00:00Well, for more to discuss all this, we can welcome Lila Jacinto from our International Affairs Desk.
00:04Lila, welcome. And tell us a bit more about this InterVision Song Contest and why is Moscow reviving it now?
00:13Yes, it's very interesting. I mean, it's a revival. InterVision was a Soviet era propaganda tool.
00:20And actually, we have very interesting details on InterVision on our website.
00:24So a shout out to our internet web team. You can go on our website, francevankat.com, for details on this.
00:33So basically, InterVision began in the mid-1960s and the last InterVision was in 1980.
00:40So, you know, so during the 60s and 70s, it was held in Prague. Poland had many contests as well.
00:48And of course, after the fall of the Soviet Union, this contest faded away because Russia got to participate in the real thing, in Eurovision.
00:58And in 2008, Russia actually won the Eurovision contest.
01:02But things started to get tricky in 2014.
01:06For one, 2014 is the year that Russia invaded Crimea.
01:11So the Russian contestant in 2014 was booed at the Eurovision contest.
01:18And also what was happening was that in 2014, President Vladimir Putin introduced very sweeping anti-gay, anti-LGBT laws.
01:28And the winner that year in 2014 was an Austrian drag queen act.
01:33Her name is Conchita Wurst.
01:36And to date, Russian officials keep mentioning that.
01:40So, for instance, at the press conference in Moscow to announce the revival of the InterVision,
01:47someone no less than Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov himself referenced a woman with a beard in a man's dress, you know.
01:58So, I mean, what they are trying to have with this contest is something different from Eurovision.
02:05But InterVision 2025 is different.
02:10This time it's different.
02:11And how so?
02:13How is it different this time around?
02:15Well, for starters, it's bigger, as you said.
02:17I mean, in the old days, it was just the Eastern Bloc countries.
02:20Nobody really paid attention to it.
02:22I mean, this time we have 23 countries, all the BRICS countries.
02:26I mean, this includes half, more than half the world's population.
02:31The tricky thing about having such a sweep of countries is that the one thing that makes Eurovision so successful is that all the participating countries can watch together and vote together.
02:42You know, these participating countries, you know, includes from Brazil to Vietnam.
02:48We're covering 11 time zones, you know, so the very democratic nature of Eurovision, you know, voters can't really call in their success stories.
02:57Another different thing, of course, is the content, right?
03:01I mean, so Russian President Vladimir Putin has talked about traditional values for the InterVision contest.
03:09So it's, you know, it doesn't make for very edgy stuff.
03:12So, I mean, the content is likely to be quite different as well.
03:15And is this version of InterVision likely to succeed?
03:20And does that even really matter?
03:23Well, I mean, a lot of critics say it's, you know, InterVision is more Kremlin than Kitsch.
03:28But will it succeed?
03:30You know, it really depends on the context.
03:33And coming back to the importance of soft power, right?
03:35We are in a different world right now, where the so-called Global South countries are really talking about the Eurocentrism of the post-World War order and are pushing it.
03:47That's one thing.
03:48Two, it also has to be seen whether this catches, because we are in a world where the narrative is not really fixed by states, right?
03:58But the thing is, the U.S. won the Cold War soft power game because the U.S. officials knew that music was very important.
04:08But they were very, you know, they were sophisticated.
04:11You know, they did not want rock and jazz and heavy metal to be seen as propaganda tools.
04:16So if Moscow continues to behave in a heavy-handed way, maybe the content itself may not speak for itself.
04:23But this is a different age, and Russia has bots on its side.
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