An Interview with the Professor of Eurovision, Dean Vuletic

On the occasion of Eurovision we republish this 2023 interview with Dean Vuletic, published in our 2023 annual magazine.

Dean, in your book ‘Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest’ you touch on many aspects of the Eurovision Song Contest that we do not see on television. Even though the Eurovision Song Contest is one of Europe’s most popular televised events which brings millions of Europeans together, you also suggest that this competition has done more to underline national divisions than forge Europe as a whole. How so?

The picture is much more complex than the one that we see on television. What I wanted to highlight by emphasising the national divisions is that Eurovision can also be a platform on which political tensions are played out between countries. For example, in the voting. It can also be a platform for countries to promote certain political issues which highlight their conflicts with other countries that are participating in Eurovision. The aim of my book was to redress several clichés and myths surrounding Eurovision. And certainly, one of those clichés is that Eurovision promotes cooperation and peace in Europe.

The first big political conflict that was played out in Eurovision was in the mid 1970s, following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In 1975, we see Turkey participate in Eurovision for the first time, and Greece boycotts Eurovision as a result of the Turkish debut. Then, in 1976, Greece sends a song which thematises the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the plight of Greek refugees, and Turkey boycotts the contest as a result. And since then, we’ve seen many other examples.

Which prompts the question: how did other national, or even international, political antagonisms or conflicts make inroads into the Eurovision Song Contest?

There is long list which includes a song from Eurovision being used as a signal to start the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which brought down the right-wing dictatorship in 1974. It was not the performance of the song in the actual contest that triggered the revolution, but the song was used as a signal on the radio some weeks later. There is a pre-history to this song in that Portuguese entries before then, in the few years before, had already been becoming implicitly more critical of the government.

It’s a bit like what we still have in Eurovision today, where the organisers say that lyrics should not be political. But of course, you have a lot of political songs, like the Croatian one year in 2023 by the group Let 3, which was an anti-war song that criticised Putin and Lukashenko.

Also on that list, we’ve had spokespersons for countries calling in their votes in the context of war, such as in 1993 when the votes from Sarajevo were delivered via satellite telephone, a crackling line. But it was a huge statement for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which then debuted in the contest.

In your book you write that the results of Europe’s biggest election allow us to analyse interactions and sympathies in an international context of diasporic, post-colonial, regional, religious and sexual identities. Can you share some examples?

Since this year, there is a rest of the world vote included in Eurovision so we can now call it the world’s biggest election, but that’s a side note.

To come back to your question, I think a great example of diasporic identities was reflected in the voting results for Turkey, in which you could see a strong vote from the Turkish diaspora for Turkish entries in Eurovision. And when the voting system was changed in 2009, bringing back the expert jury that decides 50% of the vote, this prompted a reaction from Turkish television, which actually withdrew from Eurovision after 2012 because it didn’t agree with this change to the voting. It preferred to have 100% public televoting, partly because the Turkish diaspora helped to boost the Turkish results.

Portugal provides a good example of colonial aspects, first of all, in that it sent among the first black singers to appear in Eurovision, who was from one of the African countries that were part of the Portuguese empire at a time when the Portuguese dictatorship was still reluctant to give up its empire, as had other western European states. We’ve also seen Portuguese singers with migrant backgrounds from these countries participate in Eurovision. So here you also have the issue of how migrants from Africa and elsewhere are integrated into West European societies and how they then appear on the Eurovision stage representing these countries as symbols of, yes, a colonial heritage, but also of the multiculturalism of these societies today.

Regarding regional blocs, let’s touch on Yugoslavia. What we see among the countries that together formed Yugoslavia is that they have a common popular culture and common popular music scene, which they developed during their common experience of Yugoslavia. And actually, popular music was one of the cultural phenomena that most united citizens of Yugoslavia during the Cold War, and since then the countries of the region have been voting for each other even during times of political tensions.

So, in this regard, regional voting is a sign, for me, of reconciliation. It’s a positive sign. And it has also been interpreted like that by political leaders. Whereas some West European commentators like to really criticise voting blocs in East Europe, especially for being undemocratic and unmeritocratic, actually, this can also be a positive sign in the relations between countries.

