The Eurovision Song Contest, that annual exercise in kitsch diplomacy and musical mediocrity, has once again provided fodder for the cultural commentators. This year, the winner Dara has revealed that she nearly quit the competition twice before her eventual triumph. Meanwhile, Britain is celebrating its entry 'Bangaranga' as a victory of national spirit.
One must ask: is this the best we can do as a civilisation? The Victorians would be appalled. They built an empire on industry and innovation, not on glittery costumes and auto-tuned pop songs.
The Fall of Rome, as Gibbon taught us, was accompanied by a decline in public virtue and a rise in spectacle. Eurovision is precisely that spectacle: a distraction from the real decay of our intellectual and moral foundations. Dara's near-quits are a microcosm of the fragility of modern 'artists' who are treated as heroes for overcoming the most trivial of obstacles.
And Britain's celebration of 'Bangaranga'? It reeks of a provincialism that mistakes participation for achievement. We have become a nation more concerned with winning a song contest than with winning the battle of ideas.
The irony is that Eurovision was once a vehicle for European unity, but now it is a mirror of our fragmentation: vapid, ephemeral, and utterly forgettable.
