Douze pointe: Thoughts on the Eurovision Song Contest

No, I did not watch the Eurovision. Haven't sat through one since I moved to the USA. But that does not mean I don't fondly remember tuning in year after year to listen to terrible songs and watch the even worse costumes. Nor does it mean that just because I'm out here, in the wilderness, that I am a cultural ignoramus. I still follow the significant developments in continental culture - and what is more cultured than the Eurovision??

Indeed, the Eurovision puts a fairly accurate mirror to the cultural trends that shake the continent - and this year it was the double whammy of sexual and political freedom. In one corner we have the winner, an Austrian drag queen by the name of Conchita Wurst (what can be wittier than a be-sausaged lady?). In corner two are the Russian Tolmachevy identical twins.   So a woman+ against two women. The + won.
Here are the two performances:

What I found interesting (thank you JV!) are the differences in approach to both femininity and 'normalcy'. The drag queen, a role traditionally defined as extreme performance of femininity, chose to punctuate her look with a beard, a symbol of masculinity. Unlike the bearded ladies of circuses and freak shows of yore, however, her freakdom is studied, carefully calibrated, calculated, and packaged marketing conceit.  She knows that more than an implied angry inch is necessary to shock an audience habituated by now in transvestites (Dana International, Israel's claim to dame) and drag queens - you need something visible. A beard.

Her dress, on the other hand, in all its bedazzled glory fully conforms to drag queen rules, as does her rail thin figure. She is all femme - until, right where it matters, around her pouty lips, she isn't.

The politics of her performance, while supposedly a transgressive call for personal, sexual freedom took as many risks as needed to play completely safe and despite the bombastic free-speech hype they said, sadly, very little new or true about conditions of un-freedom.

The Russian twins took the opposite approach, fully in line, again, with the political climate in their home country. There was no display of scintillating flesh, no porno glimmers celebrating twin fantasies. Their dresses were virginally white and puritanically demure. The only sexual hint was in the crystal rods they held. The only freaky aspect was their twin-ness, the fact that they began their performance joined at the hair as well as the hip, and their mirror-image movements. Their performance, like Conchita's, was political - but its politics were different. There was not even the smallest attempt to shock and instead every attempt to mollify the powers that be. Were they supposed to represent the twin nations of Russia and Ukraine that should be unified under one wise father-leader? Quite possibly.

And so Europe becomes once again a continent divided. By Eurovision?

Oh, and the songs were of course complete crap.