When adoration turns to nastiness

Don’t worry, this is not an article about the Malta Eurovision Song Contest itself or who should or should not have won.

What has intrigued me is the fallout. I was taken aback by the sheer wall of nastiness directed at Ira Losco now that she has once again won the contest. Until recently, she was the nation’s darling (and for many people, she clearly still is), but on Saturday night there was an evident backlash against her by another segment of the population who were not happy that their favourites didn’t win. Of course, this happens every year, because everyone backs different singers, but the aggro directed at Ira seems to have been amplified more than usual. The ease of online commentary, of course, has a lot to do with this.

It is astonishing just how easily people can turn against celebrities they once loved in the fickle world of public opinion. The undercurrents that the tide had turned were there as soon as we learned that Ira would be taking part again, with many claiming it was obviously a foregone conclusion that she would snatch victory away from any potential newcomer for the simple reason that she is who she is.

But, as others have also pointed out, for many long years, the Eurovision contest used to be a who’s who of the same old “established” names, year in, year out, and previous winners had no qualms in trying their luck once again. More significantly, the public did not really seem to mind all that much, except perhaps to say with wry amusement, “oh no, not him/her again.” So why this viciousness against Ira?

I wonder: is it in human nature to build people up to impossible heights only to take perverse pleasure in tearing them down again? While it is easy to dismiss the backlash as pure jealousy, I think it goes deeper than that; it is more like a desire to put someone “in their place” for daring to succeed in their field and for seemingly “having it all”. It is as if the success and accolades for being considered the best at something have been exhausted and that person is perceived as being greedy and cheeky for wanting more, so we feel the need to chip away at the pedestal we ourselves would have created, in order to take them down a peg or three. It’s like we’re saying, “OK, OK, you’ve had enough limelight to last you a lifetime now, so go away and let someone else bask in some of the glory.”

This is a strange kind of attitude towards success because it is as if we are saying there is only room for one person to excel at something (whatever the field may be) when that is patently absurd. Success should never be rationed just to make others feel better about themselves. For the sake of comparison, it’s like saying Meryl Streep should not take part in the Academy Awards any more “to give others a chance to win an Oscar.”

On the other hand, in Malta’s context, where winning the Eurovision is considered to be the ultimate achievement of any musician/singer (even though experience has taught us that it clearly isn’t), it is easy to see why Ira’s presence ruffled so many feathers. There were even those who wondered why we even bothered to hold the contest, as Ira could have been simply handpicked and sent to represent Malta, so great was the assumption that she was going to win anyway. But the organizers had tried handpicking a singer for the Junior Eurovision two years in a row (Gaia and Federica respectively) but that method did not go down well either and last year they went back to holding a contest.

Many remarked how Ira did not seem to be that happy or excited as the votes started coming in and when she was declared the winner. To be honest, I wondered about it myself. But now that I’ve thought about it, it makes sense. She was in one of those Catch-22 situations, that no matter how she reacted she would have been criticized. Screaming with excitement would have looked downright undignified and frankly uncalled for, since she was the frontrunner, while acting too blasé would have been considered almost an insult to those who wanted to win so badly.

She settled for a quiet smile and cautious clapping but, unfortunately, that too came across as indifference; as if she was obviously expecting to win. But knowing her, that definitely was not the case, as her later interview confirmed.

Let’s face it, she would have had to be a robot not to be very much aware of the underlying hostile vibe from members of the public because she had “dared” to enter again, thus shafting the chances of any of the up and coming rising stars. At one point, I even detected an expression on her face which seemed to say, “why did I do this, was this even a good idea?” Maybe I am wrong, but there was a flicker of something much like regret, knowing that her win would continue to fan the flames of antagonism towards her even more. Certainly her win has revealed an aspect of human nature among some members of the general public which is downright unpleasant and ugly. It beats me how people can get so worked up and be so spiteful and even ferocious about a song contest when in life there are much more important things to fret over. First World Problems, indeed.

Meanwhile, time will tell whether Ira Losco’s calculated risk to go back to the contest which launched her career 14 years ago, was a wise move or not.