Eurovision song contest and identity crisis in Moldova

Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was created for strengthening the development of a European soul. But generally speaking, one can say it has been used as a tool for nation-branding, and as a means for Central and Eastern countries to “return” to Europe, in particular after the fall of their Communist regimes. In the difficult social, economic, political, and historical context of the Republic of Moldova nowadays, the ESC furthermore allows the discursive construction of the nation and the building of a particular self. Accordingly, based on a method inspired by the Critical Discourse Analysis methodology applied to three local newspapers, the research demonstrates how the ESC acts as a sound box when building the Moldovan self. The Moldovan identity that emerges from the articles seems to be an identity in crisis which proves much different from the usual political constructions of the nation. This bottom-up identity put forward by journalists has indeed to be related to the twofold crisis in which Moldova is at the moment: social and economic, on the one hand, and linked to a permanent struggle between a separate Moldovan or an integrated Romanian identity, on the other.

Keywords:

• Eurovision
• Moldova
• newspapers
• identity
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

An early edition of this article was presented to the 18th Annual World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in April 2013 and to the “Plural” workshop of the Pedagogical State University “Ion Creanga” in Chisinau in October 2013. I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and also to Slawomir Lodzinski, Petru Negura, and Sharon Weinblum, and all the persons in the audience for their enthusiastic and challenging comments.

Notes

1. The ESC consists in an event to which each national member of the EBU can send a representative. In the first half of the evening, contestants from each country perform an original song and, in the second half, each country awards points for its top 10 songs (from 1 to 8 points to the places 10 to 3, 10 for the second place, and 12 for the first place). Countries cannot vote for their own representatives.

2. A minority group whose language is Turkic and who are Orthodox Christians, living in southern Moldova.

3. Nevertheless, since 2012, the contest has been won by Western countries that have been participating since the 1950s (Sweden in 2012, Denmark in 2013, and Austria in 2014). But Denmark and Sweden are also often seen as “buddy voters” along with other members of the “Scandinavian block.”

4. For a total of 110 articles. Newspapers articles that were used as primary sources have been referred to as following: the first (two) letter(s) for the newspaper (MS for Moldova Suverana, JC for Jurnal de Chisinau, and T for Timpul) followed by the date of publication of the article.

5. These different discursive constructions are to be found mainly in the early years of the country's participation in the contest. Gradually, newspapers no longer carry discursive constructions in which a particular Moldovan self emerges. Meanwhile, the supposed purity of the European competition is increasingly questioned. Journalists mention on several occasions that the contest is “political” (JC01/03/2011) and that some countries vote for their neighbors and not for the best songs (JC10/05/2011). In addition, it seems that in recent years all discursive constructions of a national character are only found on the Internet and not in the press. As an article in the Jurnal de Chisinau in 2011 shows, the Internet is full of blogs where the Eurovision demonstrates that Moldova does not know what its identity is, that the Romanian identity has no border, or that Moldova has nothing and is only a kind of “clown” (JC16/05/2011). All these blogs tackle issues that have been put forward in the present article, and the comments available on social networks and the Internet in general can be used for analyzing the construction of the local self. Taking into account articles available in newspapers allows the research to be systematic and exhaustive. The objective here is to analyze a general and latent discourse which can be found in the texts of a supposedly independent press. By using regular news articles, the aim is to make visible the interconnectedness of things (Fairclough, 1995, 747). Blogs and other social media are close to the genre of editorials, where opinions are made salient on purpose, and give another account of the construction at stake.

6. Nickname of the members of the band Zdob si Zdub.

7. Group dance in circles.