Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest

Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest examines how the Eurovision Song Contest has reflected and become intertwined with the history of postwar Europe from a political perspective. Established in 1956, the Eurovision Song Contest is the world's largest popular music event and one of the most popular television programmes in Europe, currently attracting a global audience of around 200 million people. Eurovision is often mocked as cultural kitsch because of its over-the-top performances and frivolous song lyrics. Yet there is no cultural medium that connects Europeans more than popular music, the development of which has always been tied to cultural, economic, political, social and technological change - making Eurovision the ideal tool to explain the history of Europe in the last sixty years. This book uses Eurovision as a vehicle to address topics ranging from the Cold War, liberal democracy and communism to nationalism, European integration, economic prosperity and human rights. It analyses these subjects through their cultural, political and social relationships with Eurovision entries as expressed through lyrics and music, as well as by examining public debates that have accompanied the selection of the entries and the organisation of the contest itself. Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest also considers how states have used Eurovision to define their identities in a European context, be it to assert their national distinctiveness, highlight political issues or affirm their Europeanism or Euroscepticism in the context of European integration. Based on original sources, including hitherto unpublished archival documents from international broadcasting organisations, this is a novel historical study of interest to anyone keen to know more about the postwar history of Europe and its cultural history in particular.

Dr. Dean Vuletic is a historian of contemporary Europe who specialises in the Eurovision Song Contest, including as a prominent media commentator and public speaker. He began teaching the world's first university course on Eurovision at New York University; as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellow at the University of Vienna, he then led a groundbreaking research project on the history of Eurovision. He holds a PhD in modern European history from Columbia University.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Europe's Greatest Television Show Part I: The Cold War, 1945-1989 1. The Western European Arrangement 2. The Show of Nations 3. A Contest for Communism Part II: European Unification, 1990-2016 4. A Concert of Europe 5. The Values of Eurovision Conclusion: Bridges, Diamonds and Fires Bibliography Index