Why is the Eurovision Song Contest Ridiculous? Exploring a Spectacle of Embarrassment, Irony and Identity

Abstract

This article considers how the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK has come to be seen as a moment of cultural embarrassment. As a showcase for national identities, Eurovision gives rise to contemporary unease about cultural disembeddedness, the state-centric nature of national identity and the gap between globalized/American popular culture and European/ethnic cultural forms. The paper explores Terry Wogan's use of ironic commentary to both embrace and distance himself and his audience from the embarrassment of Eurovision and looks at responses to his commentary on the BBC website. The paper concludes by considering technologies of worldliness that construct internationalism differently from Eurovision.