174. Eurovision part 1
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There aren't many multilingual, multinational television shows that have been running for nearly seven decades. But what makes the Eurovision Song Contest so special to me is not the music, or the dancing, or the costumes that range from spangletastic to tear-off: no, it's the people butting heads about language. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, recounts the many changes in Eurovision's language rules, and its language hopes and dreams.
This is the first of a two-part Eurovisionallusionist. In the next instalment: dictators. Protests. Boom Bang-A-Bang Ding-a-Dong Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley. Find out more about this episode at theallusionist.org/eurovision1, where there's also a transcript.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zoltzman, couldn't escape if I wanted to, language |
| 0:09.6 | Lou, knowing my fate is to be with you. |
| 0:13.4 | This episode is about the language of the Eurovision Song Contest. |
| 0:17.1 | It doesn't matter if you've never seen it, because the very concept of a nearly 70 year |
| 0:22.6 | old international multilingual televised song contest contains plenty to get your teeth |
| 0:27.9 | and teeth. |
| 0:28.9 | If you do want to get the gist, I'm sure you can find a veritable buffadlement of clips |
| 0:33.9 | online. |
| 0:35.0 | This is Eurovision Illusionist Part 1 of 2. |
| 0:38.4 | On with the show. |
| 0:46.7 | The Eurovision Song Contest has given us the international renown of Celine Dion, Monascin, |
| 0:53.4 | Dana International, Comchita Worst and River Dance. |
| 0:57.6 | It's given us tear off skirts, null poit, shiny, shiny costumes, a band of Babishke dancing |
| 1:04.2 | around an onstage bread oven, not to mention fraught politics within and between nations. |
| 1:11.4 | And most importantly for our purposes, linguistic intrigue. |
| 1:16.4 | So much linguistic intrigue. |
| 1:18.5 | My name is Dean Vouletich. |
| 1:20.4 | I'm a historian of contemporary Europe and the author of the world's first scholarly |
| 1:26.3 | study on the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. |
| 1:31.0 | What got you interested in Eurovision as a field of study? |
| 1:34.6 | Well I grew up in Australia, the son of Croatian migrants, and we got to watch Eurovision |
| 1:40.8 | already in the 1980s because of Australia's large non-English speaking as they call |
... |
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