Why the Eurovision Song Contest is no joke

My name is John and I am a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. Not an ironic, one-night-a-year, let’s get pissed and laugh at our silly, backwards European neighbours and jokily bemoan the inevitability of the UK finishing last fan. A bona-fide, hardcore, 365-day Eurovision obsessive. I could tell you every winning entrant in chronological order and hum most of them. I have every single entry since the contest began in 1956 on MP3. My idea of a perfect night in is watching the 1993 contest on DVD and marvelling at the down-to-the-wire final voting results (between scouse popstrell Sonia for the United Kingdom and ultimate victor Niamh Kavanagh for Ireland, if you’re interested) for approximately the 72nd time.

Chances are your primary thought at this point is not "Wow, I'd really like to sleep with this guy". Not an entirely unfair reaction – obsession with any piece of light entertainment has more than a whiff of tragedy about it. But the British Eurovision defender gets a particularly raw deal. Our generally appalling performances in world sporting events are forgivable. We still rally behind our nation with heart-warming pride and optimism. A dismal failure in the World Cup and we furiously analyse what went wrong, assign blame where it is usually due and vow to do better next time. A disaster at the Eurovision song contest and at best we shrug, at worst we snort with derision at the poor taste and politically motivated voting of our lesser neighbour nations. Surely nobody of sound mind actually takes it seriously?

Here’s a statistic for you. Since we last won the World Cup in 1966, we’ve won the Eurovision Song Contest five times. Three of those songs, by Sandie Shaw, Brotherhood of Man and Bucks Fizz, were number one hits. The other two, Lulu and Katrina & The Waves, were also top 5 records and sizeable hits worldwide. Sweden, in many ways the natural home of the Eurovision Song Contest, have only fielded four winners – and of those four only two made any waves internationally (ABBA in 1974 and to a much lesser extent Charlotte Nilsson in 1999).

The point is, when we make the effort we’re actually good at the Eurovision Song Contest, as opposed to Football, a sport at which we plough grimly on despite a near-complete lack of national talent compared with the top-tier nations.

So why do we have such a terrible attitude towards it? In recent years the statistics have admittedly been poor. In the past decade we’ve finished in the bottom half of the table eight times, including three last-place finishes and even the dread null points in 2003 (Whither now, Jemini?). We also scored two top 5 finishes – former Pop Idol alumni Jessica Garlick came third in 2002 and Jade Ewen, now clinging for dear life to the revolving door that is the Sugababes line-up, finished 5th in 2009. Chances are you can’t remember their songs – the media all but ignored them and they made little impact on the charts.

“Politics!” I hear you cry. “Europe hates us!” “They all vote for their neighbours!” I’ve even, on more than one occasion, heard the bewildering argument “It’s all because of the Iraq war!” If any of the above represents your knee-jerk opinion, I suggest you brace yourself and actually listen to any of our recent failed entries. These are, without exception, terrible terrible records. Naff, dated Carry-On Pop from Steps-lite early 00s also-rans Scooch, dreary disco from early X Factor runner up and charisma vacuum Andy Abraham, a truly unsettling schoolyard rap by forty-something Adrian Chiles lookalike Daz Sampson. These are not songs that represent the UK music scene, nor, despite the misguided and borderline xenophobic beliefs of many media figures, do they represent that mysterious demographic of the ‘great Eurovision song’ (a.k.a. a naff piece of crap that those culturally stunted peasants in Slovetzia will just go wild for!).

I love the Eurovision because every year I discover a handful of genuinely thrilling pop songs. It’s not all great; I defy anyone to sit through last year’s Russian entry more than once, but the vast majority of countries send big local stars and credible entries, even if not all of them translate particularly well on the world stage. Yes it can have a certain charming awkwardness, and political voting does exist, but rarely enough to determine the winner. Besides, if not for an extremely questionable set of points from Ireland last year our entry would barely have scored anything at all.

