I’ve been a fan for almost 18 years, ever since some euro friends were talking about the voting system on IRC. Love the intersection between culture and geopolitics.
It's not what they say on the stage but how voters from different countries behave.
UK: 0 points total
Cyprus: 12 points from Greece
Azerbaijan: 12 points from Turkey
San Marino singer: A Turkish guy sings in English
Armenia: the song is in English instead of Armenian
It gives you a clue on what's going on in every country. How nationalistic they feel this year, are they fixing their issues with their arch enemies, are they opening up to different cultures, do they feel part of the community, is everybody still annoyed by the Brits and did they took the event seriously enough to send a good song etc.
And yet the event is full of politics. From the voting cliques and countries favouring specific allies, to lyrics with hidden (or not so hidden¹) messages, it's everywhere. A lot of it is on a meta level though, leading to an event which taken at face value seems devoid of politics.
1: Georgia's entry in 2009 was called “We Don't Wanna Put In”…
always has been. Eurovision almost each and every year had two streams of interest - contest itself and the technology and logistics behind it. I vividly remember the whole 1996 big talk around virtual stage tech by Silicon Graphics https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_268-hughes.pdf Their brand was even prominently displayed and mentioned before and during the live event.
> Reddit style drive by snark doesn’t work as well here imho.
Isn't this the only snark and drive-by comment around? I think it's more interesting, just as I think a pit stop change is more interesting in F1 than most of the race itself.
