The ‘gay Olympics’? The Eurovision Song Contest and the politics of LGBT/European belonging
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7770952 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Catherine Baker (0000-0002-3991-7946, University of Hull, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 97-121 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of International Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1354-0661 • E-ISSN: 1460-3713 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066116633278 |
| OpenAlex | W2330428593 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 51 |
| References cited | 119 |
The politics of gay and transgender visibility and representation at the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual televised popular music festival presented to viewers as a contest between European nations, show that processes of interest to Queer International Relations do not just involve states or even international institutions; national and transnational popular geopolitics over ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights’ and ‘Europeanness’ equally constitute the understandings of ‘the international’ with which Queer International Relations is concerned. Building on Cynthia Weber’s reading the persona of the 2014 Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst with ‘queer intellectual curiosity’, this article demonstrates that Eurovision shifted from, in the late 1990s, an emerging site of gay and trans visibility to, by 2008–2014, part of a larger discursive circuit taking in international mega-events like the Olympics, international human-rights advocacy, Europe–Russia relations and the politics of state homophobia and transphobia. Contest organisers thus had to take positions — ranging from detachment to celebration — about ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender’ politics in host states and the Eurovision region. The construction of spatio-temporal hierarchies around attitudes to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, however, revealed exclusions that corroborate other critical arguments on the reconfiguration of national and European identities around ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality
CONTEST · Lesbian · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sociology · Transgender · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law
And I Dance with Somebody
(Un)Civilizing the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony
Embodying Military Muscles and a Remasculinized West
Yhdentymisen juhlaa ja ihanteiden kamppailua
All aboard?! Co-viewing with and within connected platforms in the Eurovision Song Contest
Belonging to a community of European fans? European common in-group identity formation through football fandom
Una Zorra de postal
Organization-as-Platform Activism
De ‘We Are Slavic’ a ‘My sister’s Crown’
Towards a sociology of recurrent events. Constellations of cultural change around Eurovision in 18 countries (1981–2021)
Bridging the ‘sport/culture silo’
Chicken dance (off)
Audiovisual narratives of the Sami people at the beginnings of the Eurovision Song Contest (1960–1980)
Nation Branding, Cultural Relations and Cultural Diplomacy at Eurovision
Russia, the Former Soviet Republics, and Europe Since 1989
Transness as insecurity
‘All Kinds of Everything’? Queer Visibility in Online and Offline Eurovision Fandom
Identidad, espectáculo y representación
What is told is always in the telling’
Voting in the Eurovision Song Contest
Promoting Nordicness through prizes
The historical coverage of televised media events in print media
Cosmopolitan recognition
Boycott eurovision singing to the song of its own tune
Eastern others
Eurovision through an intercultural lens
Eurovision Song Contest
No longer sidelined? Football fandom, belonging, and the boundaries of Europe
Becoming more and more European
Are you sure you’re not gay
Russia’s spectacle of “traditional values”
To those who choose to follow in our footsteps”
A country to fall in love with/in”
Media events and cosmopolitan fandom
Douze point
From Marlene to Conchita and Kim
Rethinking human rights
I’m not your toy’
Gender, Militarized Masculinity, and Hungarian Illiberalism
F*** tha police!” à la Russe
Uncanny Europe and Protective Europeanness
Pop populism
Failing Homonationalism? Gay Israeli Eurovision Geeks Negotiating Nationalism and Masculinity
A European Public Sphere United by Football
Be Creative, Be Friends and Share Cultural Experiences
Foodways and Foodwashing
Assessing the Role of Proximity, Authenticity, and Professionalism in Struggles Over Journalistic Authority in Fan Communities
Somewhere over the rainbow (crossing)
Killing Conchita
That's Not the Only Reason We Love Him
Instrumentally Inclusive
Inventing Eastern Europe
Resounding International Relations
Eurovision at 50
The socialist star
Empire of Song
Global Homophobia
The Crises of Multiculturalism
The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure 1
The locations of homophobia
T.A.T.u. You! Russia, the global politics of Eurovision, and lesbian pop
‘It’s Just Not Funny Any More’
Europe Since 1945
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures
The Curious Feminist
Eurovision Song Contest 2013. Malmö, Sweden
The Globalization of Sexuality
The Modern Fairy Tale
The Logic of Masculinist Protection
‘Love in Another Country’ - ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in Sexual Education Material Targeting Migrants in Sweden
Terrorist Assemblages
From Criticism to Critique
London's shadow legacies
De-Centring western sexualities
Sexual Excess in Russia’s Eurovision Performances as a Nation Branding Tool
Sweden
Wild Dances and Dying Wolves
Liquid London
Queer Rights and the Triangulation of Western Exceptionalism
Putting “Traditional Values” Into Practice
Special Issue
Resisting LGBT Rights Where “We Have Won”
The Intended and Unintended Queering of States/Nations
Mediating Post-Socialist Femininities
Political Identities/Nationalism as Heterosexism
Neoliberal Geopolitical Order and Value
Visions of Europe
Fantasies of power
Soft Power, Sports Mega-Events and Emerging States
In what language do you like to sing best?’ Placing popular music in broadcasting in post-war Europe
New face of Serbia’ at the Eurovision Song Contest
Gays who cannot properly be gay’
Banning “Homosexual Propaganda”
Political Awareness and Self-Blame in the Explanatory Narratives of LGBT People Amid the Anti-LGBT Campaign in Russia
Global games, local rules
Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe
Citation and Censorship
The Dutch Homo-Emancipation Policy and its Silencing Effects on Queer Muslims
Problematic Proximities
Now everybody can wear a skirt’
The Geopolitics of Global Aspiration
State Pride”
The protected, the protector, the defender
Local histories, European LGBT designs
The post-Communist growth machine
State, identity, and the politics of music
Welcoming the World? Hospitality, Homonationalism, and the London 2012 Olympics
The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure
Post‐Soviet Pop Goes Gay
A New Song for a New Motherland
The Colonial Present
Rethinking Homonationalism
"Orientalist Variations on the Theme "Balkans
National Identities and Transnational Intimacies
A ‘New Cold War
Whither Europe
International Courts as Agents of Legal Change
Off-shoring and Out-sourcing the Borders of EUrope
Empire of Song
Ukrainian Nation Branding Off-line and Online
My Kind of Campfire
Going Cultural
International Relations Theory and Global Sexuality Politics
Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture—World Politics Continuum
Queer Intellectual Curiosity as International Relations Method
Sochi 2014 and the rhetoric of a new Russia
Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law
Why is there no Queer International Theory
The end of International Relations theory
Critique of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ in human rights discourse
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights
Publishing American identity
From 'saving women' to 'saving gays
The global politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights
The Security Archipelago
Terrorist Assemblages
Microaggressions
Lost in conceptualization
Seeing sex, gender, and sexuality in international security
Heroic kisses, pseudo-events and homosexual propaganda
Sexual politics, torture, and secular time
Human rights and the Beijing Olympics
Popular Geopolitics Past and Future
Queer Space, Pride, and Shame in Moscow
Excluded
Hidden Hegemonies of the Rainbow
Mapping Québécois Sexual Nationalism in Times of 'Crisis of Reasonable Accommodations
Photographing Vladimir Putin
Sexual Politics, Orientalism and Multicultural Citizenship in the Netherlands
Spectacles of migrant 'illegality
| Unique citing works | 51 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5,1 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 51 |