Eurovision

[liv]

cjwatson and I got home from France just in time for Eurovision. So, with jack, we spent a pleasant evening drinking cocktails and watching the show.

I found the show unusually bland and boring. There was very little exciting staging, very little outrageous camp, just a bunch of people singing more or less pleasant songs. I liked Norway a lot, especially with the Sami elements, and I liked France even if they were a trying a bit too hard with a song about a fat person and a deaf person getting to dance even though people tried to exclude them.

Regarding the headline acts, I'd got the wrong impression that Madonna and Idan Raichel were performing together, which would have been massively exciting. But ok, they were also quite cool separately. I was a bit cheesed off with Madonna at first, showing up to a show in Israel completely covered in crosses, but it turned out this was for an anniversary staging of Like a Prayer. And I was really quite impressed with her sneaking in a little sequence where dancers wearing Israeli and Palestinian flags embraced.

I was also really quite annoyed with the debates all over social media about boycotting the show. Some people said the boycott had been requested by Palestinian activists, and I didn't see that, but that could be because I don't follow enough Palestinian activists on social media. But if it's true, then that's a very good reason for the boycott. What it seemed like to me was a bunch of self-righteous mostly European lefties who are horrified at the idea of a country that has racist politics and is involved in an illegal occupation hosting Eurovision. Totally unacceptable to have Israel alongside all those entirely non-racist countries that have never occupied anyone else's land or used military violence against Arabs, like Russia, Australia, the UK etc...

I don't have a problem with individual people boycotting whatever media they feel uncomfortable with. I just got annoyed with the debate which assumed that all decent human beings must always boycott anything to do with Israel. Anyway, I found Abigail Nussbaum interesting on the topic of Eurovision and Israeli politics. She describes Eurovision going ahead, even though Netanyahu hates it possibly even more than European lefties, as the last flicker of normalcy before the dark. I find Nussbaum credible because she's actually Israeli, but I appreciate this may make her less credible in the eyes of people who will see her as representing the hegemonic voice of the oppressor.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

I definitely saw Palestinian activists calling for this boycott on Twitter, etc. Arwa Mahdawi wrote for the Guardian. Of course, you may not consider them to count, as they were Palestinian activists living in Australia or the UK. I believe their cultural/ancestral claim to Palestinian identity, and that they are better judges of and more likely to be in touch with what Palestinians currently residing in Gaza want or need than most people.

[highlyeccentric]

Actually wait, I'm missing the point. The call to boycott Eurovision originates with the BDS movement, which is lead from Palestine and its international branches led by local Palestinian groups. Either you somehow missed that memo, or you do not believe BDS's claim to be lead by Palestinians.

It seems reasonable to me that you might debate the BDS movement's aims and methods, but to claim their campaigns do not originate with Palestinians at all is... a bit much.