Photo: RTS screenshot
Participating in the Eurovision Song Contest and publicly, on a national program, showing your attitude as a sign of protest, risking that your song will get fewer votes because of it, as well as that you will suffer the consequences at work tomorrow, is perhaps even a stronger gesture than giving up
In addition to the selection of the first eight finalists of the Eurovision Song Contest, on Tuesday evening a clear and loud support for the students was sent to the Serbian airwaves in the live broadcast of RTS - the first semi-final night.
To be clear: this does not mean that RTS supported the students, but that the organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest were open to such a possibility and were ready for such a thing to happen to them in a live broadcast.
What is planned?
The first, openness, was shown at the beginning of the first semi-final night with the performance of the "Kolibri" Children's Choir, whose members, dressed in white, held red hearts and sang "For a million years". The same song was performed by a choir of students near the Freedom Bridge in Novi Sad on February 1 as part of a general civil protest, and it is considered the anthem of student protests.
It was part of the planned program.
What is unplanned?
Everything after that was unplanned.
On the first evening, in a live broadcast, Ana Ćurčin the singer of the group "Ana and The Changes" near the end of the song "Brinem" raised a red palm, and the word "pump up the jam" was written on her guitar. On the second evening, the same was done by Sedlar, who presented the song "Eyes the color of the earth".
Then, the first pitchers in the Green room, members of the band "Cruise Road" who competed with the song "Everything and Now", held the student indexes.
After them, also in the Green room, the members of the group "Biber" who introduced herself with the song "Come back to me", they had protest badges on their costumes. The host Stefan Popović, who talked to the participants, acted as if the symbols of the students at the Eurovision Song Contest were the most normal phenomenon.
When all the contestants presented their songs and when the discussions in the Green room were over, almost everyone stood up and sang "For a million years",
On the second night in the Green room, Oxajo and the lead singer of the Marshalls wore badges, Tam displayed a "It's not artistic to be silent" banner on the phone, and members of the Gifts and Roses pumped up red balloons.
All of this on the RTS program.
Test
Participating in Beovision and publicly, on the national program, showing your attitude as a sign of protest against everything that brought students and citizens to the streets of Serbia, risking that your song will get fewer votes because of it, as well as that tomorrow, when all this is over, you will suffer the consequences at work, is perhaps even a stronger gesture than giving up participation.
For the editors and organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest, this was a test. The regime media called the competition a scandal, and the editor Olja Kovačević, "yellow Olja" as they call her, became even more yellow for them.
The fact that on the first night, Ana Ćurčin, "Cruz Road" and "Bieber" made it to the finals, as well as the fact that, apart from them, even the drag group "Harem girls" with the song "Aladdin" passed, and that Sedlar, "Oxajo", Tam and "Maršali" were selected from the second group of semi-finalists, shows that the authors of the Eurovision Song Contest have succeeded for now.
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