In the hours leading up to the Grand Final of the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, it rained ceaselessly. I know this because I was standing outside in that rain, queueing for entry to the Wiener Stadthalle, where the event was to be held that night, slowly getting soakedâticketholders had been warned that umbrellas would not be let in. Having travelled from Australia with a general admission, standing room ticket, I was not taking any chances in ensuring I secured a good viewing position. The kindly Swede standing in front of me offered commiserations on the weather, and struck up a conversation. A mad Eurovision fan since ABBAâs 1974 win, he was thrilled to learn that this was my first visit. This gave way to confusion when he realised where I was from: âbut what,â he wondered, âis an Australian doing here?â Before I could answer, a group of compatriots decked in green and gold from head to toe walked past the queue and, noticing the scarf sticking above my collar, bellowed âAussie! Aussie! Aussie!â at me.1 âOi, oi, oi,â I replied meekly, smiling and waving as they moved on to berate someone else further down the line. My new Swedish friend turned and raised an eyebrow, seeking an explanation. âItâs an⊠Australian thing,â I muttered, eyes fixed firmly forward, waiting for the hours to tick down before the doors opened and the show began.
Later, inside, as I fought for space in the vast standing area in front of the stage and narrowly avoided asphyxiation at the hands of an overenthusiastic Spanish flag, I noticed the scale of the Australian fan presence: we were everywhere. Australiaâs participation in that yearâs Contest had been confirmed long after the tickets for the event had gone on sale; these werenât fly-by-night fans, but rather, many of them had intended to attend the Contest even before it was confirmed as Australiaâs official dĂ©but. About ten minutes into the show, the three Austrian hosts Mirjam Weichselbraun, Alice Tumler, and Arabella Kiesbauer strode to the front of the stage, and proclaimed the iconic opening to the Eurovision Grand Final broadcast: âGood evening, Europe!â They moved swiftly through some platitudes about the Contestâs 2015 taglineââBuilding Bridgesââbefore Weichselbraun declared: âIt surely is the worldâs biggest music showâor as Australians put it, breakfast TV! By the way, welcome our very special anniversary guests in the Contest: hello Australia!â The audience inside the venue roared their approval. Australia had arrived on the biggest television stage in the world: the Eurovision Song Contest.
Three hours later, half-way through the vote-reporting phase in which each individual nation is âcalledâ from onstage and delivers its point tally, Weichselbraun announced, âAnd now, weâve got a long way [sic]: weâre going to Australia, for the first time everâ. Iconic Australian newsreader and media personality Lee Lin Chin appeared on the screen, in front of a dodgy green screen of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and that audience roar returned: both in the room and on the telecast, Weichselbraun was drowned out as she continued, âwe ask for the results of Australiaâgood morning, Australia!â. Chin, with a wry smile, waited a moment for the sound to die down, and when it didnât, she continued regardless: âand good evening, Europe. Weâre very excited; Australia thanks you for including us for the first time, in your sixtieth anniversary yearâ. Chin went on to award Australiaâs 12 points to the eventual winner Sweden. In return, Australia received the maximum douze points from hosts Austria and Sweden. If we accept the image of the Eurovision Familyâone often proffered by the eventâs organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU )âthen we might say it is here in 2015 that Australia finally steps up to join the adults, from the kidsâ table at which it had been sitting since the Contestâs first broadcast on Australian screens in 1983.
The genesis of this book is in the struggle I faced answering the Swedeâs question in 2015: what was an Australian doing there in that queue, and by extension what was Australia doing in the Contest as a whole? Many of the reactions to Australiaâs promotion to a competing nation in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 centred on its right to compete, whether in fan commentary or in mainstream media. Australia is self-evidently not a European nation, and while the legacy of European colonisation lives on in many aspects of national identity, the most recent decades of Australian foreign policy and migration have been marked by a pivot towards Asia. Yet, perhaps Australia might still be (self-)described as culturally European, and Australian Head of Delegation Paul Clarkeâs aspiration for Australia to be the âSweden of the Southâ (van Ee 2017) is as much about aligning Australia with a progressive, chic Scandi-cosmopolitanism, as it is about success in Eurovision. The fierce debate that Australiaâs accession into Eurovision provoked, both at home and abroad, provides an illustration of not only the ways in which a single nationâs experience opens out wider questions about the Contest, but also the ways in which the Contest can be used to ask and answer wider questions about the nation.
The structure of this book follows a similar logic: it offers a collection of Australian scholars writing about Australia and Eurovision from their individual disciplinary and geographical standpoints. While it avoids a strict delineation between them, the book is divided into three parts that broadly correspond to the uses to which the authors put Eurovision as a case study. In the first part, Australia in Eurovision, the chapters consider how Australia has participated in Eurovision from the Contestâs inception to our first national selection in 2019, examining in particular what Australiaâs participation can tell us about Eurovision. An Interval Act, a shift in tone and form, presents the view from Europe, collating some European perspectives on Australiaâs arrival in Eurovision. The second part, Eurovision in Australia, turns to considering the history of the Contestâs reception in Australia, focussing on how Eurovision has been experienced down under across time, and what this might say about Australia. The Conclusion then considers how the findings of the book are deepened and complicated by the inaugural EurovisionâAustralia Decides event in 2019. The following section of this introduction sets out a brief roadmap to navigate this book, outlining the arguments of each chapter and their relationship to the book as a whole.
