Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Reveuse » 2014-05-11, 11:04

Ludwig Whitby wrote:
Vertigo wrote:
Luís wrote:And clearly there somewhat of a West/East divide when it came to voting for Conchita.


I was pleasantly surprised, considering the media's been framing the ESC as this clash of values, and implying the East is inherently backwards and homophobic. She got votes from nearly every country.

That really is interesting. You know what's even more interesting? The fact that most Eastern countries' televoters placed Austria in the top 5, while the juries ranked them much lower. Take for example Belarus or Armenia or Poland.


And don't forget Russia. Austria was third among televoters there.

I'm so glad with the results for the Netherlands, even though in the middle of the voting, the electricity in my neighbourhood went out, and I couldn't watch remaining part of the voting. :shock:

My other favourite was definitely Norway, such a beautiful song. :<3:
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Car » 2014-05-11, 11:39

Ludwig Whitby wrote:
Car wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
Levike wrote:That Polish and Slavic girls are the best, what's wrong with that?


That it's a male chauvinist message.

And in countries where it's not done, the reaction is " :ohwell: " at best, more likely " :roll: ". Not the kind of message to send out if you want to be seen as a modern country.
If you want to come across as backwards and making your women seen as objects, it's the way too go. In Poland's case, that's confirming existing stereotypes indeed.

And he just said what most of you were thinking. Let's be honest.

She. ;)
That IS the stereotype about Polish/ Slavic/ Eastern European women, fully confirmed by the song. Heck, even in a forum I'm a member of with lots of misogynist and sexist users, the straight men found it "cheap" and were embarrassed by the many points it received here and hoped that it was the many Poles living here who voted for it because "otherwise things must have changed for the worse here if people actually like that".

So that's the way it came across in Germany.

I don't see Poles as backwards, but the song certainly appeared that way. Not a good idea if you want to improve your image (which Poland could need indeed).
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2014-05-11, 11:44

Saim wrote:I don't agree with any reading of this that claims it reflects Poland's "backwardness", leading to some "clash of civilisations". First we'd have to accept that the "West" is substantially less sexist than Poland, something which I find hard to believe as someone who's lived in Australia, Catalonia and Serbia and has visited Poland and has met lots of Poles. In my experience, most people are sexist. Let's look at some music videos and ads that I see as broadly equivalent to My Słowianie:

Ok. We don't only differ on how we perceive social problems, we also differ in how we perceive our very society. There are people, both in the West and in the East, who see Europe as one society, one big family. The rules that apply to the old family members should also apply indiscriminately to the new ones as well. Others see Europe as a collection of societies who could be grouped into a couple of different cultural circles, and that rules should be adjusted according to cultural differences. Some focus on the whole, others on divisions and possible conflicts. This kind of thing happens all the time, from marxist theories to the 1990s Yugoslavia. What most of them have in common is that it's mostly the dominant group that focuses on the whole and the dominated ones on the divisions.

Car wrote:She. ;)

I'm terribly sorry. I never checked your profile. With the name that ends in a consonant and that means Emperor in my language I just assumed that you were a guy. Sorry.
Last edited by Ludwig Whitby on 2014-05-11, 11:51, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby languagepotato » 2014-05-11, 11:47

i pretty much disagree with europe apparently, my favourites were france, san marino, spain, and italy and slovenia weren't that bad either.
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Saim » 2014-05-11, 13:02

Ludwig, I more or less agree with you. It's definitely important to take on this issue from the angles of both culture/ethnicity and gender. Certainly there is more than one kind of chauvinism at work here - although I do think the principal one is the sexism.

My point about it not being a primarily cultural issue wasn't meant to downplay the differences between European societies - living in a territory inhabited by a national minority and learning their language has made me painfully aware of the kind of culture negation that can happen among "progressive" circles (the Catalan identity divides the proletariat blah blah blah). My point was more that it's incoherent for a Western European to act paternalistically towards Slavs when Western European societies have only very recently started taking on patriarchy and at a very slow pace, at that. In that sense, before we talk about which countries are "backward" or not it's important to remember we all live in essentially patriarchal societies.

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby languagepotato » 2014-05-11, 13:42

somehow finding the netherlands, france, san marino, spain, italy and slovenia the only countries with entries that don't sound like crying cats is a reason for my 'friends' to call me 'women-with-beard-o-phobic'
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Reveuse » 2014-05-11, 14:30

languagepotato wrote:somehow finding the netherlands, france, san marino, spain, italy and slovenia the only countries with entries that don't sound like crying cats is a reason for my 'friends' to call me 'women-with-beard-o-phobic'


In my opinion, the entry from Italy was way more like a crying cat than those from for example Sweden or Norway...(who didn't sound like crying cats at all)
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby languagepotato » 2014-05-11, 14:37

Reveuse wrote:
languagepotato wrote:somehow finding the netherlands, france, san marino, spain, italy and slovenia the only countries with entries that don't sound like crying cats is a reason for my 'friends' to call me 'women-with-beard-o-phobic'


