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Post‐Soviet Pop Goes Gay: Russia's Trajectory to Eurovision Victory
Author(s) -
CASSIDAY JULIE A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the russian review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9434
pISSN - 0036-0341
DOI - 10.1111/russ.10717
Subject(s) - contest , victory , sociology , gender studies , politics , political science , media studies , law
Russia's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest confirms the popular music extravaganza's ability to create a Europe that bears an eccentric yet powerful relationship to the geopolitical entity that this word usually describes. Since Russia's debut in 1994 through 2008, when pop star Dima Bilan took Eurovision's Grand Prix, Russian acts leveraged the contest's appeal to an LGBT audience, camp esthetic, and ability to construct a queer European identity by incorporating Russian constructions of Western homosexuality in an increasingly evident manner. This gay trajectory to Eurovision victory produced a mixed message that struck an uneasy balance between Russia's historic homophobia and Eurovision's gay identity politics. Although Russia's gay trajectory to Eurovision victory began unintentionally, Bilan's two acts established his mastery of the contest's camp esthetic by blurring the lines between hetero‐ and homosexual romance in 2006 and expressing homoeroticism via metrosexuality in his winning performance of the ballad “Believe” in 2008. However, after reaching its zenith in 2008, this gay trajectory came to a homophobic halt in Moscow's own production of Eurovision 2009. In addition to televising a heteronormative spectacle, officials banned the first ever pan‐Slavic Pride parade timed to coincide with the contest's finals. Subsequent Eurovision acts from Russia show that Russia's gay trajectory to Eurovision victory had nothing to do with entering the Western European arena of accepting and protecting LGBT subjects and instead has resulted in new forms of camp that distance themselves from the contest's gay fan base.