Pack the sequins away.
Stow away the glitter.
And don’t even think about setting off that pyrotechnics display.
No, not all of you.
Just Portugal, Poland, Greece and Cyprus who hinted strongly this week that the European debt crisis may just have claimed its most sacred scalp of all – their participation in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
The annual song contest, which began in 1956 as a way of uniting the divided countries of Europe – at least those west of the Iron Curtain who briefly held their own rival competition, Intervision – and advancing the cause of peace through music, and appeared unstoppable as a cultural force not just in Europe but throughout the world, could be facing one of its greatest challenges yet.
While it is unlikely to permanently spell the end of the contest, which has been re-energised in recent years by the enthusiastic participation of the former countries of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, now free to participate in it, it will nonetheless mean at the very least a diminished contest in 2013 and possibly for a few years afterward.
So far 38 countries have signed up to strut their stuff on the stage at Malmo, down from the 45 who participated in 2012 in Baku.
Hardly a collapse of popular support for the contest you might think, but it is an indication of just how expensive it has become to slap on the glitter and knock out a tune for many European countries – not to mention how expensive it is to stage it right Sweden? – and the increasing numbers that simply can’t justify spending that money when social security programs are being gutted and people are rioting in the streets.
Justifying Greece’s likely decision not to take part, a Greek government spokesman, Simos Kedikoglou was quoted in a Guardian news and media article on the withdrawals carried by Fairfax media in Australia as saying:
”Public television ought not to participate in this year’s Eurovision contest in correspondence with overwhelming public sentiment. It is very unlikely that Greece will take part.”
In other words, when you’re cutting back on the size of peoples’ pensions, and laying off government workers by the truckload, it is not a good look to have a flamboyant singer in skin tight costuming singing their heart out against 1000 LED screens.
Not taking part in Eurovision is an acknowledgement by fiscally strapped governments that the debt crisis has moved far beyond simply “bread and circus” appeasement policies with people too deeply affected by the budgetary cuts to be distracted by a week of glitzy froth and bubble.
Cyprus’s state TV channel, PIK, echoing Greece’s position was quoted in the article as describing their participation in Eurovision as a ”possibly provocative” move.
And considering the depth of feeling at all the austerity measures being introduced, it likely would be.
While only Poland and Portugal have so far definitively ruled out taking part, it would take a miracle of epic proportions for Greece and Cyprus to have the financial wherewithal to take part.
After all, things are only likely to get worse in the short term for these two countries, and for now at least, glitter and sequins will have to take a back seat to simply paying the bills.