No song is likely to cause more consternation in the contest than one that sends it up and questions its worth simultaneously in a context that is played for laughs. At first it seemed unlikely that such a song would come from Ireland, the self-styled 'home of Eurovision', and yet it is entirely consistent. "Where oh where did it all go wrong?" Dustin the Turkey muses in the opening bars of this year's Irish entry, and well might he ask: for the past ten years all the country has given us is cod anthems, bland ballads, talent show fodder and misfiring folk music. Perhaps more than any other participating nation it is Ireland that has failed to come to grips with the evolution of the contest in the modern era.All that is about to change with Irelande Douze Pointe: a song that sticks two fingers up at anyone who takes Eurovision seriously and maintains that it is a contest of musical quality in which everyone has an equal chance of winning. It is a swift about-turn for a country which has been guilty of both for so long, but if they were ever going to hold the contest up to a bit of tongue-in-cheek ridicule it was always going to be now. The writers behind the entry (and the majority of those who voted in the Irish national final) clearly feel that the emperor has no clothes.
The risk a song like this runs - as could already be seen in the mixed reception it received from its home audience - is whether anyone will actually find it funny. A little like the Estonian entry, I was amused by this when I first heard it, but only briefly, and was ultimately underwhelmed. This is not to say that it is not funny: some of its lyrics are true LOL moments and aspects of the performance are ridiculous enough to raise a smile. Working in its favour is the fact that it is much more immediate than Leto Svet and also that its humour has a point to it i.e. mocking the contest (as opposed to just being silly). Whether or not this offends your sensibilities is immaterial; it is the kind of approach that will likely see those who do appreciate it picking up their phones and voting for it as much because of as despite the fact that it is a load of nonsense. It worked for Lithuania in 2006, and there's no reason it shouldn't work for Ireland in 2008.
I doubt anyone would defend the song on the grounds of musical superiority (although having said that, the composition is perfectly alright), but even if they did they would be missing the point. Despite the rule about no animals on stage, there is more than just a turkey present in this song: there is an elephant in the room, and Dustin is not afraid to stick it in the spotlight. Rather like the small child pointing out the truth in the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, there is something appealing about a handpuppet underscoring the problems inherent in the contest at present.
Then again, there are two ways of looking at everything, which is the whole point of The Emperor's New Clothes, and it is no less valid to suggest that Dustin reeling off a list of Eastern European countries is as much to gain their support as lay the blame at their feet. This brings us to the point of how well the song is likely to do in Serbia. Whether or not the song is a call for everyone behind the Iron Curtain to vote for it, I'm not sure they will; at least, not to the same extent as it is endorsed by Western Europe, who will probably have more sympathy for what it is saying. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Ireland appearing again on Saturday, although under the new semi-final system with split voting its chances of getting there may have been reduced. Given it's a song with an agenda though it's pretty much a win-win situation anyway: proving one point by failing to do well or proving another as an exception to the rule by doing well.
In this day and age, the Eurovision Song Contest is about three hours of entertainment, visual as much as musical. Does Irelande Douze Pointe provide entertainment? Undoubtedly. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but then people relate to humour just as differently as they relate to music, and on those terms the song has just as much of a place in the contest as the straightforward ballad and textbook schlager either side of it. If you don't like it my advice would be not to take it personally: Eurovision is teflon, and one song is hardly likely to have any lasting impact on it. Like the Emperor himself, it carries on regardless even when its bareness is exposed.
1 comment:
I know there's no point in getting all precious about gimmick entries cheapening the contest. That particular Pandora's Box was opened a long time ago and the forces unleashed show no signs of giving up the ghost anytime soon. But for me there's something rather mean-spirited about Ireland literally farting in the face of Eurovision this year. It strikes me as a particularly cheap and nasty embodiment of Old Eurovision's annual exercise in self-pity which amounts to expecting ever increasing returns for less and less effort expended. Still, the painful short-term memory of coming bottom of the pile last year is something the alleged Home of Eurovision probably has to get out of its system. And this may as well clear the tubes as anything else.
Yet there is something genuinely sad about sending a glove puppet to bawl out "give us yer points, ya bastards" over a bunch of bargain basement synths while trying to pass it off as satire. To me the only thing it's underscoring is Western Europe's churlish attitude to the expansion of the contest. It's telling that Dustin's smattering of genuinely funny lines are all local Irish/UK in-jokes, while the best they can do when it comes to the wider world is reel off a list of place names. The irony is that Ireland is one of the traditional Eurovision nations with the least cause for complaint, having managed to score two top ten-ish finishes in the last five years. But then we are talking about a nation whose supporters came out of the 2003 Contest in Riga chanting "You can't beat the Irish", blithely ignoring the undeniable fact that ten other countries just had...
Post a Comment