Envisioning Europe: Ruslana's rhetoric of identity

On May 15, 2004 Ruslana Lyzhychko, a singer from Ukraine, won the 49th Eurovision Song Contest, a globally televised competition among musical acts representing countries whose national broadcasting organizations are members of the European Broadcasting Union (“Rules”). Notwithstanding frequently ironic media commentary concerning the competition’s musical standards and the partisanship displayed in some countries’ voting behavior, the Eurovision Song Context is widely popular. The audience in 2004 was estimated to be 100 million, and almost 4.3 million viewers participated in the televoting (“Record Numbers”). The Contest implies an idea of Europe not limited by membership in the European Union, nor even by location within the traditional geographical borders of the European continent: the thirty-six participants in 2004 included countries that were not on the EU accession timetable (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), as well as Middle Eastern countries (Turkey and Israel). The contest thus confronts a large number of television viewers with questions of the delimitation of Europe and of the grounds on which a European identity may be claimed.