Nation Branding

            The Eurovision Song Contest is a TV broadcasting, international song contest watched by millions of viewers around the world. The three-minute performances allow countries to showcase themselves to a variety of people. It offers a chance for nation branding, allowing countries to convey their own images on their own terms (Jordan, 2014). Some countries use Eurovision for the benefits of exposure to its culture, expressing its political stances, or using the opportunity to educate individuals who are unfamiliar with where their country is located. Belarus has been participating in Eurovision since 2004 and has yet to win. In this blog post, I will be examining Belarus’ view towards national branding on Eurovision. Do they take it seriously? Who gets involved? And how well is it represented on stage? Through these questions, I will also be determining if there are any alignments with its national identity at Eurovision.

            In blog post one, I defined national identity as something that makes a country specific, identifiable, and stand out to other countries. I used this definition towards Belarus to identify its national identity. I concluded that Belarus’ national identity involved language, religion, and mythology. However, it’s worth noting that Belarus’ national identity is still unclear and conflicting due to types of othering and close ties to other countries such as Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. Given Eurovision’s platform and Belarus’ ability to express its national identities when participating in Eurovision, Belarus does not use it well in offering others an brief insight towards its country’s representation.

There is a misalignment between Belarus’ identity of language and its representation at Eurovision throughout the 2012 to 2014 performances, I analyzed from blog post two. None of the performances were sung in any of Belarus’ official languages, Belarussian or Russian. It is understandable as to why the song would not be sung in Russian, given that they are competitors at Eurovision. However, Belarus seems to have missed an opportunity to stand out and showcase its language and culture to the world. Being that all the performances were sung in English, it is reasonable to conclude that Belarus may be disassociating itself with Russia, facing West, and proclaiming a “not Russia” stance. By having songs performed in English, it appears that Belarus is attempting to appeal to and affiliate itself with a more Western audience, rather than an Eastern one. An example of how Belarus is viewed in the West is from World War II, when Belarus had been the main Nazi-Soviet battleground for years, but many in the West prefer to label Belarusian territories and its people as "Russian” (Bohdan, 2012). The decision to sing its songs in English is relevant to national identity, as it may seem that Belarus is more concerned with separating itself from Russia in the language department. It is taking somewhat of a political stance revealing its effort to appear “not Russian”, while demonstrating pure separation and independence to the world. In doing so, Belarus is sacrificing the chance of showing others the beauty, culture, and different regions it has to offer.

Another misalignment between Belarus’ national identity and how it’s represented at Eurovision is mythology. Mythology pertains to the history and myths of a country. In all the performances I analyzed, not one used any sense of history or myths of Belarus either in the projected backgrounds or anywhere else on stage. In the 2012 performance “We Are the Heroes” by Litesound, Belarus appeared to have used the concept of apocalypse survivors. This is apparent from the message of persevering, to the pop-rock genre, and finally the black clothing style with metal accessories. It would have been interesting if the background projected Belarussian symbols or images of its history in place of the nuts and bolts that were projected. If Belarus wanted to incorporate history, the Polish-Soviet War between Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine would have been suitable. The war’s purpose was to take control over the area of what is now parts of modern-day Belarus and Western Ukraine (Campbell, 2008). This would have been appropriate because in blog post one, I mentioned Belarus’ prior efforts to create an identity from its history. However, it wasn’t favorable since Belarussian citizens were not proud of its history. Thirty two percent of ethnic Belarussians considered the histories of Belarus and Russia to be identical. While about thirty eight percent of Belarussians had no knowledge of its culture (Ioffe, 2003). This war would have been a valid representation of mythology in relation to Belarus’ national identity in the 2012 Eurovision performance. Unfortunately, it did not occur and the themes for the performances throughout 2012 to 2014 were likely to be for entertainment purposes rather than nation branding.

The last national identity pertaining to Belarus’ national identity is religion. Once again, there is a misalignment between Belarus’ identity of religion not being represented in the Eurovision performances. Belarus has been stuck in-between two dominant religions, Orthodox and Catholicism. Most of the Belarussian population identifies with Orthodox, so that is what it associates its religious identity with. Ultimately, Belarus’ national religious identity looks toward both Russia and Poland for cultural ties to religion (Ioffe, 2003). Now, it’s no surprise why there’s no representation of Belarus’ religious identity at Eurovision. The reasons being that there is no official religion for Belarus and it often looks towards Poland and Russia for cultural ties, which is not something it should want to do at Eurovision with millions of viewers watching. Especially, when they are trying to say they are not Russia. The last reason is that there is a lack of government support regarding religion. Belarus’ government only allows the freedom of worship and religious practice if it does not pose a threat to social or governmental institutions (The World Factbook, 2018). In Teo’s performance of Cheesecake in 2014 (Belarus), there is no sense of religion. In fact, the performance is quite sleazy and misogynistic with a double standard towards women in what they cannot do, but men can. The same goes for Belarus’ 2013 performance of Solayoh performed by Alyona, her dress is quite short which I don’t think is church appropriate attire. The performances here miss the mark in relating to Belarus’ national identity, being solely meant for entertainment.

