Having a look again on the utmost decade, Tom Neuwirth is taken aback through how a ways his 2014 Eurovision win because the drag queen Conchita Wurst has reverberated.
“I think this moment, the win, happened to all of us,” Neuwirth mentioned in a up to date interview at his staff’s places of work in Vienna. Wearing red corduroys, a twilight hoodie and white shoes, he was once fascinating and candy, jokey one 2nd and quietly reflective the then. “People will tell me where they were and how their life took a turn from then on,” he mentioned. “There are always big stories and emotions.”
That Would possibly, 10 years in the past, 195 million family watched Conchita Wurst belt out the facility ballad “Rise Like a Phoenix,” representing Austria within the finale of the Eurovision Tune Match. The yearly display is Europe’s longest-running skill pageant, wherein singers representing their international locations carry out for a profusion TV target audience that votes for its favourite occupation.
This life’s Eurovision ultimate takes playground in Malmo, Sweden, on Saturday. The development, which has been referred to “the queer Olympics” or “gay Christmas,” has lengthy been common with L.G.B.T.Q. family. Via 2014, the contest had already detectable plenty of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual contributors, in addition to a number of drag acts, and a trans winner as early as 1998.
But none of the ones performers won as explosive a reception as Conchita Wurst, whose victory arrived amid prevalent developments in L.G.B.T.Q. rights in Western Europe that incorporated a current of legalization for same-sex marriage. The singer become a world image of the sections between liberals and conservatives, with some calling her efficiency a high-profile victory for queer illustration, and others eye it as an indication of the abasement of conventional Western values.
On the presen of his win, Neuwirth was once 25 and a newcomer to the global pop scene. All he had in the back of him was once a activate an Austrian skill display, on which he positioned 2nd, and a short lived duration in a boy band that sputtered out.
So his victory was once a profusion miracle for him and for all of Austria, which had utmost gained Eurovision in 1966. “Everyone was completely out of their minds, like, ‘What, we won that?’” recalled Florian Aschka, a member of a collective that runs the Queer Museum Vienna. “It felt like a win for the whole queer community.”
Invites for Conchita Wurst flooded in: to headline L.G.B.T.Q. Satisfaction occasions in Madrid, London, Antwerp and past; to accomplish on the Ecu Parliament and the United International locations; and to look in a Jean Paul Gaultier model display.
Round the similar presen, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which have been on breeze for a couple of years, exploded in reputation, and drag queen tale hours started in San Francisco. Within the decade since, each the TV display and the tale hours have became cultural phenomena.
Neuwirth mentioned that these days, the semblance of a bearded drag queen on Eurovision “wouldn’t be so much of a topic.” However in other places within the mainstream media, he mentioned, there was a rising backlash towards L.G.B.T.Q. family’s higher visibility in people while — for instance, from family who assume drag queens are the usage of tale hours to groom youngsters. “I think with all this recognition and visibility, people who do not understand the concept of inclusion get triggered to the max,” he mentioned.
He would know; the blowback to Conchita Wurst was once fierce. One ultranationalist Russian lawmaker described her efficiency as “the end of Europe”; some other referred to as it “propaganda for homosexuality and moral decay.” The chief of the conservative Legislation and Justice Celebration in Poland echoed the ones sentiments, and a couple of years after, Turkey’s people broadcaster, which have been boycotting Eurovision since 2012, mentioned that the spectacle of “an Austrian with a beard and a skirt, who claims not to have a gender” affirmed its choice to step again from the competition.
However Neuwirth wasn’t stricken. He was once too busy “living my princess fantasy,” he mentioned. Consideration from the haters was once, if anything else, flattering, he added: “They are so triggered by me that they have to talk about me.”
Then the win, Neuwirth spent 3 years at the street, residing his dream as a singer within the people perceptible, with “paparazzi, being famous and all the things that come with it.” However with presen got here knowledge. “There was a moment in my career where I thought, this can’t be it,” he mentioned. “Conchita became a very narrow niche.”
Later, Neuwirth created a brandnew, extra masculine personality referred to as WURST, whose 2019 debut was once coupled with an digital magazine, “Truth Over Magnitude.” “I thought I was breaking free, but in hindsight I fled in the opposite direction and then again I was stuck in whatever I thought I had to be,” Neuwirth mentioned.
At the moment, Neuwirth is 35 and starring in his first theater function, because the manage in “LuziWuzi: I Am the Empress,” a kitschy dramedy a few Hapsburg royal, Archduke Ludwig Victor, who was once overtly however quietly homosexual, periodically donned attire and was once ultimately prohibited from Vienna through his brother, Emperor Franz Joseph, upcoming he was once accused of inappropriately drawing near some other guy within the people baths. The display, which runs on the Rabenhof Theater in Vienna via Sept. 24, has been rather well won, with status ovations and certain evaluations.
Neuwirth mentioned he now felt relaxed moving between his non-public self — Tom in sweatpants — and his characters, whether or not it’s a glam Conchita Wurst or a campy Hapsburg archduke.
In the end, he mentioned, “I understood for myself that there are no boundaries.”
“I always said it,” he added, “but I didn’t authentically live it as much as I wanted to for myself.”
