Euro-fantastic

We did watch the Eurovision song contest last night. The Serbian lesbian pop ballad won. And I'm a winner, too. Who knew my semi-finals results post would get hundreds of hits off the search string "Serbian Lesbian Eurovision"

It was one of the better songs, definitely. And the staging was really brilliant. Somebody somewhere said "How can we turn a short, ugly obviously dyke singer to our advantage? I know, let's have lots of lipstick lesbian Amazonian types stiffly writhing in the background, implying that while she might not be a looker to you or me - at least she appeals to a certain type - in Serbia" Whoever came up with that is a pop genius. It really worked. It was compulsive viewing. It handily beat even the most favored entry - the Ukranian transvestite with the nonsense song and the mirrored outfit (that was fab, by the way).

The Texan came over to watch the Eurovision. In her five years here, she had never actually sat down to watch the Eurovision all the way through (I have to admit I don't always manage it). She was amazed by the cheesy, cheese-cheese of the songs and the strange Eastern-European stylings. Even though she still has family in the Czech Republic - growing up in America you can't really get your head inside those particular tastes and preferences.

There were some good examples of ethno-pop - and I do like me some ethno-pop (Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia and Ireland and Greece entrants all fall in this category more or less). You can hear all the songs here and check out videos here for every single entrant.

What's even more interesting than the performances are the voting patterns and system. It used to be that winners were chosen by a panel who, although internationally representative, were just as on the up-and-up as a Russian Olympic skating judge. But in recent years, the tv companies have figured out there's a lot of revenue in phone-in, so now each country runs its own phone-in sytem - and the votes are tabulated in a kind of particularly unbalanced electoral college system. That is - the UK can vote for any of the entrants but the British one. The votes are counted and the top 10 entrants are allocated points between 1 and 7 and then 8, 10 or 12 points for the favored contestants. All other entrants receive 0 points (or nil points en Francais) from the UK. Alright, it's fair enough that Britons can't vote for the UK entrant (I guess), but why should the smattering of votes of each of the itty-bitty countries count exactly the same as the millions of votes from the UK, France or Germany.

And then what's worse all the little countries vote in blocks. (See an analysis here) All the Scandinavian countries vote for each other. All the Baltic countries vote for each other. Now all the former Soviet Republics are in the contest and they vote for each other - as do the Balkan nations - united once again in the name of music - which has a bit of a distorting influence. The dire Russian entry - which was all about whoring (I'm not kidding - check out the lyrics ) appears to have won because every surrounding country feared having their gas supply cut off if they didn't vote for Russia. On the other hand, Turkey with the stupid "Shake it up" seems to have done quite well because Turkish emigrants in a number of Western European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria) voted for their home nation.

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Anyway, congratulations Serbia. Next year, Belgrade.