Dustin, the first puppet to grace the Eurovision stage, has started to come over all patriotic. It seems the fowl-mouthed novelty act is serious about getting Ireland back in tune with the song contest spirit, writes Karen Fricker.
WHAT TO THINK about the bird? That's the question being pondered up and down the land this weekend, as Ireland faces the implications of being the first country to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest by a singing puppet. There have been puppet-themed songs before - a barefoot Sandie Shaw won for the UK in 1967 with Puppet on a String, and two years before that Serge Gainsbourg's Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son took home honours for France - but our own Dustin the Turkey is the only actual puppet to ever front a Eurovision act.
In doing so, Dustin has generated the most publicity of any Eurovision performer this year, and created a buzz around Ireland's presence in the contest that was desperately needed after a decade of declining fortunes that reached its nadir last year with last place in the Eurovision final.
With his brassy persona, knowingly snarky lyrics (another Eurovision first is his mention of "Terry Wogan's wig") and an entourage of back-up performers decked in tricolour maribou feathers, Dustin is cutting a newsworthy figure in the run-up to next Saturday's contest in Belgrade.
But when he finally takes the stage on Tuesday night to sing Irlande Douze Points in the first Eurovision semi-final, will Europe be laughing with us or at us? It's hard to know, even for experienced Eurovision hands. Phil Coulter, co-writer of three high-scoring Eurovision songs (including Puppet on a String), summed up the current confusion when he confessed to Ryan Tubridy that he's "seriously on the fence about the turkey".
One of Eurovision's nicer characteristics is the way in which it promotes benign national feeling: whatever your personal tastes, there is a strong drive to get behind your country's act and cheer it on, come what may. But Dustin's entry into the Eurovision arena is too left-field to have allowed a consensus to form around him, or indeed any agreement on what his participation might represent about today's Ireland and its attitude towards Eurovision.
Perhaps the way through this interpretative morass is to accept that Dustin's presence in Eurovision is just as ambiguous and as multi-layered as our feelings about it. This would involve acknowledging that ever since he popped up on the cultural radar in the early 1990s, Dustin has been difficult to categorise.
On the one hand, he's a farting, burping, fowl-mouthed cartoon, given to puerile humour, swingeing cultural objectification (everyone who's not from Dublin is a "culchie") and shameless self-promotion. On the other, he's a sophisticated comic device whose non-human status allows him to do and say things that people can't get away with. Unlike many other topical Irish comedians, Dustin has never been censured by RTÉ, even when he sends up the broadcaster and its biggest stars on its own programmes.
His unofficial presidential campaigns presciently mocked political corruption and became an outlet for public frustration with the powers that be. Through his fictional occupation as a builder, he could criticise the laziness and self-satisfaction of boomtime Ireland (he was always on a tea-break), while his identity as a plain-speaking working-class bloke allowed him to cultivate a "man of the people" persona.
Dustin and his management need to constantly create new opportunities to extend the character's marketability and lifespan: hence the political aspirations; hence his emergence as a recording artist in the mid-1990s despite, to put it mildly, limited musical abilities (which is part of the present confusion, but more of that later); and hence Dustin the Eurovision contestant.
THE INITIAL RESPONSE to Dustin's entry into Eurovision was that he was mocking the contest, and in particular its current trends towards neighbourly voting, gimmicky acts and spectacular staging at the expense of quality songwriting. Eurovision has become a joke, the thinking went, and Dustin was joining in the fun.
This is doubtless partially the case, but to read Irlande Douze Points as just a joke or "novelty act" (a description Team Dustin is pooh-poohing in its interactions with the media and fans) is to miss the point. Listen to the song's lyrics and to Dustin's interview banter, and you'll find a more interesting message. You might even find - gasp - a strain of earnestness, perhaps even patriotism.
From its dirge-like first lines ("Oh Europe, where oh where did it all go wrong?") onward, Irlande Douze Points is a lament for Ireland's faded Eurovision glory, and an attempt to lure votes back to Ireland by shameless - but clever and well-tested - means. Winning Eurovision for Ireland used to be "Johnny Logan's gig", the song argues, and it's time that the rest of Europe came back to "Dublin, Ireland, to party the shamrock way".
The song extends a long Eurovision tradition of courting votes by mentioning as many European locations as possible, and of supplying a memorable catchphrase that underlines the key message: vote for Ireland. Dustin clearly stated his agenda at a Belgrade press conference on Monday: "We're here to bring respect back to Ireland in Eurovision. Everyone's talking about the Irish entry and that's what we want. We're hoping to turn that into votes."
Some might argue that offering up a rapping turkey is a fairly outlandish way to garner national respect. But, as a stage act, Irlande Douze Points is a canny package that is absolutely in keeping with current trends of Eurovision success: it's a big production number with a disco beat, a catchy chorus and an unquestionably unique central performer.