After researching more, I found that politics plays an important and influential role in Eurovision. Belarus’ government type is considered a Presidential Republic, but is in fact a dictatorship (The World Factbook, 2018). The song selection by the broadcaster is rumored to be influenced by the government. In 2014 at the National Final in Belarus, there was a tie between “Cheesecake” and another performance by Lorens and DiDyLya. The tie breaker was made by eight jurors who voted for one of the two songs and the winner of the jury’s votes would be the performance that would represent Belarus at Eurovision (Knezevic, 2014). This shows that the jury, broadcaster, and government all have the final say on who gets to represent Belarus. It also demonstrates that Belarus does take Eurovision seriously and cares about how it’s viewed. President Lukashenko has also been involved in Eurovision over the years and has made multiple statements about it. While answering questions of students of the Belarusian State Agrarian Technical University, he stated, “Maybe I take this contest too close to heart, though I understand very well what is going on there, the things that you might not be aware of. I know that this contest is not objective at all…everything is fake, a show” (Oikotimes, 2013). After hearing this and realizing who the audience was, I believe it was just said for show, rather than how he really feels about Eurovision because his actions of continuously getting involved with each year’s performers tells otherwise.

Despite Belarus’ misalignment at Eurovision with its national identities, Belarus has made significant efforts over the past few years in revealing more of their culture to the world at Eurovision. Belarus’ 2017 performance was sung in Belarussian with folk music, and the costumes represented Belarus customs. They even made it through to the finals. This is evidence that if Belarus brands itself well showing off their culture, tradition, and language at Eurovision, they will be successful. Another effort Belarus has made in showing that it does take the Eurovision Song Contest seriously is by using cosmopolitan, which is adhering to the principle of feeling free from attachment to one’s specific country or its inhabitants, and instead believing in belonging to a “world community” (Cambridge University, 2018). For the first time ever, Belarus will be represented by Ukrainian, Alekseev. Belarus’ willingness and desire to be represented by someone else other than itself is a positive step in boosting its appeal to the industry to impress others.

In conclusion, from 2012 to 2014, Belarus did not  accurately represent its national identities on stage. There were many misalignments throughout and all the performances were in English, as well as some form of a pop song with no true message allowing Belarus to stand out and become identifiable to other countries. This resulted in a typical Eurovision performance and was not very successful in the results. However, over the past few years, Belarus has made progress in having its national identity become apparent on stage from its 2017 performance, and the upcoming 2018 Ukrainian performer. If Belarus continues to view nation branding as a positive resource for its country and utilizes Eurovision effectively, it may have a chance of winning in the coming years.

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References

Belarus. (2018). The CIA World Factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bo.html

Bohdan. (2012). Why Belarus is Missing in World War II History. Belarus Digest. Retrieved from https://belarusdigest.com/story/why-belarus-is-missing-in-world-war-ii-history/

Campbell, H., (2008). Russo-Polish War. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Polish-War-1919-1920

Cosmopolitan. (2018). Cambridge University. Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cosmopolitan

Ioffe, G., (2003). Understanding Belarus: Belarussian identity. Europe-Asia Studies, 55(8), 1241-1272. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966813032000141105#aHR0cDovL3d3dy50YW5kZm9ubGluZS5jb20vZG9pL3BkZi8xMC4xMDgwLzA5NjY4MTMwMzIwMDAxNDExMDU/bmVlZEFjY2Vzcz10cnVlQEBAMA==

Jordan, P., (2014). The Modern Fairy Tale: Nation Branding, National Identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia. University of Tartu Press. Retrieved from  www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=474310

Knezevik, M., (2014). Why People in Belarus are Freaking Out Over This Song About Cheesecake. Mic Network. Retrieved from https://mic.com/articles/79109/why-people-in-belarus-are-freaking-out-over-this-song-about-cheesecake#.wzLlwicj8

Lanskaya, A., (2013). Solayoh (Belarus). Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Malmo. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKewBfUE2Mg

Litesound. (2012). We Are The Heroes (Belarus).  Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Baku. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JWbOKNaIAo

“Lukashenko: Eurovision is Biased” (2018, March 18). Oikotimes. Retrieved from https://oikotimes.com/lukashenko-eurovision-is-biased/

NaviBand. (2017). Historyja majho žyccia‎ (Belarus). Eurovision Song Contest 2017 Kyiv [DVD]. Baarn, NL: Universal Music Group

Teo. (2014). Cheesecake (Belarus). Eurovision Song Contest 2014 Copenhagen. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tImGMW-4eHY