Roadmap
The book begins in Chap. 2 with an overview of Australiaâs Eurovision history, which outlines the countryâs relationship with and involvement in the Contest, and provides the historical context on which the following chapters draw. Dean Vuletic highlights here that Australiaâs connection to Eurovision reflects the countryâs evolving cultural, political, and social demographics. This begins in the 1950s, with Australiaâs inclusion in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU ) as an associate member, reflecting the countryâs colonialist history, with a greater interest in and identification with broadcast content from the United Kingdom. The more multicultural government policies of the 1970s allowed the post-war southern European immigrant population of Australia to enter public discourse and be recognised as an integral part of the nation, particularly through the creation of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS ). It was therefore a logical development for SBS to begin its Eurovision telecast in 1983. The current period of Australiaâs participation in the Contest as a contestant has involved a greater awareness of countryâs Asian immigrant population and First Nations peoples. Vuletic also notes that the recent welcoming of Australia as a competing nation in the Contest was a more desirable shift for the EBU, both politically and economically, than trying to expand the Contest to other member nations in the Middle East and northern Africa. Australia has a much longer history of participation in the Eurovision Song Contest than is popularly known, and Vuletic sets out the multitude of overlapping factors that have contributed to this national fascination.
While Australia has a clear fascination with the Contest, those countries that are experienced Eurovision veterans do not always have a reciprocal fascination with Australia. Anika Gauja unpacks this misalignment in Chap. 3, by analysing the voting patterns for Contests that have involved Australia as a competing country and identifying that Australia does not fit into traditional voting blocs within Europe, despite the countryâs historical, cultural, and political ties to numerous European nations. Gauja also discusses the history of voting in the Contest, including the relatively recent expansion of the popular vote to include the viewing public. For Australian viewers, this expansion was continued in 2019 when SBS held the first Australia Decides event, which allowed viewers to vote for the artist who would represent Australia in Eurovision that year. By further engaging with the very audience it has helped to cultivate, SBS has sought to cement Australiaâs interest in the Contest to both expand the national fan base and disseminate the multicultural identity of Australia to countries beyond Europe.
Multiculturalism is not the only facet of the Australian identity projected to the world as part of the nationâs participation in Eurovision. In Chap. 4, Julie L. Collins and Lorina Barker assert that through the selection of Indigenous Australian performers Jessica Mauboy and Isaiah Firebrace as entrants, First Nations peoples are represented on the global stage as paradigmatically Australian. In performing at the Contest, though, Mauboy and Firebrace are expected to represent not only Australia, but also First Nations Australians as a wholeâan expectation that Collins and Barker question through asking why the performing Indigenous body must always signify more than itself. Furthermore, these performances by Indigenous Australians at the Contest have presented to the world and the Australian viewing public an image of reconciliation that, while positive and aspirational, neither aligns with nor fully represents the treatment of Indigenous Australians in their own country. They conclude by suggesting that the inclusion of Australiaâs First Nations peoples in Eurovision can be understood as both an exercise in nation-branding, and an unprecedented career opportunity for these Indigenous artists.
Bronwyn Winter begins Chap. 5 by noting that the question of gender, especially as it applies to women, has often been overlooked in commentary about Eurovision. Observing that gender identity in the Contest is imbricated with the presentation of diverse sexual and racial identities, she focusses on the ways in which women have been portrayed throughout Eurovisionâs history, with specific reference to expectations of behaviour and the presentation of women as a vessel for national identity. Turning to Australia, Winter argues that thus far, Australia has competed in the Contest with more conservative or perceived safer acts that were chosen by SBS and their broadcast partner Blink TV. Following the introduction of public voting in 2019 for the Australia Decides competition, the winner and runner-up were both far more adventurous than the previous heteronormative acts. This public embrace illustrates how well the Australian Eurovision audience understands the Contest, and the wide variety of genders, sexualities, and ethnicities that it embraces. Nevertheless, even as Winterâs chapter addresses the lacuna in analysis of women and femininity at the Contest, it highlights a new gap in Australian Eurovision scholarship around queerness and transinclusivity that we hope is quickly addressed as academic consideration of the Contest continues to grow in Australia.
Despite the many disciplinary perspectives from which the Contest has been interrogated as an object of study, little debate has focussed on the music itself and the many sounds of Eurovision. In Chap. 6, Brent Keogh, Shelley Brunt, and Liz Giuffre address this gap by analysing the Australian entries that have competed at the Contest thus far. After establishing that there is no singular âAustralian soundâ, the trio discuss the manner in which performers, and the songs they are performing, may or may not reflect the identity of the country they are representing. This is followed by a musical analysis of the five songs that have represented Australia at the Contest from 2014 to 2018, which identifies common traits such as chord progressions and rhythms reflecting a more globalised and culturally root...