the
2013 ESC at Malmö Arena (capacity 15,000) instead of the newly constructed
Mari Pajala 93
Friends Arena (maximum capacity 65,000, although for the ESC it would have
been around half this number) near Stockholm may be a step in this direction.
Executive producer Martin Österdahl commented in the newspaper Dagens
Nyheter that he could not understand how Russian and German organizers
had been able to inflate their respective budgets on the ESC. Instead of competing
with huge arenas and LED walls, SVT declared an interest in spending
resources on developing the ESC in other ways. Österdahl argued that the
recent emphasis on scale had made the ESC cold, whereas SVT wanted to
make the contest ‘more engaging’ (see Lindström, 2012).
4. As ‘Western Europe’ and ‘Eastern Europe’ are contentious terms, I talk about
the ‘former West’ and ‘former East’ to reference the historical legacy of the era
when Europe was divided between communist and non-communist countries.
5. These were Bulgaria, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova,
Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey. In fact, Serbia, Slovenia, and Macedonia had
been participating in the ESC since the early 1960s as part of Yugoslavia,
which had distanced itself from the Eastern bloc in the late 1940s. Such differences
among the new Eurovision countries are not taken into account in
the simplifying division between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Europe.
6. OGAE, the Organisation Générale des Amateurs de l’Eurovision, is the leading
Eurovision fan club.
7. Thus in 2012, popular topics included the entries from Albania (an arty ballad
that earned the country its best ESC result so far) and Russia (represented
by the grandmothers from Buranovo who received extensive media attention
before the contest).