AN AUSTRIAN DRAG QUEEN WINS EUROVISION

Описание: 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."