cosmolinguist | [134/365] Croatia (Reply)

Croatia was my favorite last night and the more I learn about the act and their performance the more there is to like.

Even if you don't care about Eurovision, it's a great way to get a broader audience for stuff like this.

Eurovision fans outside the post-Yugoslav region have been getting to know a band who were using their art to mock and shock repressive social forces even before Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991....

By the time Let 3 appeared on Dora, in other words, Croatian viewers had a frame of reference going back more than thirty years for making sense of their uniforms, inflatable missiles and salutes (and for wondering what was going to be under those uniforms when they inevitably came off). While their lyrics describe militarism and machismo, the band’s profile as musicians and their subcultural positioning has already resolved what would otherwise be the ambiguity of where they stand.

Like all ambiguous art which questions the allure of military power by placing its style and symbols up front, how well ‘MAMA ŠČ!’ can convey its messages depends on how far the audience realise how the band are inviting them to respond, and what they need to know about them to form that interpretation.

Pro-LGBTQ+ stances and anti-militarism go together in Let 3’s military drag because, according to the politics the band have expressed for more than thirty years, patriarchy, homophobia and male insecurity are root causes of militarism, nationalism and war.

Let 3’s mockery of drag dictators, however, starts at home – where they have been standing up to militaristic, nationalistic, and aggressively heterosexual ideals of masculine leadership in their own context for so long that ‘home’ used to be a different state.

Arriving in Liverpool, Let 3 and their tractor have touched down in a country where the forces that want to criminalise drag internationally are gaining ground, drag queen story hours in public libraries are being threatened by the far right, the equalities minister has met approvingly with the governor of the US state passing the widest suite of anti-trans laws, and the UN’s independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, has just been hearing from trans people across the country about how politicians and the media are whipping up fear against them during his own visit to the UK.

Let 3’s art may not be for everyone, but the freedom to make it for anyone is the same freedom that lets Eurovision itself be a place of safety for LGBTQ+ fans – and one of the first freedoms that the dictators lampooned in ‘MAMA ŠČ!’ have struck against.