THE POWER OF ART || IS THERE ART ON THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST?

Hi guuys, I am not a talented musician, unfortunately, but I am sooo into music. As a literature student, I like to pay more attention to the lyrics. I hope there will be a place for me in this community.

Believe it or not, in my country almost all of us are Eurovision enthusiasts. We started to organize family and friends' gatherings to watch the competition and enjoy music during the night. Since our competition was very interesting this year and become one of the famous youtube trending videos in 20 countries, I would like to represent my view of it with you. I’ve noticed that our winner song is not able to be understood easily and I am going to try to make it more understandable.
Namely, in this year's contest for Eurovision song, here in Serbia, we had a chance to get an answer again to a question What is the art and also to be convinced of its magnificent capabilities. After the winner announcement, we all stopped to think about war, existential crises, and the eventual collapse of civilization for a while. All that you could hear is the chorus of the winner’s song – The artist must be healthy!

SOURCE Youtube

Serbia is fully divided (according to the dominant global trend of polarization) into two parts – the one that doesn’t like the song and is frustrated about the public’s choice, and the other one that is fascinated by the song. The song certainly has broken the horizon of expectation and all of us, even the ones that don’t understand the song, feel that there is something so special and meaningful. That is enough for us to suspect that it is a complex work of art.
The author of the song, Ana Djuric Konstrakta, is the member of an alternative Serbian band and the architect, which makes her a disciplinary artist - so this song functions on several levels - musical, visual, and then with its content on the social and philosophical level. This song is actually a performance, modelled on Marina Abramovic’s Art must be beautiful, the artist must be beautiful, which was originally shown in 1975 in Copenhagen.

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

In Corpore Sano is absolutely an avant-garde masterpiece, the song that screams about strong social and political messages on so many levels and at the same time manages to be fun. Namely, there are several central topics in the song:

1. Criticism of the consumer society, which, in its superficiality, buys countless preparations, lotions, and supplements, allegedly in the name of health, and essentially only for the sake of beauty, beauty that is regulated, codified in the last few decades. In the line: What is the secret behind Meghan Markle's healthy hair? the answer is obvious that we all want such perfect hair, but a hairdresser is not enough for that effect, for that we need to be healthy and to buy so many different drugs and supplements. (Put some effort, girl 😊)
2. Then, through the chorus, it becomes clear that in addition to the trendsetter, there are people who have no choice, but must be healthy and only "sufficiently" healthy and have confidence in their autonomic nervous system, or perhaps God - to whom it suits. While some need the luxury to be healthy, others are satisfied with a simple walk with a dog and that’s all. So, the next topic is the cruelty of the system towards the artist (and only an alternative!) to whom the state did not even provide health insurance. Konstrakta explicitly states in the song that she does not have a health card.
3. Also, one of the most important topics is stated in the final lines. What is happening with the human soul in the era of consumerism? This topic is well represented through the wordplay – that is the Latin expression in healthy body healthy mind, and in time comes to completely disaster – in a healthy body the soul is weak, sad, frightened, and desperate! Evidently, she speaks about the reality we live in. While forcefully marketing campaigns impose us consumerism as a paradigm of a successful life, we anxiously tend to consumerism trends, sensationalism, and the making of the image in accordance with consumer culture, while our soul is devastated. Actually, is there a word soul in the dictionary of consumerism?
   The visual representation of the song also has numerous symbolical meanings and is very interested in the analysis. I would like to leave something for your imagination, thus if you are willing, we can interpret together some symbols in the comments below. The little hint: she doesn’t wash her hands only because of Covid, there are more metaphorical meanings. Also, if you look carefully in the background, you can see colours of the Ukraine flag for a moment.

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

SOURCE Youtube screenshot

Let artistic rebellion be the only one that we will fight and beat the system!