Abstract
Since 2014, Australia has been represented on the Eurovision stage, first as an invited guest, then as wild card entrant, and as a contestant. Before 2019, Australia’s entrant has been decided through invitation from the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), the network which broadcasts Eurovision. As such, the selection of Australia’s representatives is closely aligned with the SBS’s mandate to represent Australia’s diversity. This representation in part differs from other on-screen depictions, which a 2016 government body review found to be predominately Anglo-Celtic in nature (Screen Australia 2016). This chapter explores the reaction of Australian audiences to the selection of Australian Eurovision contestants as a means to investigate how ‘Australian-ness’ is perceived by the general public. Content analysis is conducted on audience comments on media reports between 2014 and 2016. This provides insights into the normalised view of how ‘Australian’ is constructed and how indigeneity and Asian-ness is negotiated in contemporary Australian identity.
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Notes
- 1.
Australia is not a permanent competitor in the ESC. From 2015, its participation was decided on a yearly basis until 2019 when a five-year commitment was agreed upon between SBS, BlinkTV, and the European Broadcasting Union (Eurovision 2019).
- 2.
Eligibility is based on inclusion within the European Broadcasting Union, which includes some non-European territories (Eurovision 2017).
- 3.
Australia’s 2019 Anglo-Germanic entrant, Kate Miller-Heidke, will test this.
- 4.
Voting was introduced in 2019.
- 5.
For more on Eurovision and multicultural Australia, see Carniel (2018).
- 6.
The obvious exception is Australia’s Indigenous population, whose connection to historical culture and land is disrupted and traumatised because of European occupation. Indeed, history and land play a large part in contemporary race relations between black and white Australia ; see Koerner (2015) and Grant (2002).
- 7.
For more see, Hage (2002)
- 8.
See Hage (2002: 430–434) for more on the contributing factors to shifts in the articulation of Australian multiculturalism, white paranoia, and white decline.
- 9.
It is unclear which party (SBS, BlinkTV, or Song BMG) has more power in the selection process, however many online comments attribute selection of entrants to the SBS, with a minority identifying the influence of Sony BMG.
- 10.
The Faculty Ethics Office of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China waived ethics approval for this study. The waiver is granted on the basis that the study focuses on an analysis of online comments published on the website of media outlets. Comments requiring access via a gatekeeper are excluded from analysis, and user names are not used in the discussion of results.
- 11.
See Carniel (2018: 74–78) for more on how Australian involvement in the ESC provides a platform to express attitudes towards cultural diversity and Australian identity.
- 12.
Comments by readers who were Australian were determined through their use of collective nouns (we or I), or if readers directly identified as Australian. Readers who were not Australian openly advertised the fact by nominating their country of origin.
- 13.
All comments will be presented in their original form without editorial intervention
- 14.
The latest census data indicates that the top five ancestries are English (25.0%), Australian (23.3%), Irish (7.6%), Scottish (6.4%), and Chinese (3.9%), suggesting that although European ancestry is strongly represented, 94% may be a slight exaggeration.
- 15.
This is a slight exaggeration of the viewer numbers.
- 16.
See degli Alessandrini (2015: 42–53) for more on associations between musical style and Australian national identity.
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Lam, C. (2019). Our Aussie Divas: Interrogating Australian Identity through Audience Reactions to Australia’ Eurovision Entrants. In: Hay, C., Carniel, J. (eds) Eurovision and Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20058-9_10
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