Pictorial: The wonderfully weird world of Eurovision!

95% of the songs are awful beyond belief, and the votations are all politics, but it's something to appeal to a high percentage of european population. Here in spain the festival had better days, but in easter europe is a success.

And the curious thing, it's that a lot of straight seems to like it too. In my tennis forum there are a eurovision thread, and a lot of straights follow it with devotion

...Not a lot of people watch over here, it's pretty awful but sometimes it can be fun^^

The last winners were terrible...They killed me...well...almost!

Btw, have afterelton heard that one of the three representants from Holland ( funny song ;) was planning to boycott it if Russia didn't allow the Gay Pride? (it's forbidden in Moscow because of a homophobic mayor X_X) Did he do it?

 

I didn't watch it because France (even if we always have terrible scores) is already qualified! I think it was because we are the second most populated/wealthiest country in Europe but since Germany performed (Dita), our contestant must have too...Was she good? Anyone know why Italy doesn't participate?

 

Have to say that it's always funny, there are always some crazy performances, disguises... It's entertaining at least if not good for the ears (was my last sentence correct? I'm not so sure...should work on my english!) 

of a HOT MESS!

Every year I say I'll never watch it again but come tomorrow night I'll be clued to my TV once again.  The songs are awful, the performances are cheesy beyond belief and the voting is completely political but still there's something strangely compelling about it .  Despite coming last or thereabouts pretty much every year (the drawback of being an island and having few allies except Ireland and Malta) the UK continue to put money into the competion and so get automatic entry into the finals.  In an attempt to change the situation we even had Andrew Lloyd Webber write our song for us this year but I'm not sure its going to make much of a difference!

I always hear about Eurovision, but I never see it on TV here in the US.  Is it televised on BBC America, perhaps?

was the chessiest thing i saw in my life, and the guy makes some pics for a magazine that seems like cheap gay softcore porn.

But every year a small bunch of songs are good (my favourite was France in 2002), in fact some of the winners of this decade like Serbia, Greece or Turkey were quite good.

And the scores are totally political, and Spain isn¡t doing well lately

If there is something one can count on of Eurovision is that. At least this year I dont think any puppets made the final (rolling eyes) and no aliens will win.

But the whole thing is meant to be fun and it acomplishes just that. Like jose says, the contest is very skewed now, western countries are very blasé about it because is very old, they gave us ABBA after all, for eastern contries the contest is more novel and virtually control the results.

If anyone is going to watch online remember that is Moscow and not standard european time. Also some of the international feeds of european TV show the contest.

It should be noted that yes, that is famous burlesque singer Dita von Teese and that the country she'll be entering for (strictly for dancing) is Germany, which is being represented by out singer Oscar Lya (who will, unfortunately, be appearing on-stage grinding up to a bikini-clad woman).

 

You totally missed the twink in the Bulgarian entry who was wearing almost nothing. Belarus' singer had a waxed (and exposed) chest and Sakis' entry just screams "Camp!". Also, the Netherlands were represented by three human disco balls.

Every year since I was a little girl I watch this very special event. Even when I was in Australia I watched it on telly. I can't wait to sit on my sofa with a couple of beers, unhealthy food and enjoy this parade of crazy, funny, entertaining performances. Too bad my sis isn't here this year as we normally have an awesome time discussing and backbiting everything;) I hope that like all the years before one performance will capture my heart and make me dial for it. We'll see.

The US may have the Oscars as the gay Superbowl, but Eurovision is a UEFA [soccer] Championship played through the streets as a carnival is going on. Amid its rare high (?) points, it's given the world the song Volare, Celine Dion, Olivia Newton John, Riverdance and Abba.

Its low points are simply too many to enumerate. Gay men across Europe hold Eurovision parties and drink vast amounts to celebrate - and then drink even more to forget what they've just watched.

But it really is a lot more than just a an exercise in kitsch and camp and caterwauling. It's the only occasion each year when the populations of all the European countries (and Israel and Turkey) get to tell the populations of other countries what they think of them. So while that can be positive declarations of love (Sweden and Norway always try to give each other top marks) and all the Eastern European countries give big bear Russia good marks. However, when the UK got involved in the Iraq war, its standing reached an all-time low in Eurovision which had nothing to do with the British songs (although, admittedly, some of them were gruesome in the extreme) and everything to do with disapproval over foreign policy. And when Latvia and Estonia wanted to join the EU, they used their ability to stage Eurovision as a global stage to show what was good and civilised about their countries.

