Serbia, Lesbians and the Russian Federation

Blond in Deventer, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Serbia has been in the news lately because they have just appointed an ultra-nationalist as the speaker of their parliament. A day later he said that he would much rather that Serbia be a member of the Russian Federation than a member of the European Union. A nice provocative remark.

I am not exactly the world's expert on Balkan politics. We never even studied the causes of the First World War in History at school, but I am showing a little bit of interest in Serbia now because of the Eurovision Song Contest. The semi-final is today and the final is on Saturday. We are having friends over for dinner this evening and on Saturday we are going to a friend's for dinner, both dinners to be followed by the Song Festival, giving points and making nasty remarks and so on.

Not having a job, but having broadband internet access and too much time, I have been spending too much time watching videos of the participants and discussing their merits on various messageboards. decided very early on that Serbia was my favourite song this year and have put a little bit of money with the bookies on Serbia winning.

Serbia are one of the favourites, as they have a very powerful ballad, sung very well by, shall-we-say, a very powerful lass from Serbia, Marija Serifovic. She put on a great performance in their national song festival, where Marija looked very charismatic and confident, with a cheeky smile and a wink to the audience, whilst the (female) backing singers danced around and played instruments in the background, a classic Balkan Eurovision performance. I get goose pimples every time I hear it!

However, the rehearsals in Helsinki are now to be seen on the internet and I am afraid to say the act has gone all lesbian. The singers are no longer dancing in pretty dresses but dressed like factory workers and are all holding hands. This is perhaps not surprising given those recent remarks of the Serbian speaker about wnating to 'get in' with the Russian Federation. This because the most famous Russian pop group in the west, Tatu, was a couple of very pretty and quite young lesbians. While Europe is probably ready for gay and transvestite (Ukraine ad Denmark, this year) and even transexual (Dana International in 1998), I am not so sure they are ready for lesbian. But then again, they might get 12 points from Russia...we will see...

P.S. The photo is just of a young woman in Deventer and by having her to illustrate this blog entry is not meant to signify anything about her sexual orientation and i certainly not to assume that she might be, dare I say it, Russian.

Tags: molitva, marija serifovic, serbia, eurovision, serbia wins eurovision, marija molitva, eurovision 2007