Eurovision 2021, the controversy over Damiano and the myth of the rocker from which we must free ourselves

They tell us rockers and the mind immediately runs to forty years ago, to the photographs of exhausted artists, assiduous frequenters of Studio 54, often drunk and stoned, rulers of excesses and of a life that was consumed like a fuse that was there and there for detonate the device. The thing, in some ways, is funny, given that, in 2021, we do nothing but say to move forward and want to overcome labels when, often unconsciously, we are still very attached to yesterday’s clichés, to those watertight compartments that, for some strange reason, make us feel safe, as if the world were something elementary, decomposable and simplified.

This is demonstrated by the controversy triggered a few hours after the final of theEurovision Song Contest who won Italy after 31 years e which saw the Måneskin first at the center of praise and then at the center of controversy because of a frame in which Damiano David would have, in a “suspicious” manner, bowed his head on the table of the Italian post of Ahoy in Rotterdam at the time of the counting of the votes, first convincing a journalist of Paris Match, Mariana Gréinet, and then several Twitter users that the singer was actually snorting cocaine.

🇮🇹@thisismaneskin when you’re so Rock and Roll your pants split at #Eurovision pic.twitter.com/dXpiDHOxA3

— Eurovision Song Contest (@Eurovision) May 22, 2021

Leaving aside the fact that a journalist, before launching into such an accusation, should first verify the facts (this could, in fact, have important legal consequences), it is evident that, beyond that shot of a handful of seconds – yesterday to What’s the weather like Damiano explained, so he had already done at the post-victory press conference in Rotterdam, that was bent over the coffee table while inspecting the broken glass of a glass inadvertently broken by his friend Thomas Raggi on the floor – the most worrying thing of all remains the approximation that leads us to believe that a guy who puts on eyeliner, wears wedges and devours the stage with high-pitched strokes automatically conforms to the image of the old-fashioned rocker, drugs , sex and rock’n’roll. It doesn’t matter that Damiano is very shy and blushes every time he is asked if he is having an affair with Victoria. Nor does it matter that Damiano said he was willing to take a drug test that same night just to deny the slander: no, Damiano is beautiful and cursed and should automatically share all the imagery that has always been linked to the beautiful and cursed (cocaine, the wee hours, escape any moral law by simply being a rocker) .

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The speculations, however, continued to the point of pushing the Måneskin, who in a normal world should have simply enjoyed the victory, to publish a post on social media: “We are really shocked by what some people say about Damiano using drugs. We are really anti-drug and have never used cocaine. We are ready to take the test, because we have nothing to hide ». Their explanation is supported by the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision: “The band, their management and the head of the delegation informed us that there were no drugs in the Green Room and explained that a glass had broken under their table and had been cleaned up by the singer” . The EBU, with all due respect to Paris MatchHe also confirmed that he had found the broken glass on the ground “after an on-the-spot check”. Until we learn to stop being superficial and to understand, as even a great like Simon Le Bon pointed out in a tweet, that rock (as well as the world) is not due to a stereotype, perhaps it would really be the case to be “quiet and good”.