Another statistic for you. Last year’s winning entry by Germany’s Lena Meyer-Landrut was a number one hit in six countries, and a top ten in seven more. Her album also charted well across the continent. 2009’s Norwegian winner Alexander Rybak did even better, even hitting the UK top ten. The rise of Itunes has reinvigorated the contest, allowing successful entries to instantly capitalise on the massive exposure that Eurovision still promises. In a time when the music industry is scrambling to find ways to promote their artists, it’s a goldmine which has yet to be properly exploited in this country.

So while some will roll their eyes at the announcement last night that faded boyband Blue will be our 2011 representatives, I applaud the decision. It isn’t ideal – early rumours included Pixie Lott, Charlotte Church and Katherine Jenkins, all of whom are much more high-profile and credible. But they’re a professional group, the song, we have been assured, is a serious effort with nary a hint of novelty, and in their heyday they scored numerous big hits all over Europe. If they do well they’re recognisable enough that their song might become a hit single from which they can launch a serious comeback. If this is the case, and I fervently hope that it is, perhaps bigger and better names will see the benefit of representing themselves and their nation on this massive stage, instead of dismissing it as beneath them. Because by patronising this silly little contest, we only make fools of ourselves.

Film Review: Black Swan

In Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream, the viewer is dragged along as a group of drug-addled characters descend into an ever-escalating nightmare that doesn’t let up until the final frame. In The Wrestler, we follow one damaged, isolated misfit so closely that we feel we’re practically inside his head. In his dizzying latest release Black Swan, these two experiences are combined as we follow rising ballet star Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) on a disorienting journey into madness.

Watching Black Swan is an almost hysterical experience. From the moment Nina is cast in the make-or-break lead role in a production of Swan Lake, the tension barely lets up for a second. Portman is in every scene of this movie, and as with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, every aspect of the film is geared towards placing you as close to her point of view as possible, from the shaky, intrusive camera shots to the occasionally deafening soundtrack.

The plot has elements of everything from All About Eve to Inland Empire, by way of Rosemary’s Baby and, inevitably, The Red Shoes. There’s the promotion from chorus-line to centre stage at the expense of an ageing star (a brief but memorable turn by Winona Ryder), the possibility of romance with the director who questions her ability to truly inhabit the role, and the initially friendly new arrival who may or may not be plotting to take Nina’s place.

However all of these influences are merely a framing device for a surreal journey into Nina’s psyche as she begins to lose her grip on reality and her sense of self as she is subsumed into the twin roles of the tragic white swan and the passionate, uncontrolled black swan. Nina begins seeing mirror images of herself everywhere, cleverly shot so that the viewer shares her split-second confusion as to whether these doppelgangers are Nina or the trio of female characters who haunt her mind at every turn.

Portman’s performance, which initially seems somewhat mannered and one-note, soon reveals itself to be an extraordinary display of repressed fear and self-control. She spends the entire first half of this movie with her face in a riktus of sheer terror. Her entire life consists of the ballet studio and the claustrophobic flat where she endlessly practices, under the ever-watchful eyes of her ex-dancer mother (Barbara Hershey). Only once is she shown to venture into the real world, when she is manipulated into a hedonistic night out with spirited newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis). On returning to her flat, dizzy with drugs and alcohol, she briefly rebels in an angry confrontation with her mother. The scene is brief, but the utter transformation of Nina’s visage, as she her facial muscles relax and the fear disappears from her eyes for the first time, is astonishing.

The movie is unquestionably Portman’s show, but the supporting cast are uniformly excellent. Barbara Hershey makes a particularly strong impression as Nina’s mother Erica. The two evidently share an unhealthy relationship; Nina has been so infantilised by her mother that she allows her to dress and undress her, while Erica’s bedroom is a shrine to her daughter’s achievements. Rather than a place of escape, Nina’s flat is a claustrophobic hellhole where she can never escape from Erica’s gaze. In the hands of a lesser actress the role of Erica would have been a fairly rote ‘stage mother from hell’ performance, but Hershey wisely underplays it. At times her character exudes such genuine warmth that you can believe that Nina would have allowed herself to remain cocooned in this childlike state without making a break for independence. This makes the moments in which Erica’s behaviour reveals her to be obsessive and controlling all the more unsettling.