This year, it's gay rights that are being tied to Eurovision. Moscow Pride isn't going to be some fiesta - it's a hard-going political event in which gay men and women are risking arrest, beatings, broken bones and even death to make their point. But they won't be doing it alone. Apart from the gays who are just turning up to see Eurovision, there are also going to be gay and lesbian activists from across Europe marching with the Russians. By binding gay rights to Eurovison, the Russian gays and lesbians are ensuring that if the police beat the crap out of the marchers or (more likely) allow the far right 'Christian' groupings to do the beatings, then it's going to get reported across Europe because it'll be happening in the full view of the rest of Europe. While Russia doesn't have any problems having other European citizens beaten up on its streets - this year if it lets it happen, it could have an impact on the votes it gets in the song contest.

Russia can cope with international condemnation of its human rights record - but if that hurts its artistic reputation.... well, that's another thing altogether. Not only does it run the risk of the humiliation of being called one of the worst Eurovisions in recent history (and going by the semi-finals earlier this week, Russian staging doesn't look good), but it could also end up with lousy votes from Europeans who are punishing it for beating up their citizens. And that would be a tremendous loss of face.

Sorry for banging on about this, but as a cultural and geo-political phenomenon, the Eurovision is unique. It grew out of a small club of Western European national televison broadcasters trying to find something that they could all broadcast together in 1955 into something that expressed the permissiveness of the Sixties and sexual liberations of the Seventies (there were clearly gay singers competing) which became an outright statement when controversial transexual Israeli singer Dana International won. Then, during the Nineties, Eastern Europe joined in. And now it's this monster that is increasingly becoming a battle ground between the East and West. 

This year, they've changed the voting to try to decrease the antagonism between Eastern and Western Europe by introducing a new voting system in which the viewers only get 50 per cent of the vote and a panel of music industry experts from each country gets 50 per cent of their country's votes. This has been done because the Big Four of Eurovision - France, Germany, Spain and the UK - who pay the most into the organisation and automatically get a pass into the finals, muttered loudly about partisan voting in Eastern Europe and the possibility of the West taking its money and setting up something different.

The organisers are also hoping that this will mute some distant rumblings that Eurovision is is racist. There's a perception in the West (which may or may not be true) that Eurovison represents the only opportunity for some Eastern viewers to see a black person that year. The sub-text of that is that they don't like 'em when they see 'em, too. For example, this year, out of all of Europe only the UK (and possibly Germany - I'm not sure) have put in non-white singers. In both cases, those countries have balanced out the colour thing by adding distracting elements. In the case of Germany it's Dita von Teese, who looks spectacular, doing incredibly sexy burlesque sexy stuff in the background. For the UK, we've got Andrew Lloyd Webber (who's so white he's got a new anthropological classification all to himself) playing the piano as our diva Jade (think a really sexy Leona Lewis) belts out a fairly underwhelming song. [In the UK programme choosing the singer of Lloyd Webber's song, during the warm-up the audience was invited to give it a standing ovation when the show went live. Instead, the audience opted to give it a sitting down 'what-the-fuck?'].

Anyway, this year, despite voters having chosen in the semi finals to put through mostly a massive array of divas wearing white, the bookies' favourites to win are both men. There's Norway's Alexander (I think) who is so cute you'd need a warehouse full of buttons to even get close to his quotient of cheek-pinchability (he's the one above with the fiddle) and Greece's Sakis (pic right at the top - it doesn't do him justice), whose glorious abs and strong thighs show that wearing incredibly tight white jeans is a genetic predisposition rather than fashion statement.

Whatever happens, I have every intention of watching it and scoring it with my friends, but will be bringing along enough alcohol to make sure I can't remember it. Like childbirth, it's one of those painful experiences better forgotten. 

Goes to Paul Oscar from Iceland in 1997

why it didnt win I shall never know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud2MbWKwYzw

it only came 20th.

Svetlana Loboda from Ukraine

Trashy song, amazing show and dancers are very sexy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfUg7ARRyOk

 

Oops, sorry, too many pictures.

