Opinion: Every May, when the Northern Hemisphere ticks off the Eurovision Song Contest from its calendar, the meaning of the word “shocking” takes a further devaluation. In more than 30 different languages.
This year, even the furious anti-Israel protests mounted in Sweden’s hosting city, Malmö, petered out to a huffy smoulder. Viewers were pounded with such a relentless onslaught of garishness as to cause outrage outage.
A typically depleting brain-teaser was the Finnish entry, which began with half-dressed men “hatching” from an egg-like structure. For unexplained reasons, they were “born” with clothes on their top halves but not their nether regions. This may have been a coded tribute to Winnie-the-Pooh or Donald Duck. Nothing can be ruled out in this increasingly gnomic yet histrionic event.
Britain’s Olly Alexander and his back-up squad performed while seemingly upside down in a grotesquely unhygienic ablutions block. This also remains unexplained. Despite the clever special effects, the poor chap, at a critical stage of voting, got the dreaded “null pointes”.
Switzerland’s Nemo won, despite a concerted effort to physically eject him from the stage by his own team, which whirled and rocked the circular platform beneath him so violently he was fortunate to avoid harm. He has a future in surfing or rodeo if pop doesn’t work out.
Unusually among the mostly menacing contestants, Nemo seemed cheerful – albeit in the cheeky way a bored kid would look cheerful after ransacking his aunty’s 70s clubbing wardrobe and upcycling it with his siblings’ play paints.
Anachronistic but feverishly popular, the contest has an unofficial graceless losers’ category, usually related to politics, which contest rules vainly proscribe.
The Netherlands’ Joost Klein will probably scoop this, having been disqualified during rehearsals for allegedly threatening a female member of the production crew.
But Ireland’s Bambie Thug – a young, non-binary performer who was beside themself to be outranked by Israel’s Eden Golan – may swipe the booby prize after a furious protest which included an exhortation to “fuck the EBU” – the European Broadcasting Union that hosted the event.
Thug’s beef was that Israeli broadcaster Kan warned its viewers the Irish performer’s number, which included spells, voodoo dolls and Satanic symbols, might be scary for children.
Thug declared the warning was an act of violence against themself. A stewards’ inquiry is pending – though, curiously, Irish comedian Graham Norton also warned in his BBC commentary that the performance might scare the littlies, but his “violence” has yet to trouble the stewards.
Nonetheless, Thug, with their pointy horns, razor talons and barbed body art, was rapturously cheered on in their tiny rural hometown of Macroom.
It was a sign of how far even elderly-skewing parts of Ireland have detached from the strictest edicts of the church that senior locals could tell Irish television what an honour it was to have someone from Macroom become world famous.
No one mentioned – as once would have been compulsory to avoid a clip round the lugs from one’s local priest – that it was a pity the artist was got up “loik the divil himsilf”.
And anyway, these days, it’s the divil themself.
Considering Eurovision’s curious 68-year evolution, it’s surely at a stage where only a reversion to the ethos of the event’s wholesome, earnest early decades could possibly shock viewers next year. The cosplay devil worshippers, pimps and other assorted faux gargoyles who qualify for today’s Eurovision can now only remain subversive by doing bouncy, jolly numbers like past winners Waterloo and Save All Your Kisses for Me.
Alternatively, were it Celine Dion/Ed Sheeran types roaring about witchcraft and species annihilation and getting their kit off, that would give the seniors of Macroom something to think about.
