I reckon I’ve watched my last Eurovision for a while. I don’t want to sound like one of those old fuddy duddies but it’s all gone too explicit for my liking.
“I used to watch this with my Grandma!” I said, while half-naked models cavorted on stage. At times the action went beyond suggestive and crossed into overt sexualisation of a song, or an image, or a singer. When a novelty act came out apparently naked from the waste down with fireworks going off around his flesh-coloured bits, I had to wonder at what point we lost the fun of silly hats and props from IKEA, and switched them for debauchery.
Unfortunately, worse than the cavorting, and far far less amusing, was the brazen evil of some of the acts. Yeah - I mean it. Again, forgive me for sounding like a curmudgeon but when Ireland swirled out of the dark fog into satanic magic, I felt a very real, spiritual tug, and almost immediately I switched off the laptop. Whatever was going on was suddenly pounding my head with ice cold fear and pain, and I’m not partnering with that. Ever.
Similarly, Slovenia’s entry was a lady in skin-tight snake leather, with no curve left to the imagination, plus a coven of naked men writhing around her like snakes. As the camera panned past her sneering face, I saw a flash of eyes behind her own, like eyes within eyes, and I knew that some entity from a stage in Malmo, Sweden, was actually pouring hatred at me - somehow - through the screen.
That sounds daft doesn’t it? I promise you, it’s not. I saw it. We saw it. We switched it off.
Sad, isn’t it? I learned flags and capitals from Eurovision. Plus the French things like ‘douze points’ and ‘Le Royaume Uni’… I used to wonder what it would be like to write a song that got to be performed, and I learned about hooks and middle-8s and song writing! It was always silly - of course it was, it was the Eurovision Song Contest, but it was fun!
So that was my last Eurovision I think. Sir Terry Wogan’s gentle quips are a thousand years ago and my Grandma is long gone too, along with the fun. Europe, now at its most politically diverse state in maybe a hundred years, is a desolate wasteland of pornographic europop, if tonight is to be believed.
And that is a shame, because Slovenia, Ireland, Finland, Austria, Croatia… these are beautiful, beautiful places of rich history and stunning scenery! And I think that’s how I want to think of Europe.
I told Sammy, and my friends, that I simply don’t want to watch it next year.
“I honestly just wish I was having a worship time instead,” I said, texting. I mean it. I really do mean it.
No comments:
Post a Comment