An Austrian Drag Queen Wins Eurovision

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. (Wurst means 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 editor-in-chief of WiwiBloggs.com, the Internet’s most-read Eurovision Web site, said. Adams added that the passage of anti-gay-propaganda 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 votes from Southern and Eastern European countries, like Italy and Slovenia, as from traditionally left-leaning countries like the Netherlands. “There’s the idea that Eastern Europe is homophobic, and this proves it’s not true,” Feddersen said. “Conchita Wurst is 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 a great 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 he can 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.” -The New Yorker