After watching the annual song contest, beamed to us this year from Helsinki, I cannot help but think that we British are very different from the rest of our European neighbours. There must be something in the water. I thought the commentary of our own national treasure, the Irishman Terry Wogan, epitomised these differences — although perhaps not in the way he might expect.
Year after year, he and we mock Eurovision with glee, pointing out how seriously everyone takes the contest, while we participate with our tongues in our cheek. This year, however, that same attitude boomeranged back to slap us in the face. For example, when the song that was destined to win was performed by the Serbian delegation, those of us watching the broadcast with the translations could see that the song was a personal account of someone coming to terms with a lost, forbidden love. But the only words Terry could find were to mock the “owl like” lead singer, noticing the contrast between her rather androgynous appearance and the Amazonian femininity of her backing singers. She was baring her soul for the continent, and all Terry could do was chuckle.
The Serbian singer had the last laugh, however, when the rest of Europe voted in her favour, dumping the British effort into a “nosedive”. This was not a surprise – our song about low cost air travel was never going to be popular. What was noteworthy, however, was that the UK was one of the few countries that did not give the Serbian owl-woman any points. Instead, we gave ‘douze points’ to the terrible Turkish offering, which matched the British entry for vacuity, but with the added eye-candy of belly-dancers.
Indeed, we had already been told that the belly dancers were British, so in fact, my fellow countrymen had voted as jingoistic as possible, given the rules. A familiar and hilarious theme for Sir Terry is the bizarre block voting which has always characterised the competition. We find that the neighbours in the Scandinavian cul-de-sac all voted for each other; the handful of countries that made up the former Yugoslavia gave each other maximum points; and Russia exchanged top marks with her former Soviet states. This is particularly alien to the British mindset. While our own neighbours Ireland and France were kind to us in their point allocations, we did not reciprocate. Do we imagine that an independent Scotland or Wales will vote for England, or vice-versa, if the UK were to break up? No we do not, not even out of pity.
I am often criticised on this site for my apparent insistence on the relativistic, without any anchor of objectivity to judge and compare different peoples and cultures. Well, let me satisfy those critics by throwing all that relativistic nonsense out the window for a moment. Let me say that the British have this weekend shown themselves to be nothing less than a drone of boors. I mean that quite sincerely and objectively, since there is no room for irony when we talk about Eurovision. We are like the idiot at the party who initially misses the joke, yet bores everyone by repeating the same punch-line when everyone else has moved on to being serious for a moment. We are the misers who show no camaraderie or neighbourly love, who bring nothing to the party but noxious fumes and bullying laughter. We are the social inepts of Europe.
Except for me of course, because I voted for Serbia.
Roschekno at Smokewriting has similar feelings: “The subsequent massive failure of the song may have had something to do with said eurotypes having got used a long time ago to the increasingly smug unfunniness of official British ‘humour’.”
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Two journalists find themselves without liberty, in two very different situations.
First, via Mash at the Dr Strangelove Blog, we hear that prominent journalist Tasneem Khalil arrested by military police in Bangladesh. Khalil is only 26, and works for the Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper. He also campaigns for Human Rights Watch, who have issued a statement regarding his detention.
There are rumours that this detention will be shortlived, and that he might be released by the weekend. Regardless, the Internet is already being used to co-ordinate a campaign for his release: There is a possibility of a protest outside the Bangladeshi embassy in London, and campaigners will be raising awareness within the Bangladeshi community in the UK, at the Brick Lane Mela this weekend. Pickled Politics has more information.
Meanwhile, BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been missing for 60 days. In his case, his captors are a local militia group in Gaza.
An online petitions has been created for Alan Johnston, with another planned for Tasneem Khalil. However, I wonder whether this is as important as simply spreading awareness on a word-of-mouth (or word-of-blog) basis throughout the relevant communities. In neither case are the captors (The Bangladeshi ‘caretaker government’; and the Jaish al-Islam group in Gaza) directly accountable to the populations they pretend to serve. But one hopes that a rising wave of discontent coming from within those populations will eventually persuade those who make the decisions, that releasing their prisoners is the best course of action. By contrast, disapproval from outside these ‘constituencies’ – say, from the BBC or the British Government – might not be as persuasive.
