PeR of Latvia performs on stage during the second semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest. Photograph: Ragnar Singsaas/Getty Images
This week new figures showed that the eurozone remains mired in recession, the worst since the second world war, while the continent’s feckless leaders once again offered no new measures to stem sky-high unemployment or stimulate growth. From here, on the other side of the Atlantic, it is easy to look at Europe and see nothing but hopelessness. An unworkable currency union, a clueless and austerity-obsessed policy elite, spiking nationalism and extremism. Europe, it can seem, is done for.
But there is a future for Europe – and it wears sequins. The magisterial musical showdown known as the Eurovision Song Contest has its grand final this Saturday, and at this desperate moment for the continent, it’s more necessary than ever. Eurovision is an enormous spectacle, one of the world’s biggest non-sporting events. Last year 102.8 million people, about the same number who watched the blackout-stricken Super Bowl, tuned in to watch the cavalcade of shimmying showgirls and leathery chanteurs, and this year is expected to be even higher.
You may have heard Eurovision derided by antimodern haters as some kind of tacky, overblown kitsch festival – and in the years since the fall of the Iron Curtain, some western Europeans have not hesitated to add a racist tinge to their derision, calling it a silly display only fit for Slavs and Balts. Pay them no mind. Eurovision only looks like a singing competition. It is much more than that: it is an emergent political paradigm, a model wherein national pride and pan-European unity go hand in hand. The EU itself can only dream of this kind of allegiance.
And how much better the world would be if only it were governed by the fraternal bonds of Eurovision, rather than the insane punitive diktats of Brussels and Frankfurt! It was just three years ago, when the crisis was beginning to bite, that now-dreaded Germany won it all on a surge of pan-European joy with Satellite, sung by the winsome popstar Lena in an incongruous Australian accent (and written by a woman from Oklahoma, of all places). The next year, performing in Germany, a rapper from debt-wracked Greece spat verses among Hellenic breakdancers and projected Ionic columns – and the Germans loved it! They gave Greece 10 points, the second-highest score, while their chancellor was trying to wipe out the breakdancers’ pensions.
Eurovision has a large following far from the continent, especially in Australia – but America has been slow to get with the program. If you’ve never watched, then this year, at this hinge moment for the future of Europe, is the ideal moment for you to take the plunge. There are public Eurovision viewings in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and probably in your town too if you do a quick search of your favorite gay listings website. But if this is your first Eurovision, there are some things you need to know:
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