On religion, I would say that there can be interesting synergies between religion and Eurovision. The winning song in 1961, Nous les amoureux, sung by Jean-Claude Pascal for Luxembourg, is actually often cited as the first queer song in Eurovision because it talks about a love between two people, but it doesn’t mention their gender. And it is actually the first song in Eurovision that mentions God.

Another example is the win of Dana International in 1998, the transsexual winner for Israel, at a time when public voting was introduced. A lot of commentators think that one of the reasons she won was because the gays of Europe united behind her and voted for her. And we know that Eurovision has historically had a strong fan base in the gay community, but she was strongly criticised by Orthodox Jewish religious leaders in her country as not being an appropriate representative of Israel. But then if we look at Conchita Wurst winning in 2014 for Austria, the bearded drag queen, she actually was invited to speak in the cathedral in Vienna on World AIDS Day. It showed how much the Catholic Church in Austria was changing and how it was embracing the LGBTIQ+ communities more.

Could you say that when the Eurovision Song Contest started, it was a contest between nations, and now it has become a song contest between the many ‘Europes’ existing on this continent, with the contest being a catalyst for change?

First of all, the idea behind the establishment of Eurovision in 1956 was not to promote European integration, it was not to promote any political idea, but rather to experiment with the nascent technology of television. But it still was a competition between countries, and the rules stated that the songs had to be in their national languages. In that sense, it was conceived as a platform to promote national cultural diversity and to show Europeans the different popular music cultures.

And even though sometimes it can anticipate political change, with some people exaggerating it and saying “Eurovision can change the world,” it’s not true. The contest reflects changes that have started to happen, are happening, will intensify, but I haven’t found, in my research, that it’s really a catalyst for political change.

Gay marriage is an example of change that was underway in Austria, and that Conchita tried to push, but which was, in the end, decided by the Constitutional Court in 2017. Even though politicians were using Conchita’s win to show off Austria as a modern, progressive and open country, they still did not have enough courage to make this decision for Austria to adopt gay marriage.

So, the European Song Contest also provides us insights into intranational politics?

I describe in my book that Eurovision is often a platform for national political conflicts, debates, tensions, which we don’t get to learn about if we’re not familiar with those countries. Let’s look at Austria again. In 2000, when Austria was under sanctions from other EU member states, when the far-right Freedom Party of Jörg Haider joined a coalition government, ORF [the Austrian national broadcasting organisation] sent a trio, which included two black singers who had actually been engaged in the protests against this coalition government in Austria. There you see this tension between a liberal Austria and a xenophobic Austria being played out through the national television station’s selection of the singers.

And when you are discussing these issues in your book, you write that you prefer the term nation “fashioning” over “branding”. What is the difference between the two?

Nation branding doesn’t take into account the changes that can be reflected so frequently in Eurovision, considering that Eurovision is an annual event. So let’s say when there is a campaign to brand a nation, this campaign will usually last more than one year. There will be a logo, there will be a slogan, there will be publicity, marketing campaigns, that will go on for more than one year. Whereas Eurovision gives countries, or the representatives of countries, the option to reflect their country’s changing identities or changing social and political issues, or changing cultural fashions that are occurring in their country, on an annual basis. And this is why I call it fashioning, because the idea of fashion is, first of all, by fashioning something you reshape it, remould it, and a fashion is also something that changes more quickly than a brand.

Lastly, what changes to Eurovision Song Contest do you expect to happen over the next 10 years?

Eurovision has always changed: for example, regarding the number of countries participating, voting matters like in the composition of the juries, or how to make the contest more up to date with musical trends and, relatedly, more appealing to younger viewers especially.

The European Broadcasting Union has been trying to expand Eurovision as a global brand, which it has also tried to do by selling licences for the creation of Eurovision-style contests in Asia, Latin America, the United States, and Canada.

But I think that in all this talk about the global growth of Eurovision, what has been forgotten is that there are countries that need to be brought back into the Eurovision fold, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which really needs being supported by the European family. Like Bosnia and Herzegovina, other countries that have withdrawn for financial reasons should also be brought back in.

For I believe that Eurovision’s strength will continue to be as it has been so far, a European event that brings Europeans together.