Eurovision, between geopolitical issues and musical competition | RCF

On Saturday May 16, the grand final of theEurovision in Austria. In 70 years, this competition has been completely renewed, between the immense scenographies, the calibrated choruses and the improbable performances that the singers reveal each year. This event was created in 1956, in a spirit of reconciliation after the Second World War, by the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union. At the front of this media stage, a true demonstration of European diplomacy is taking place, in which it exposes its alliances, its tensions and its identity. 

This is what the book Geopolitics of Eurovision – The soundtrack of European construction reveals by Cyrille Bret, doctor of philosophy, teacher at Sciences Po and associate researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute, co-author with Florent Parmentier. In the show I think therefore I act presented by Melchior Gormand, Cyrille Bret questions the global scope of this European program.

The construction of a major musical show

L’Eurovision appears in a post-war context. It was created in 1956, by the EBU, a “association of audiovisual professionals who, in the 1950s, faced the very high costs of producing programs. They tried to pool their technical capacity for producing programs to increase their audience and their financing, at a time when television was becoming widespread in homes”explains Cyrille Bret. The objective of audiovisual groups at that time was to bring together Europeans, despite the political divisions that the continent was experiencing. Initially, public broadcasting had much more modest resources in the face of a large penis ; since then, there has been a real improvement with “a technological and technical competition thanks to devices and extensions of synthetic images generated by artificial intelligence”. However, the Europe-focused curriculum evolved between the 1960s and 1970s, as “the generalization of television in Yugoslavia, Turkey, the Maghreb, the Middle East has led more and more audiovisual groups to join the EBU and Eurovision”, relate Cyrille Bret.

 

Eurovision was created at a time when television was becoming widespread in homes.

 

The media coverage of Eurovision is one of the factors in its global expansion. The television programs were “largely determined by ministries of information and culture“indicates Cyrille Bret. But this has been completely disrupted by the rise of a society of material pleasure. Eurovision will contribute to “this technological diffusion and this general aspiration towards materialism and forgetting the major contemporary questions of the Second World War. This strategy allowed the competition to take a very important place in “the strategies of audiovisual groups, of States, to show themselves, to promote themselves, to attract tourists, investors, to also attract the good graces of public opinion in troubled periods”. This results in a battle for attendance at Eurovision concerts between the different participating countries. To attract more and more tourists, the cities that host Eurovision, like Vienna in Austria, are facing new commercial challenges: a strong presence on social networks, technical, marketing and commercial prowess, we are thus testing “the capacity of organizing cities to attract fans, investors, hoteliers”. Cities gain legitimacy and receive the name of “city of the world” or “destination city”.

 

Eurovision will help the strategy of audiovisual groups and States to show themselves, to promote themselves, to attract tourists and investors.

 

Voting blocs are formed to assert a national identity.Cyrille Bret thus evokes “the fact that Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian or Icelandic candidates vote for each other”compensating for the smallness of their population to achieve victory. This phenomenon also reveals the dynamics of diasporas and, more broadly, those of European emigration. “Because more and more Europeans are spending part of their lives in another country on the continent. They are becoming binational, trinational, forging links through marriages, affinities, associations and their local investment”indicates Cyrille Bret. This circulation of people and symbols generates what Cyrille Bret describes as a double movement: the affirmation of a national identity and pride, entirely legitimate for peoples carrying a millennia-old history, and at the same time a profound hybridization of these same identities.

Eurovision, a competition that has become a geopolitical object?

Contemporary geopolitics is characterized by new rivalries, new contexts of war, petitions and boycotts. Teacher-researcher Cyrille Bret highlights two dimensions in this type of international competition. First of all, an ideal dimension, based on “the unifying and pacifying vocation of these major musical, artistic or sporting events”. Then, the more realistic dimension: “the balance of power limits the unifying vocation of these major events”. Indeed, these cultural events often become spaces for affirmation of political and diplomatic power. International tensions then result in calls for boycotts or protests, depending on the political situation of the participating states. Journalists from RTBF in Belgium campaigned in January for the non-broadcast, non-participation and non-financing of the competition, because of Israel’s participation. These positions show to what extent Eurovision also depends on the funding and interests of European audiovisual groups. The competition also welcomes authoritarian regimes which sometimes seek to improve their image internationally. This was particularly the case in Franco’s Spain in the 1960s: the dictatorship used Eurovision to attract European tourists to Spanish beaches and thus economically support the regime thanks to tourism income. This reveals a more ambiguous dimension of Eurovision, which can serve as a tool for political communication and “soft power”.

 

We are always torn between the desire to defend folklore and the desire to win the competition with internationalized pop.

 

Europe’s linguistic plurality is being called into question. “At the beginning, there was an unwritten rule which is that each candidate sings in one of the official languages ​​of their audiovisual group”, informs Cyrille Bret. Except that not everyone followed the same path. Sweden, for example, is starting to sing in English, because it does not consider itself part of the Western bloc. This is the group of Swedish singers ABBA, “who sang in English, who made a worldwide hit, Waterloo, which far exceeds the Eurovision charts”. This obviously led to protests, particularly from the French. “who rebel against this English-speaking equation, successful equals success” announces doctoral student in philosophy Cyrille Bret. This is why, in 1999, the competition required candidates to sing in one of the official languages ​​of their audiovisual group. Which hasn’t changed much, since English remains the majority language of songs since that date, even if the national and regional languages ​​and dialects remain extremely strong. Because “we are always torn between the desire to defend folklore and the desire to win the competition with internationalized pop”. Portugal, for example, chose to remain in the folkloric register, which allowed it to “to achieve very important breakthroughs by cultivating its references to Fado and its Portuguese-speaking”. Unlike Portugal, its openness to English allowed Germany to liberalize so as not to remain on the sidelines.