Eurovision Song Contest and the Iron Curtain: Introduction
Marcin Bogucki
University of Warsaw (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5349-1208
Jonas Vanderschueren
KU Leuven (Belgium)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8479-085X
Abstract
This editorial frames the special issue Eurovision Song Contest and the Iron Curtain, examining the Eurovision Song Contest as a site to perform Europeanization and belonging from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe. The article traces the ESC’s institutional origins in the European Broadcasting Union alongside its Cold War-era counterpart, the OIRT/Intervision network, before following the ESC’s eastward expansion after 1989 and the recurring anxieties this expansion generated in Western commentary, particularly after the 1998 shift to televoting, which was widely perceived in the West as favoring Eastern and Southeastern European blocs. The editors argue that dominant scholarly and popular narratives about Eurovision have been written largely from a post-Cold War, Western European vantage point that treats CEE as a homogeneous, peripheral, or perpetually transitional space. Drawing on decolonial and inter-imperial frameworks, the essay contends that this framing obscures the ways in which the region has itself been subject to external empire-building, while also erasing the diversity of knowledge produced within the region. Collectively, the issue advances the engagement of performance studies’ with Eurovision as a transnational stage on which geopolitics, cultural memory, and contested Europeanness are continuously performed and renegotiated.
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Keywords:
Eurovision Song Contest, iron curtain, Central and Eastern Europe, performance studies, decolonial studies, EuropeanizationReferences
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Authors
Marcin BoguckiUniversity of Warsaw Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5349-1208
Marcin Bogucki - PhD, graduate of cultural studies, art history and musicology, assistant profesor at the University of Warsaw (Institute of Polish Culture, Section for Theatre and Performance). His research focuses on the cultural history of music and modern staging of opera. Recently he also has been developing projects on queer performances and the Eurovision Song Contest, especially in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. Member of the Polish Society for Theatre Research, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe branch, and the Organisation Générale des Amateurs de l’Eurovision
Authors
Jonas VanderschuerenKU Leuven Belgium
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8479-085X
Jonas Vanderschueren - Postdoctoral Researcher at Cultural Studies, KU Leuven (Belgium), where they specialize in queer as method in the context of Polish culture and Sinophone cinemas. Previously they were affiliated with PAN-IS and Ghent University.
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From issue 1/2018 to 3/2022 all articles were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Pamiętnik Teatralny, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
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