In my opinion, the entry from Italy was way more like a crying cat than those from for example Sweden or Norway...(who didn't sound like crying cats at all)


i couldn't translate the idiom but in dutch 'kattengejank' (crying cat sound) means annoying sound, that's what i meant with crying cats
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Reveuse » 2014-05-11, 14:56

languagepotato wrote:
Reveuse wrote:
languagepotato wrote:somehow finding the netherlands, france, san marino, spain, italy and slovenia the only countries with entries that don't sound like crying cats is a reason for my 'friends' to call me 'women-with-beard-o-phobic'


In my opinion, the entry from Italy was way more like a crying cat than those from for example Sweden or Norway...(who didn't sound like crying cats at all)


i couldn't translate the idiom but in dutch 'kattengejank' (crying cat sound) means annoying sound, that's what i meant with crying cats


[Dutch mode on] Daarom juist. Italië was toch echt veel meer kattengejank (nou ja, geschreeuw dan) dan Zweden of Noorwegen. Maar dat is mijn mening, mijn vriend vond het liedje van Italië wel leuk. [Dutch mode off]
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2014-05-11, 15:19

I can't even remember Italy... But I do remember Norway, well, that certainly was 'kattengejank' according to me. Like a cat stuck in a tree. It wasn't bad or something, but I couldn't really understand why we gave it so many points. And none to France, I agree with languagepotatoe there! :)
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Luís » 2014-05-11, 15:21

Image

:lol:

It seems Poland won the UK public vote (while the jury ranked them last) so I guess there's still a lot of sexism in Western Europe too.
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Luís » 2014-05-11, 15:32

Quot linguas calles, tot homines vales

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Car » 2014-05-11, 15:50

Ludwig Whitby wrote:
Car wrote:She. ;)

I'm terribly sorry. I never checked your profile. With the name that ends in a consonant and that means Emperor in my language I just assumed that you were a guy. Sorry.

No need to apologise, I actually don't even mind.
But since we're Facebook friends, I though you'd like to know. ;)

Emperor? Well, makes sense, thinking of tsar.
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Varislintu » 2014-05-11, 15:53



I don't get it. Isn't men dressing as women almost the oldest comedy schtick around? So what's the problem here? That Conchita does it in a way that doesn't ridicule or put down femininity? Or is it just because he's gay? :ohwell:
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby md0 » 2014-05-11, 16:15

I am already getting tired of the political commentary on ESC from both respectable professors on Facebook, and from hundreds of people on reddit/r/europe.
I haven't watched anything, but I am pretty sure it will not smash Cypriot machismo as some professors suggested.
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Levike » 2014-05-11, 16:19

Oh Russia ... :|
Putin is simply mad that he can't grow a beard like that.

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 – Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby MillMaths » 2014-05-11, 17:38

Varislintu wrote:I don't get it. Isn't men dressing as women almost the oldest comedy schtick around? So what's the problem here? That Conchita does it in a way that doesn't ridicule or put down femininity? Or is it just because he's gay? :ohwell:

This year’s show reminds me of the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest.

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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Sol Invictus » 2014-05-11, 18:50

Varislintu wrote:


I don't get it. Isn't men dressing as women almost the oldest comedy schtick around? So what's the problem here? That Conchita does it in a way that doesn't ridicule or put down femininity? Or is it just because he's gay? :ohwell:

It's their new thing, Latvian news portal comments are overrun by pro-Russian people (not sure why, guess they feel need to prove themselves and everyone else has gotten tired of it and no longer coments) and in recent years they've gone viciously homophobic... go figure. I was like this reading what they said about Austria wining > :lolhuh: On top of it it is not like Russians don't have such comedy acts
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby Luís » 2014-05-11, 19:09

Well, there was Verka Serduchka in 2007. I don't remember Russia complaining so much when she came in second that year (but then again, she was Ukrainian, not Western).
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Re: Eurovision Song Contest 2014 - Copenhagen, Denmark

Postby voron » 2014-05-11, 20:02

Varislintu wrote:I don't get it. Isn't men dressing as women almost the oldest comedy schtick around? So what's the problem here?

Right. If you read Russian classics from Tolstoy to Chekhov, they would tell about a circus performance featuring among others a bearded woman. So if it was ok 2 centuries back, why does it cause such an ado nowadays? I don't get it.

I particularly hated how after the Eurovision show was over, I watched the comments on Russian TV and they were all chanting about how Europe degraded, how the symbol of Europe became a genderless being which stood on the stage all alone, how it damages the youth etc etc. I switched to another channel after a minute.

If they really want to protected the youth, why don't they ban vodka or cigarettes? They are universally accepted as being harmful for your health and they kill and degrade many more people than Conchita would do, yet they are universally popularized and sold. God damn it, even candies are more harmful (they make you obese and they harm your teeth) than a crossdresser is. What a blatant hypocrisy! It has nothing to do with conservatism, it's plain backwardness.


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