Good luck Alan and Tasneem.
Tasneem Khalil has now been released. Worryingly, his detention was apparently “not due to his journalistic work and had nothing to do with his functions at The Daily Star … In fact, it was because of the contents of his personal blog and some SMSs he had sent recently…” Hmmm.
An overfull service from Kings Cross to Edinburgh yesterday.
Despite the fact we were packed like sardines in a tin, I found the journey passed quite quickly. Probably something to do with everyone being in the same situation, which breeds a certain camaraderie. One kind family from Portsmouth even shared their chapattis with the other passengers.
Layers of sponge, layers of meaning: My mother does a fantastic line in meta-cakes. Last year, we had the Famous Blog Cake. This year, we have a representation of the theatre production I have been working on, rendered in the medium of icing and lego.
The show combines film and live performance, where the characters conjure “seventeen scenarios for the theatre”. So my birthday cake is, in fact, a rendering in icing of a rendering on film of a rendering on stage of an imagined story. That’s at least four layers, which works out at two-per sponge tier.
I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of the little man with the beard and computers, standing off-stage/cake. It is meant to be me.
In fact, I was presented with the cake by means of a short video, e-mailed to me while I was at work. Given the context, it was the perfect combination of medium and message. It is unfortunate that the sublime wit might not be apparent to anyone other than myself, but I sincerely believe it was a very clever creation.
The common (some might say inevitable) response to my previous post is to suggest that I am mis-defining the term multiculturalism, and that it does in fact mean simply the idea that all cultures have complete parity. How else do we get the absurd defences of illiberal practices? Even if the the counter-intuitive work done in the name of multiculturalism is no such thing, why persist with a term that has been sullied by these actions. Far better, say the critics, to call the tolerance and change something like ‘melting pot’ instead.
But cling to ‘multiculturalism’ I do. First, because I question the extent to which the word has been discredited by its misuse. And secondly, because it just seems a better word, which better captures the ideas which I think are important. ‘Melting pot’ implies an all-consuming mass in which individual identity is lost. It has a whiff of homogeneity about it, and any new addition is barely perceptible. I want to emphasise the fact that change will occur within the majority population too. New additions are not just ‘spice’ but a whole extra ingredient…
Here are some areas of interest to me. First, the notion of group or cultural rights. Where they exist and are taken into account, I tend to the idea that they arise from a combination of individual rights, and tradition. Preserving (or at least respecting) a particular cultural practice will allow individuals to flourish. I suspect that this puts me at odds with what we could call fundamentalist multiculturalists, who hold that a culture is inherently valuable in itself.
Second, the extent to which multiculturalism is an off-shoot of western liberal thought. Is it simply a kind of legislated tolerance? Is it possible in other societies? Critics say that it is not, but I am less sure. India and the new South Africa are worthy of examination here. Clearly the impasse in Iraq, and between Israel and the Palestinians will only be solved when the various ethnic groups agree that there are things of value in different cultures they might encounter, and that these other cultures are not malign. Nation states with a single identifiable culture are not an option. But it is still an open question as to whether these solutions can succeed without an acceptance of basic liberal values. No wonder the theocracies of Iran and The Vatican feel threatened by multiculturalism – it is entirely incompatible with their claim to the absolute truth.
A third point about the multicultural debate is the extent to which it is dominated by religion, and religious obsession with sex and the sexes. Culture is of course more than that. It extends into those areas of life that are less contentious, where people might be more willing to engage in a dialogue, more willing to change. Cultural practices concerning not only food, but hospitality, leisure and ritual are all fair game for this kind of discussion. And how we evolve in these areas is as much a concern of multiculturalism, as the the ‘flash-point’ issues which periodically sweep through our periodicals like wildfire. It is perfectly possible to sit in a souq smoking a shisha pipe, without endorsing any of the pillars of Islam. Likewise, it is perfectly possible to visit the mosque in the morning and the football in the afternoon. Finsbury Park Mosque is a short walk from the Emirates Stadium at Ashburton Grove. When people talk of London and New York as the two truly multicultural ‘world cities,’ it is surely this kind of diversity that they are referring to.