Conchita
Wurst, An Austrian Drag Queen, Wins Eurovision
by Sally McGrane; May 12, 2014
In
the wee hours of Sunday morning, this year’s Eurovision Song
Contest, a pop extravaganza founded in 1956 with the purpose of
fostering good relations between neighbors after the violence of the
Second World War, drew to a close.
Many
have called it the most political Eurovision ever: over the course of
the evening, which was watched by a hundred and twenty million
people, the blonde, teen-aged twins representing Russia, where they
are widely touted as virgins, were booed, a first in the history
of the contest. Televotes from Crimea had been counted, according to
Eurovision decree, as Ukrainian. (They went to Sweden.) The Russians
had, as usual, awarded high points to Belarus, whose song was about
cheesecake.
But
the crowning statement was yet to come. As the last of the
thirty-seven participating countries weighed in (Israel, the
Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia), a dark-horse winner emerged:
Conchita Wurst. A glamorous drag queen, the Austrian candidate was
decked out in a long, glittering dress and sported a full beard. The
crowd in Copenhagen went wild. “This night is dedicated to everyone
who believes in peace and freedom,” Wurst said, brandishing the
glass trophy. “You know who you are. We are unity,
and we are unstoppable.” Later, in a press conference, she
addressed the same message directly to Vladimir Putin.
Conchita
Wurst is the alter ego of the twenty-five-year-old Tom Neuwirth, who
created Wurst in response to the discrimination he faced growing up
gay in a small Austrian town. (Wurstmeans both “sausage” and
“it’s all the same” in German, and stands, in Neuwirth’s
lexicon, for acceptance: “It’s all the same, at the end of the
day, how you look or where you come from, because the only thing that
counts is the person you are.”) Though she is Eurovision’s first
bearded woman, Wurst is by no means the first gender-bending act to
do well in the competition; in 1998, the transgender Israeli singer
Dana International won. But, against the current political backdrop,
the singer’s resounding victory can be read as a statement about
Europe’s commitment to progressive ideals.
“It’s
a firm and clear rebuke against Putin’s anti-L.G.B.T. legislation
and people who support it,” William Lee Adams, the editorin-chief
of WiwiBloggs.com, the Internet’s most-read Eurovision Web site,
said. Adams added that the passage of anti-gaypropaganda laws in
Russia, in combination with the Sochi Olympics, the annexation of
Crimea, and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, gave Wurst’s act,
which one journalist described as “James Bond/Adelle/Sheena
Easton-style,” the emotional weight it might not otherwise have
had. “She’s singing about rising like a phoenix,” Adams said.
“She’s been burned.”
Certainly,
Wurst’s path to Eurovision victory has not been easy. A petition
against her circulated in Austria after she was chosen as this year’s
national candidate. Subsequent petitions in Belarus and Russia
objected that Wurst’s participation would turn Eurovision into a
hotbed of sodomy. Some people, including Russian
politicians, demanded that Russian television edit out her act.
(This is against Eurovision rules and was not pursued by any
stations, a Eurovision spokesperson said.) Jan Feddersen, an
editor at the German newspaper TAZ and a longtime Eurovision
reporter, said Austria’s win indicates that there is less of a
cultural divide in Europe than is widely thought: Wurst garnered
nearly as many votesfrom Southern and Eastern European countries,
like Italy and Slovenia, as from traditionally left-leaning countries
likethe Netherlands. “There’s the idea that Eastern Europe is
homophobic, and this proves it’s not true,” Feddersen said.
“Conchita Wurstis a success of liberal, democratic Europe.”
Eurovision
scores are comprised of rankings made by appointed jury members in
combination with a popular televote. Wurst’s popular ranking held
additional surprises: in Armenia, a country that recently considered
instituting Russian-style laws against so-called gay propaganda, the
public ranked Wurst second. In Russia, Wurst was televoters’
third-favorite act. Yury Gavrikov, the leader of the Russian L.G.B.T.
organization Equality, said that this was remarkable. “The Russian
people, who are under really
aggressive government propaganda in the past couple of years, in
spite of all of this they voted for the Austrian with agreat
percentage,” he said. “They gave him or her bronze.”
Indeed,
Eurovision can be seen as a measure of Russia’s changing attitudes
toward homosexuality: in 2003, Russia sent t.A.T.u., a carefully
choreographed faux-lesbian duo described by one journalist as “the
biggest Russian export after oil and gas.” In 2007, Russia awarded
the Ukrainian drag performer Verka Serduchk’s song, whose refrain
included a nonsense phrase that sounded like “Russia goodbye,”
the highest score possible. “The difference is that, in seven
years, we have the idea of ‘an enemy’
recreated by the Kremlin and Putin,” Gavrikov said, adding that the
Russian L.G.B.T. community is happy with Wurst’s win. “It’s a
great compensation, you know, for all the history of the past couple
of months. I think it will invite a new process of thinking for
people.”
This
seemed to be true for this year’s Armenian finalist, Aram Mp3. He
apologized to Wurst after saying publicly that his team would help
her figure out if she is a man or a woman and that he drives as fast
as hecan through the gay district in Yerevan.
Wurst
accepted his apology; before long, according to media reports, they
were on hugging terms. Wurst sees herself as a catalyst for
discussion about terms like “other” and “normal,” and an
embodiment of the idea that you shouldn’t be judged because you are
different. Adams, who called her “the goddess of tolerance,”
agreed. But, he added, Wurst has also proved to be a surprisingly
unifying figure. “People talk about the splintered European Union,
about the U.K. pulling out,” he said. “But, last night, everyone
got behind an Austrian drag queen.”
Photograph:
Keld Navntoft/EPA/Corbis
