Bombed
May 13th, 2007
Views: 290
Having the opportunity to actually sit down at a computer for the first time in over a week, I find myself having to write something Eurovision-related. Mainly because, if there’s any justice, the result of last night’s contest should finally extirpate the conviction, running like a red thread through contemporary British culture, that irony makes everything OK. Scooch, singing a painingly arch ditty called ‘Flying the Flag (For You)’ winked and elbow-nudged their way through their performance in now-traditional ‘ooh-aren’t-we-knowingly-awful-and-you-eurotypes-just-don’t-get-it -(especially-the-80s-BA-slogan-reference)’ stylee.
The subsequent massive failure of the song may have had something to do with said eurotypes having got used a long time ago to the increasingly smug unfunniness of official British ‘humour’. But it may have also had something to do with the fact that, through the knowing smirks, Scooch were trying to remind everyone of all the great stuff about the UK by announcing that ‘we’re flying the flag all over the world’, accompanied by back projected imagery that looked like nothing so much as endless waves of bombers streaming out to darken the skies over Belgrade or Baghdad… All the irony in north London would be incapable of making that a smart move, especially from the viewpoint of the Balkan bloc.
Unless (of course, in true Brit style) torpedoing the song via subtle references to imperialism was the point all along.
I knew there was something that disturbed me about Scooch’s backdrop. I couldn’t quite place it at the time, but you’re right you know, it was akin to a squadron of bomber command flying o’er the streets of Belgrade. It wasn’t the reason why we did so badly though. Afterall, why should subliminal messages of overt nationalism or imperialism necessarily disturb the great swathes of Eastern Europe that regularly churn out their nationalistic shite for our edification. If anything, it could have turned some of them on.
We did so badly because, in fact, those eurotypes didn’t get the joke. It is telling that the only votes we got came from Malta and Ireland, the two most sophisticated Eurovision peoples. The rest, let us just despair because they delivered Serbia as the winners. Good grief. Lamentable bollocks on a night full of ‘em. Scooch were poor, but not so poor as all that.
I’m off to teach English in Korea in about a month. Wish me well.
Bloody hell, you don’t do things by halves, do you? I only caught a few moments of the Serbian entry, but it seemed to have Roland Browning out of Grange Hill on vocals.
All the best - and email me the story behind this! You must have made your mind up sometime since last Saturday…
Ironic appreciation of the horror show that is Eurovision surely ran it’s
course a long time ago?
It used to be funny watching countries voting for, or against, each other in
hugely predictable blocs and knowing that we could always rely on little
Malta giving us a reciprocal thank you for the George Cross we awarded them
in 1942.
But the naked nationalism and regional bias that has been underlying the
show in the last decade or so has made it unpleasant and depressing viewing.
It now seems to be a simple competition of grotesques, with each nation
attempting to demonstrate it’s ability to laugh at itself by parading
the most ludicrously dressed individual to represent them.
Lordi, lordy, indeed.
Not for me anymore.
[…] Roschekno at Smokewriting has similar feelings: “The subsequent massive failure of the song may have had something to do with said eurotypes having got used a long time ago to the increasingly smug unfunniness of official British ‘humour’.” […]