Most crucially, it's self-consciously over the top and, as such, is the first Irish song in a decade to enter into the prevailing spirit of the contemporary contest.
Many would argue that Eurovision has always been camp, but it was with the transsexual Dana International's historic win in 1998 that Eurovision came out of the closet as a knowing performance of ironic excess. Ireland's unpreparedness for this turn was signalled that year by Pat Kenny's repeated reference to Dana International as "he, she, or it" in his commentary.
Those acts that have scored best in the years since have done so by presenting highly packaged, glossy performances based around a unique selling point, often an easily consumable pop version of an ethnic identity, as with Sertab Erener's sexed-up belly-dancing for Turkey in 2004 and Ruslana's Carpathian warrior princess routine for Ukraine in 2005. Lordi's win in 2006 paved the way for a small burst of persona-based acts; that is, acts involving characters that the performers maintain on and off stage.
The highest-profile example of this last year was Verka Serduchka, a linguistically challenged Ukrainian drag queen in head-to-toe silver lamé. Verka's catchy Dancing Lasha Tumbai came second in Helsinki, pipped to the post by Serbia's Marija Serifovic, who was arguably herself appearing in costume as a drag king crooner.
ALL OF WHICH paves the way for Irlande Douze Points. The stage act will be similar to, but more elaborate than, the one presented in the Eurosong 2008 national selection programme in February. It will feature Dustin backed by two overly glammed-up female singers, two male dancers and, according to reports from rehearsals in Belgrade, less frenzied choreography than in the Eurosong version. The behind-the-scenes talent for the act is nothing if not Eurovision-savvy: director John Comiskey staged the entire contest for RTÉ when Ireland hosted in 1995, with design by Alan Farquharson, who is also designing Irlande Douze Points.
Doubtless the biggest challenge for the staging team is what Comiskey delicately refers to as "Dustin's special needs as a performer" and the "issues of scale" these present. The puppet is only 18in tall, and any stage presentation has to include some sort of conveyance for the Person We're Not Acknowledging Is Really There. The solution, as before, is to have Dustin appear atop a pimped-up shopping trolley, pushed around the stage by another male performer. In the rehearsals before Tuesday, RTÉ will no doubt bargain hard for as many camera close-ups on Dustin as possible to compensate for his tiny size.
A further worry is that Dustin's sense of humour might not translate outside Ireland. It is certainly the case that appreciation of Irlande Douze Points is enhanced by being able to understand the lyrics, which will be lost to non-English speakers and also made more difficult by the noisiness of the song and Dustin's tendency to bellow. Which brings us to what is perhaps the most serious obstacle to Dustin's success: he lacks musical skill, and the fact that he's essentially talk-singing, sometimes off-key, may well put off voters.
It seems highly unlikely that Dustin will win Eurovision. His high standing in early polls has dropped since rehearsals began, and the word around the Belgrade Arena is that Ireland will probably clear its semi-final hurdle but then get lost in the crowd. But the beauty of Eurovision is that we can never really know how acts will be received until the lights dim and Te Deum plays. The last two winners, Lordi and Marija Serifovic, were dark horses whose acts came alive in their interaction with audiences. And Dustin knows how to work a crowd.
The first Eurovision Song Contest semi-final is on RTÉ2 on Tuesday, 8pm. The second is on RTÉ2 on Thursday, 8pm. The final is on RTÉ1 and BBC1 next Saturday, May 24, 8pm
SPLITTING THE VOTE BREAK-UP OF THE EASTERN BLOC
THIS YEAR'S Eurovision Song Contest will be the first to feature two semi-finals, one on Tuesday (in which Dustin performs) and one on Thursday, with the final on Saturday night as usual. This innovation allows the contest to accommodate an ever-increasing number of participating countries (this year there are a record 43 nations competing). But it is also acknowledged by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) as an attempt to break up neighbourly block voting.
Following on from EBU research into voting patterns, participating countries were split up into groups that tend to exchange votes. The semi-final draw was organised, as far as possible, to stop members of the same voting groups competing with each other.
Only participating countries are allowed to vote in their own semi-final, along with the UK, Germany, France and Spain, which always qualify outright for the final, and the host country, Serbia (each of these five countries has been given voting rights in one semi-final.) Thus Irish viewers can vote on Tuesday and during the final on Saturday, but not on Thursday.
Another innovation this year is a partial reintroduction of jury voting. Eighteen out of 20 places in the final will be determined by public voting, but each semi-final will have one place reserved for an act chosen by the juries of participating countries. An EBU spokesman says that this is to add another layer of excitement and suspense to the contest, though cynics might suggest it is simply a ploy to ensure that, if the new draw system doesn't break up voting blocks as much as is hoped, at least one western European country will be guaranteed progress from each semi-final.