What the fuck Eurovision?, grow some fucking balls and report on the abuses being made against gay people trying to simply be visible in the host country of Russia.  can't you simply turn the camera and say as any good reporter/ human being would do- hey Russia, we don't think this is cool. ... what's that you're enlisting hitsquads of religious wackos to .... what's that hunt down and beat and possibly kill gay people for simply being who they fucking are?!  WHOA, that's not cool!  Fuck why not do something like have a bunch of gay organizers of the show it self and have them say, " hey you know what you crazy fucks, we're gay and we put on this mega awesome event for you". How many artists and producers, and directors, dancers, camera people, and others who are organising and apart of this event are gay/l/b/ t (insert appropriate diversity representing letter here)?  What the fuck you are supposed to be an organization that celebrates bringing a continent together and has a history (so this American- not the conservative kind) of showcasing and even praising one writer said queer talent.  grow some fucking balls and show some solidarity with the queers of your continent!!! 

 

-angry gay anarchist from west coast ranting.

 

ESC finally gets the recognition it deserves. It's a HUGE thing here in Europe (especially here in Norway), and gay people all over Europe are glued to the screen on the night of ESC!

Will be fun to see who wins tonight. I hope Norway will win, and thanks for including the pic of Alexander Rybak! 

Harvey Milk: You gotta give 'em hope.

In case anyone is interested, I wrote a recap of the semis (with youtube videos of the campest acts) on my blog:

Http://pigletwildebeest-eurovision.blogspot.com 

You've got  to love Sakis' "too short" polo shirt. All such a coincidence. 

And you forgot the Montenegrin entry who kept shaking his arse at the camera. Not subtle, Montenegro! 

Ah - screwed up the comment and can't delete

Who's the group/country in the pic 3rd from the bottom, dressed in all white?...the kneeling guitarist, in particular, is lovely.

...the 4 biggest countries may participate without competition beforehand because they are the biggest financiers of the European Union. Still, their contributions have been...well...*bad* lately. I'm from Germany, still don't like this year's song but at least we have a gay singer and Dita! So go boys (and gurl!)! Oh - and - it hasn't even started yet! Sounded like it was over!

Had good song in the past years, i remember that Never ever by Texas Lightning was a big success in european charts, but it did really bad on the festival

Yay! We won! Sorry, just HAD to say it! LOL

 

Harvey Milk: You gotta give 'em hope.

Sorry, I have to get this rant off my chest.

In last night's Eurovision, Graham Norton got his first try-out doing the commentary of Britain's Eurovision show (which also gets broadcast in Australia, various arab countries and elsewhere).

He has that job - as an out, gay man - because 40 years ago British gay men and lesbians took to the streets to fight for gay rights. Yesterday, in Moscow the police violently broke up a peaceful, non-threatening gay rights demonstration - beating up and arresting Russian and gay men from other nations (including a British and an American activist).

During his broadcast, Norton made one oblique reference to heavy-handed policing without explaining anything of the circumstances.

As I said above, Norton only has his job because people fought for equality in his adopted country and he specifically got the Eurovision gig because he's gay. For him to totally ignore gay rights on Europe's gay Hallowe'en and also ignore the beating up and arrest of his own countryman pisses me off more mightily than I can express.

Norton makes millions from the BBC. He is one of their major stars and he has the clout to overrule any editor who might or might not have told him to skirt around the issue. Irrespective of any gripes I might have with BBC editorial policy, Norton has an absolute responsibility to show some solidarity with other gay men and he could have done so without any risk to his livelihood. He failed miserably.

Obviously, next time I see Norton out on the London scene, I will join the queue of other annoyed gay men to piss in his vodka and quietly take aside any of the twinks he holds court with to mention that while Graham is a great laugh, his genital warts are shocking.

However, I feel incredibly strongly that Norton should face some outright condemnation from other gay men. His entire act is based on the fact he's gay and he only has the privilege of earning millions because a previous generation of gay men and women worked to give him that opportunity. So, when he's in the position to comment on gross and violent injustice taking place around him, he ignores it? No. That's just not a decent thing to do.

Next time you see Norton on your TV screens, don't think he's an ally because of his sexuality. If you're in trouble, he's the man who'll cross the street to avoid you.