The Teapacks are an Israeli pop group, said to be punk-influenced, whose music is no doubt as ghastly as that of all such groups—if music is indeed the right generic description. “Push the Button,” the title of their latest song, is sung in English, French, and Hebrew, and contains the lines, “The world is full of terror/ If someone makes an error/ He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come.” Also, “I don’t want to die/ I want to see the flowers bloom/ Don’t want to go kapoot-kaboom.” Not likely to be mistaken for Byron or even Shelley, certainly. But it is, nonetheless, this year’s Israeli entry for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Europe is at best a notional, perhaps geographical, concept, lacking unity or a specific character. Each of its component countries cherishes its own culture and language. Constructed in defiance of this reality, the European Union has been trying to evolve a culture that it can pretend is common (in the sense of general participation). The project is hopeless. All that the controlling bureaucrats in Brussels have been able to come up with are little stunts (such as soccer matches or golf teams) to challenge the United States. The Eurovision Song Contest is their prize exhibit, and indeed common—but in the sense of low and vulgar.
Last year the winner was a so-called “local monster group” from Finland with the enticing and original name of Lordi, and their song was called, equally enticingly and originally, “Hard Rock Hallelujah.” The members of the group were dressed in what might best be described as Star Wars-style, their ghoulish other-planetary costumes decorated with deaths-head badges reminiscent of the SS. Their song warned of an impending “arockalypse.”
The Finns have the right to call the shots for this year’s contest, which is to be held in their country. One Heikki Seppala, described as an executive producer of Eurovision on radio, says of the Teapacks’ contribution, “I understand this song is clearly political” and this is not “what people are looking for.” And one Kjell Ekholm, apparently an organizer of the contest, explains, “It’s absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition.” A typically bureaucratic body known as the European Broadcasting Union will be discussing whether to throw out the Israeli entry.
Any sensible person would want to run a mile to escape the banalities of the Teapacks, but Heikki and Kjell and their like have certainly hit upon a novel way to suppress any recognition of the threats that Israel faces. (And if the watered-down Satanism of “Hard Rock Hallelujah” meets Eurovision’s standards of propriety, it’s difficult to see how the Teapacks’ mild commentary violates them.) On the other hand, Israel won the contest in 1998 with a song called “Diva,” sung by a performer identified as Dana International, a transsexual. So in respects that really matter, it seems, Europe can recognize that Israel is a country like any other.
