by Anikó Imre
about Anikó Imre
Anikó Imre is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She works in comparative media studies with a special focus on European television and film, (post-)socialism, gender, sexuality, and race. Her most recent book is TV Socialism.
The Eurovision Song Contest
Abstract: The televised annual pan-European music competition Eurovision started out in 1956 as an aspirational cultural forum to encourage a sense of European belonging among postwar nations. As the size and spectacle of the competition grew over the decades, Eurovision has increasingly provided a campy, ironic, queer commentary on the gap between the utopian principle of “unity and diversity” and the increasing national fragmentation and regional divisions of a post–Cold War Europe.