The Eurovision Song Contest – A Continent (still) Divided?

Credited as one of the most successful major televised music events held annually in Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) still serves as a battlefield between Eastern and Western European aesthetic paradigms. Although the Western paradigm has long been regarded as an almost universal criterion of success, the contemporary ESC presents a unique opportunity for post‐communist acts to contest that hegemony while playing with its conventions. This article examines how, in the post‐1989 situation, the most successful Eastern European acts purposely exploited, juxtaposed and subverted several aesthetic categories, demonstrating their understanding of the conventions promoted at the ESC on the one hand, while undermining and contesting them on the other. The article argues for greater attention to such strategies as over‐exploitation of stereotypes and auto‐stereotypes, as well as mocking the prevailing aesthetics by playing with such notions as authenticity, folklore, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch or hyper‐reality and challenging the contest's utopian and nostalgic ideals.