Mila Kunis is also strong, providing an important note of levity as the only character in the film who appears relatively well balanced. Vincent Cassel is perfectly cast, all smouldering Gallic passion and bravado. The character is a pretentious windbag, but we believe that the dancers would push themselves beyond their physical and mental limits for his approval, which seems at times to be more Nina’s goal than the stardom that a triumphant performance could promise.

This won’t be a film for everyone. It’s an intense, hysterical and challenging watch. The ambiguous question of what (if anything) is reality and what is a product of Nina’s unhinged mind will undoubtedly frustrate some viewers. But for the thrill of witnessing something genuinely different, if not entirely original, and that of seeing a talented actress finally coming of age in what will surely be one of the defining performances of her career, Black Swan is the first must-see movie of 2011.

Immigration may decide this election, so why are politicians still not really engaging with it?

My friend Emma had an argument with her girlfriend recently. Dzina grew up in Poland and came to the UK to study two years ago. Emma grew up in Bradford, so she’s familiar with the racial tension that the area is infamous for. She also spent a large portion of her working life doing the kind of manual work which is often taken by immigrants. Emma, like many people in this country, believes that it is unfair that foreign workers are widely employed in these jobs, pushing out English people. Her argument is that migrant workers, particularly those from EU member states such as Poland and Lithuania, enter the country for a few years, during which they work punishingly long hours for minimum wage (or less) before returning to their home nations with their savings. British people taking a similar job have no such escape plan. Emma wanted Dzina to admit that this was profoundly unfair.

I must confess that I always find these arguments uncomfortable. I’m very much in favour of the European Union and I have a familiar strain of middle class guilt from the fact that I’m English and relatively privileged. I’m far too much of a bleeding heart liberal to begrudge migrant workers from poorer countries for taking jobs I myself would never dream of doing. But this is clearly a hot-button issue. It’s a major reason why the BNP and UKIP are making electoral gains and racial tension continues to simmer across the nation. Writing people like Emma off as ignorant racists (she isn’t) is foolhardy, and the failure of left-wing, pro-European politicians to address the issue in plain-speaking terms has only served to fuel the resentment.

The infamous ‘Nick Griffin’ episode of Question Time was a prime example of this. Griffin has made capital out of exploiting the fears of English workers who perceive that their jobs and way of life are threatened by immigration. His party’s policies are simplistic easy-answers based on prejudice and misinformation. They bear no scrutiny whatsoever. Major party elites Jack Straw, Sayeeda Warsi and Chris Huhne were momentarily united in disparaging his dubious past-assertions and his racist beliefs. Quite right too, we may think. But I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t something of a missed opportunity. Everybody knows Nick Griffin is a nationalist and a racist. Due to the tabloid-fuelled controversy neither he nor the show would ever have such a significant public platform in the foreseeable future (ratings were almost triple what the show usually attracts). Here was an opportunity for the mainstream parties to engage in a really accessible discussion about immigration in front of a massive audience. Unfortunately Jack Straw’s waffle did little to illuminate the matter, giving a distinct impression of preaching to the converted.

The problem is that for many potential BNP voters, and perhaps even more so with the comparatively mild UKIP, outright racism isn’t the issue. Racist thinking is a symptom, not a disease. Encouraging people to feel guilty for having a problem with migrant workers without tackling the major problems in employment law (not a race issue in itself) or bringing proper attention to the many benefits immigrantion brings to our country does nothing but breed further resentment.

The fact is that many employers are more likely to employ immigrant workers than British, because they are generally more willing to work harder for longer hours and for less pay than their British counterparts. We saw evidence of this in the recent BBC documentary ‘The Day The Immigrants Went Home’, in which unemployed white Britons were given the jobs of Polish field and factory workers for three days, with predictably disappointing results.

