Melodi Grand Prix

Film Review | Literature Review | Training

21 February 2021

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Last night was the Melodi Grand Prix, which, for the uninitiated, is Norway's final for their entrant into Eurovision. Eurovision is something like American Idol in that it's a singing competition where the general public votes on the winner. And Will Ferrell, who did Superbowl commercials making fun of Norway, did the NRK commercial reminding us all to watch. The NRK is Norway's national broadcaster and there's a strong nationalist component to the competition. I couldn't stream it off of my phone's internet because I don't have a Norwegian provider - broadcast outside of Norway is forbidden. I guess the NRK lives in a make believe world where no one has a VPN. But it was wholly appropriate for Ferrell to be associated with the MGP, because of his what I thought was ridiculous movie about Eurovision coming out last year. I now know that that movie was so close to reality to practically be a documentary! The Norwegians chose a guy who wore gold chains and angel wings during his performance. And a headband with his stage name, Tix, on it. Because of Covid the families of the performers were also interviewed at watch parties in their homes rather than onsite. So we got an odd window into the homelife of all these characters. They all spoken Norwegian throughout, but sang in primarily in English. This is because English has the widest international appeal and is thus most likely to win against other countries. The exception to this was one group where two sang in English and a third in Sami. Sami is a non-Indoeuropean language spoken by a minority in northern Norway who were once more widely spread, but were persecuted by their southern Germanic language speaking neighbors. It's related to the Suomi language (also known as Finnish) which is the majority language in Finland. Maxwell hilariously once called them the Native American of Norway, mapping the history he knew onto a somewhat more complicated and definitely longer one. Speaking Sami didn't win the MGP though, English did. Which is sort of odd in a competition once designed to celebrate the diversity of Europe; chasing after victory, the unique is abandoned in favor of what is massmarketable.