¿Espectáculo de la memoria o memoria del espectáculo? La representación del genocidio en el festival de Eurovisión

Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest has become, especially in recent editions, a space where the participating States have contributed with music performances related to causes of social justice, including the remembrance of the trauma of expulsion and ethnic cleansing in the European past. In the 2016 edition the winning act about the deportation of the Crimean Tartars during the Second World War has opened the debate about the political implications of the contest. Through the analysis of the lyrics and live performance of the song 1944 we shall point to the political discourse present in the song and we shall try to establish whether the spectacle can be regarded as a space capable of promoting a debate about memory or whether, on the contrary, the representation of the trauma of the genocide in the spectacle only contributes to the spectacularization of the tragedy.