Yesterday night we were watching Eurovision 2007 song contest final. Ukraine was represented by well-known in CIS countries show man – Verka Serduchka. Verka is a stage-name of an actor who plays a bad-educated, utter ignorant lady who originally worked as a train conductor. Verka speaks an illiterate, sometimes, rude language – “surzhik” stands for mixed Ukrainian and Russian languages. The jokes are extremely primitive and not for intellectuals. Most of intelligent people with good taste consider Verka at least as an offensive show to Ukrainian spectators. In spite of this facts, Verka is extremely popular among vast amount of people. I think that it is bright sign of culture crisis on post-soviet Ukraine.
When the final results were summed up, and Verka won 2nd place, I to fell into a snare. Of course, I was happy that Ukrainian singer took 2nd place, but I couldn’t believe that it did Serduchka.
I’m not good at speaking on culture specific problems, so it is enough for this post.
read more: Verka Goes to Helsinki!
Eurovision has nothing common with culture. It’s a contest of diasporas.
Every year Cyprus votes for Greece, Portugal for Ukraine, Germany for Turkey, Turkey for Armenia, Belarus for Russia etc. The more people a country loses as emigrants, the more countries vote for it. The harder a diaspora is oppressed somewhere (armenians in Turkey or russians in Estonia), the more votes it gives to its native country. And so on. Those people do not think at all about the quality of contender.
It’s just global demography.
I completely agree. Furthermore, this is a contest of neighbors. Balkan division proved it. Yesterday I found some valuable articles on this problem:
http://www.telekritika.kiev.ua/articles/130/0/9170/eurovision_horbyk/
http://www.telekritika.kiev.ua/articles/176/0/9180/hrabovsky_verka/
http://www.proza.com.ua/culture/in_verka_we_trust.shtml