Adult workers cannot be forced to work more than a 48-hour week on average, but there is an option to opt out of this limit. This is technically voluntary and you should never be discriminated against for refusing to waive your rights, but in reality employers abuse this on a regular basis, as Emma is all too aware. Apply for a factory job, refuse the opt out, don’t get the job. This is the primary reason for the dominance of migrant workers in these jobs. They’re not superhuman, they simply have fewer perceived options. Even the most unqualified British national can probably hope for something better than a 70+ hour working week of incredible tedium and often considerable manual labour. I have faith that for most people the dole really isn’t an aspiration, but if the choice came between jobseekers and that kind of working week, I know what I’d choose…

The minimum wage has done so much to improve the lot of all workers. But it doesn’t go far enough. It needs to be much more strictly monitored so that all employers are sticking to it. More importantly still, the opt-out clause needs to be given a serious and thorough review so that no worker, whatever their background, is expected to work extreme hours just to obtain a job at all. If companies need to be operational for longer days to keep production up then shift work needs to be allocated accordingly. This seems incredibly simple, yet I’ve never heard a politician discussing it. Perhaps if they did there would be more understanding of the job market, more equality of employment opportunity at every level and the racially motivated fear-mongering of the far right would fall on deaf ears.

David Cameron insists Gay voters can trust the Tories. So why don't I believe him?

The late, great comedienne Linda Smith once observed that William Hague’s efforts to deflect racist scandals from the Tory party was akin to Dr. Frankenstein desperately trying to keep the monster locked in the basement. The problem still very definitely exists; the issue is how effectively it can be hidden from public view and prevented from causing too much damage. I have a similar reaction to David Cameron’s recent attempts to endear himself to gay voters.

Cameron granted an interview to Attitude magazine last month, in which he admitted that the Tories had “got it wrong” with Section 28, and was at pains to stress that they were a changed party in 2010. This is undoubtedly a good thing. So why do I struggle to take his apparent change of heart seriously?

The short answer is because he is so patently insincere. Cameron voted against the repeal of Section 28 as recently as 2003, long after popular support for it died. In 2008 he voted for a motion that made it more difficult for lesbian couples to obtain IVF treatment by forcing them to name a man who could act as a father figure for the baby. When questioned on this issue by Attitude he defends this decision on the basis that a father figure is essential for the stability of a child growing up. Therefore lesbians (and presumably by extension single mothers) are apparently not valid as a parenting unit. As for his long support for Section 28, he can only assure us that he has “recognised the need for change”.

It gets worse when he is pressed on his party’s incredibly distasteful association with the Law and Justice party of Poland, one of the largest parties in the recently formed European Conservatives & Reformists Group. Presented with records of leading members of this party equating homosexuality with paedophilia and claiming that the “free promotion” of homosexuality would cause the human race to disappear, Cameron’s response is the political equivalent of “Yeah but no but yeah but no”. He repeatedly insists that he does not align himself with parties that have racist or homophobic views. When it is made patently clear that he in fact is aligned with such parties, he repeats this position in the manner of a malfunctioning robot. The best defence he can ultimately come up with is that he is not aligned with a bunch of powerful homophobes for their homophobic qualities. This does not exactly inspire me with confidence.

Tory frontbencher Nick Herbert claims that the existence of himself and numerous other openly gay Tory MPs marks a ‘self evident’ change in Conservative attitude to gay people. I don’t doubt their conviction, but I do doubt that Cameron, a man who consistently voted against gay equality legislation, had a sudden change of heart in his late thirties, just in time for him to become the leader of a party which desperately needs to rebrand itself in order to drag itself back from the 00s doldrums.

The temptation may be to ask how much David Cameron’s sincerity really matters. The fact is that tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality is on the rise in the UK. Unlike the Britain of the 1980s (or modern-day America), there is little political capital to be made from exploiting fears about homosexuality being ‘promoted’ in schools by villainous paedophiles eager to groom and corrupt impressionable young minds. It is admittedly unlikely that the Tory party will rip off the mask once elected and drag us kicking and screaming back to that time.

However, the importance of having an actively liberal leader in charge as opposed to a begrudgingly tolerant one is hugely significant. Cameron’s voting record on issues like adoption speaks for itself. Would a Tory government have introduced Civil Partnerships? Will a Tory government take a hard line on international gay rights issues such as the recent Anti-Homosexuality bill in Uganda? We may be in a better place now than we were during the Thatcher years but we haven’t yet arrived at a position of total equality, and any government that drags its feet on these issues is not a government that I want to represent me.