Titled: Finland Squirms as Its Latest Export Steps Into Spotlight
Has Dave thA decided to make up for a week or two of slow posting? Lost his job? 3 posts in one day? Well, I just couldn't resist reporting a story that digs deep at the European psyche.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Eurovision Song Contest, it is a yearly ritual of polite boredom, politics and occasionally music where the ever-expanding empire of Europe and guests pits its singers against each other.
It used to include a jury in each country that would award marks for all the other countries except themselves. This would lead to predictable voting, with the French always voting down the Brits and other nationalistic rivalries. (The UK scored zero overall in 2003, probably a reflection of the Iraq invasion as much as a poor song choice.)
This may explain why Ireland, famously neutral, has won seven contest, also a record.
Strange rules abounded thoughout the years - songs had to be sung in the local dialect - even the weird Maltese, and with Lithuania singing in Samogitian which is a dialect of Lithuanian, making many songs totally incomprehensible to most viewers.
Norway holds the record for scoring zero point in three years ("nul points"), closely followed by Turkey and Austria.
The maximum duration of each song is three minutes, and although musicians of any genre can play, the musicians and songs selected for the Contest tend towards very commercial pop. Some viewers of the Contest view the event as a combination of camp entertainment and a musical train wreck (a fact played upon in the UK broadcast with the sardonic BBC commentary of Terry Wogan) and a subculture of Eurovision Song Contest drinking games has evolved in some countries.
It's worth noting that the voting system used for the Contest was originally designed to select a single compromise winner from a large field of candidates. A number of countries use this same system to select their entries, some of them going through several rounds of voting before selecting a winner. After repeated iterations of the system, variations from middle-of-the-road pop music tend to be eliminated.
So it is with great humor that I note the entry from Finland this year:
Don't forget this is a competition famous for the likes of Abba, and Céline Dion with most winners fading immediately into obscurity.
They have eight-foot retractable latex Satan wings, sing hits like "Chainsaw Buffet" and blow up slabs of smoking meat on stage.
"In Finland, we have no Eiffel Tower, few real famous artists, it is freezing cold and we suffer from low self-esteem," said Mr. Putaansuu, who, as Lordi, has horns protruding from his forehead and sports long black fingernails.
As he stuck out his tongue menacingly, his red demon eyes glaring, Lordi was surrounded by Kita, an alien-man-beast predator who plays flame-spitting drums inside a cage; Awa, a blood-splattered ghost who howls backup vocals; Ox, a zombie bull who plays bass; and Amen, a mummy in a rubber loincloth who plays guitar.
It is not the first time the contest, which began in 1956, has spawned discontent. Last year's Ukrainian entry song was rewritten after being deemed too political by government officials in Kiev because it celebrated the Orange Revolution. When Dana International, an Israeli transsexual, won in 1998 with her hit song "Diva," rabbis accused her of flouting the values of the Jewish state.
But not everyone in this Nordic country of five million views the monster squad as un-Finnish. Some Finns say that Lordi is right at home and that the band's use of flaming dragon-encrusted swords and exploding baby dolls expresses the warrior spirit of the Vikings.
Europe isn't what it used to be.
In 2006 the format of the Eurovision Song Contest was sold to an American Broadcaster in order to compete with American Idol in the ratings. The member countries of [Europe] will be replaced by the different States and territories of the United States.
Watch out USA.
Hat-tip to Nobody's Business again