Failing Homonationalism? Gay Israeli Eurovision Geeks Negotiating Nationalism and Masculinity

ABSTRACT

In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to become more integrated in the gay and national communities through homonormativity and homonational processes. However, as this case study shows, Israeli gay men ESC fans mostly rejected homonational masculinity in favor of a counterhegemonic identification, self-characterized as “ESC geeks.” In that, they adhered to their marginal space and adopted a subversive queer perspective. Analytically, this means that homonationalism should not be considered a political form of normalizing power that is accessible to all gay men. Rather, it is a process that produces manifold, including queer practices, and it can no longer be seen as accessible to all LGBTs, or as something into which LGBTs are duped.

KEYWORDS:

• Homonationalism
• (gay) masculinities
• sexual politics
• Eurovision Song Contest (ESC)
• LGBTs in Israel
• politics of value

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper focuses on gay men. We use the term LGBT to generally refer to the LGBT community in Israel. We employ it as an umbrella term to signify a subjective identification as lesbian, gay men, bisexual or transgender.

2. In 1980 Morocco participated in the ESC as well.

3. The voting system has gone through sever changes over the years. Since 2016 the votes are the sum of two independent votes: 50% professional jury and 50% tele-voting.

4. The Oslo Accords are agreements between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, aimed to start a peace process.

5. Thomas Neuwirth was the Austrian winner of the 2014 ESC as drag queen Conchita.

6. BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a global campaign to pressure Israel to end the occupation of Palestine.

7. Anne-Marie David is a French singer who won the ESC in 1973 for Luxemburg and participated again in 1979 for France.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.