Eurovision
The Eurovision Song Contest was held this evening in Rotterdam. If you've never heard of it, it's the annual competition that launched ABBA into the stratosphere in the 1970s, and was the subject of the wonderful movie starring Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrel last year.
While I wasn't surprised at the outcome of the competition itself, I was surprised at the reaction to the outcome by a number of people I know.
Before getting around to that, it's worth noting that in my mind the Eurovision Song Contest has some significant problems.
Because of the number of countries now involved, “Semi Finals” are held – meaning many of the more original bands are filtered out by juries of “professionals” that select the finalists. Unfortunately those juries tend to vote politically – meaning that neighbouring countries vote for each other.
Thankfully half of the vote in the finals is made up by a public vote – which often redresses the balance – but it's too late for the bands that have already been removed from the competition by the afore mentioned biased juries.
There's a damning phrase about committees (called juries in this case) – “designed by committee” often means the end result is a watered down mess that nobody actually wanted, but they are willing to live with if it means they don't have to do anything more.
Getting back to the actual subject of this post, I headed to Facebook and Twitter after the competition finished, and started reading people's reactions. I was stunned.
“The winner was terrible – nowhere near as good as (insert winner from 30 years ago)”
“Everyone in Europe hates us – what do you expect?”
“Most of the music was terrible – nothing I would ever listen to!”
“Did you see what half of them were wearing? I would be embarrassed!”
I could go on – for quite some time.
I suppose I'm just surprised (and not surprised at all) about the blinkered, insular view that seems to be so prevalent throughout a wide cross-section of people here.
So many people seem to think that their opinions are shared by the majority, because they are shared by the small circle of people that re-inforce their often bigoted, prejudiced, narrow minded, racist, sexist, or outdated opinions on music, fashion, style, culture, and everything in-between.
The social networks have a part to play in this of course – I've written about this before – about the algorithmic timeline surrounding people with concordant views. It's dangerous. Unless we are challenged, we do not learn or grow. Plato wrote about it thousands of years go in his “Allegory of the Cave”. It seems many people still haven't learned.
How do I turn this around?
Perhaps with the admission that our entry into the competition was really, really awful – and that I loved many of the more spirited, individual acts that performed throughout this year's show. I just wish there were a few more people with open minds, and open hearts taking notice of the direction the world is headed, who might make a quiet stand against it with me.