Eurovision 2025: brutal grass cutting in Basel

The story of this year's song selection Eurovision we can also start with our national election, which was overshadowed by political events in Serbia. When we finally chose The Crow Prince, it was as if we forgot about the final in Basel until the RTS there were no commercials for the broadcasts of the semi-final and final evenings. In the meantime, Prince did the production of the song directed by Željko Joksimović, put on a red jumpsuit and rehearsed the choreography with four dancers, who drag him around the floor of the stage while he sings. Almost overnight, we received a bunch of funny videos, where his character was compared to the mop Wilde, but bookies around the world gave our representative a chance to be among the top 10.

During the semi-finals, everything seemed as usual. Duška Vučinić was usually sarcastic, the Prince charmed the audience and fellow countrymen from the diaspora around the world, and the security measures in Basel surpassed last year's Malmo. Concrete planters were placed around the city, the area around the hall and the stadium was completely blocked, and the performers and the audience were protected by a huge police force.

After the semi-finals, it became clear that our part of Europe will be represented only by performers from Albania. The leading trio was made up of ladies who tried to present the host country in an original way, which, in addition to chocolate, brought to humanity the Theory of Relativity, the Swiss army knife, LSD, the most expensive watches, a garlic press, but also democracy in its immediate form.

I must admit that in Serbia we experienced these broadcasts as a benign form of escapism from intense political turmoil. On the evening of the finals in Basel, for example, we had two large gatherings - student gatherings in Subotica and Niš, and national gatherings in Vučićevo in Niš. That's why we understood Eurovision as an evening of light entertainment and a departure from the ubiquitous daily political division of Serbia between Vučić, students and the opposition.

For the sake of fact, I will immediately remind you that the winner of this year's contest is a boy of Filipino origin JJ (Johannes Piech), whose two parents are an IT expert from Austria and a chef from the Philippines. The good news is that the song was written by his friend Teodora Špirić, a native of Loznica, who also competed in our 2020 competition, but without a significant result. Thanks to her, the winner knows about Serbia and loves our Sarma, which he eats with cream.

Unfortunately, it turned out that during the few hours of the broadcast in Basel, there were incomparably more political messages than singing and dancing. The biggest problem of this year's selection is not the lack of memorable songs, nor the rigged distribution of votes, nor the unusual decisions of the jury. The Eurosong problem is actually a problem of a major crisis within the EU, as well as the EU's confused attitudes towards the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The Russians, as you know, have been disqualified for years, and this year there is a visible drop in support for Ukraine, not only through voting, but also through the messages of the performers. After the performance of Prince in the semi-final, a group of our fans was filmed in the audience with the banner "Your hands are bloody", but without comments from the studio.

The biggest controversy, but I can freely say abuse of Eurovision, was carried out this year by Israel. Last year, for example, the representative of the Netherlands was discredited and kicked out of the competition because he threw something at the Israeli delegation. This year, for weeks on the Internet, an advertisement popped up on each of us in which the representative of Israel invited us to vote for her. The sponsor of the competition is a company from Israel, so the campaign to improve the image of this country in the world was extremely intensive. It turned out that joking with Italian stereotypes in the song of the Estonian artist has no bad intention, but on the contrary, it glorifies the spirit of Italy all over the world. Hand on heart, he already made fun of the Swabians in the song Ounce, ham a few years ago.

The real problem actually arose after Israel's performance. After an intense campaign on the Internet, there was a serious beating in Basel of demonstrators protesting Israel's involvement. After that, the first scandal happened during the presentation of the participants in short video clips. It is incredible how the organizers missed the direct provocation in the video, which is called a "dog whistle" in communication. Namely, this is a synonym for a message addressed to a certain social group, while it is incomprehensible and imperceptible to the general public. For example - if the Albanian representative made an Albanian eagle with her hands, the Serbs would understand that message, just as if the Prince saluted with three fingers.

In the video for the announcement of the country, an Israeli woman received scissors from a gardener with which she cut a hedge. The term "grass cutting" in Israel is a common term for limited military and police operations against Hamas in Gaza. There is even a proverb "If you don't cut the weeds" they will cut you. Members of Hamas, but in a broader sense Palestinians, are perceived as "weeds" that need to be exterminated. Unfortunately, this video was also broadcast in the final. The advantage of this form of political marketing is its precision, so many of you will think that I am loading the meaning in this text or simply exaggerating. Unfortunately, during the finale, the presenters confirmed suspicions of relativizing Israel's responsibility while performing the number during which time is bought in the broadcast for viewers to vote.

There in the text you can notice the verse that everyone is welcome and accepted, whether they are "good or brutal". This very sentence caused a lot of negative comments, because it was understood as relativization in the most banal sense. The result is a note of protest from the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez, who questioned the justification of Israel's participation if Russia was excluded from the competition for political reasons. Unfortunately, this year's election showed that Europe is less and less united and united in music or common politics and that, it seems, global tunes are being composed in America, Russia and China.