Is national kitsch not so bad after all?

When Tina Kyriaki saw Marina Satti's video for Greece's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, it made her mad. Very mad, in fact. "My first thought was that we were gouging out our own eyes," the founder of Alternative Athens tells Kathimerini, quoting a Greek proverb.

Her anger, like that of many other Greeks, may seem misplaced at first, given the multitude of positive comments by foreign users for "Zari" on YouTube - where, it should be noted, it has been viewed nearly 6 million times. But what the noise surrounding Satti's video and the more recent furor sparked by the costumes designed by Mary Katrantzou for the Olympic Flame lighting ceremony tell us is that Greeks are very sensitive about their country's image. Even though we like to think that we've broken away from the stereotypical view held by tourists in the 1960s and 70s, it seems that this ...