Who’s Afraid of Conchita Wurst?

There is no point in discussing whether Conchita Wurst’s song was really the best at Eurovision. It’s not really about the song, it’s about the performer. Well, or in the performer – decide for yourself. It’s no secret that modern pop music (Russian in the first place) is rich in voiceless and mediocre boys and girls, all of whose popularity is based solely on their sexual attractiveness. And no matter how seditious it may sound, exactly the same reason can explain the success of Conchita.

Two mechanisms of attraction

Back in 2007, Harvard University biologist Catherine Dulac showed* that two neural networks operate in parallel in the mammalian brain, one of which is responsible for attraction to creatures of the same sex, the other for attraction to the opposite sex. This fact has been established in animal studies, and there are no exact data on this for humans, but psychological studies have repeatedly shown that a person has the whole range of sexual preferences: from pure heterosexuality to pure homosexuality, and this is an argument in favor of the theory of two neural networks. networks.

It is likely that Conchita Wurst won for this very reason. Her image triggers two mechanisms of sexual attraction at once. Her eyes and shape activate heterosexual neurons in the male viewer, while her beard activates homosexual neurons. In women, everything happens in reverse order, but the effect remains the same.

Tolerance is in fashion

Political motives cannot be discounted either. The culturologist Olga Vainshtein recalls them. “Probably, the jury’s decision was dictated by the desire to support the ideas of tolerance in Europe,” she says. – Now the ideology of tolerance, diversity (diversity) and political correctness has spread so much that it no longer surprises anyone. In the fashion world, the model Andrej Pejic, the owner of a uniquely beautiful feminine appearance, is very popular. Pejic walks in women’s fashion shows, advertises bras and recently appeared as a bride in a Jean-Paul Gaultier fashion show. At the same time, when it comes to creativity, not only ideas are important, but also their implementation. “In the history of European culture, there were much more artistically weighty statements about transsexualism,” emphasizes Olga Vainshtein. – Let me remind you of the novel “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf (1928), in which the hero changes sex several times in the course of history. In 1992, Sally Potter made the film Orlando, in which Orlando was played by Tilda Swinton, and the role of Queen Elizabeth was played by the outstanding English freak actor Quentin Crisp. Ideally, I would like the subject of discussion to be works of art of this level.”

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It’s hard to argue with this. But, let’s be honest, the Eurovision Song Contest never claimed to serve as an artistic standard. Its role, as, in fact, the role of all modern entertainment television, is rather comparable to that which the circus played 200 years ago. And in the traveling circuses of the XIX century, bearded women were at a great price. So much so that the poorer circuses, not having the means to get a real woman with a beard, forced their artists to stick on fake beards – just to keep up with the “trend”.

carnival start

There is nothing new in dressing men in women’s clothing (as well as women in men’s clothing). “Such dressing has historically been an attribute of carnival culture, which acted as a kind of secular “counterweight” to religious culture,” explains psychologist Yevgeny Osin. – In classical Shakespearean theater, all roles, including women’s, were performed by men, and this theme is played up in such comedies as Twelfth Night. In Russia, buffoons performed in women’s dress, and Elizaveta Petrovna arranged balls, to which the courtiers were obliged to appear in clothes of the opposite sex. Transvestite actors remain part of popular culture even today: Verka Serdyuchka and New Russian Grandmas, acting by no means in Shakespearean roles, have firmly occupied their niche on Russian TV.

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The pseudonym Wurst also refers to the carnival culture. In German, the word Wurst means “sausage” – with a wide range of associations, many of which are not supposed to be mentioned in polite society.

Doubts about gender identity

So the victory of Conchita Wurst looks quite logical. A bearded woman with a farce pseudonym has become the star of a modern farce – why be surprised? It is much more interesting to understand why her victory became the cause of such violent indignation in Russia, uniting in the manner of a national idea both TV viewers and deputies of the State Duma. According to psychologist Yevgeny Osin, the main reason is that the image of Conchita encroaches on “traditional” ideas about gender roles. “A man dressed as a woman shows us the relativity of gender as a socio-psychological phenomenon, reminding us of a simple fact: psychologically, there are no such clear boundaries between men and women as we think,” he notes. Every man has traits that are traditionally seen as “feminine” and vice versa. Knowing about these traits and the ability to harmoniously combine them makes a person more successful. On the contrary, the obsessive conscious assertion of one’s masculinity, the desire to suppress “feminine” traits at any cost (not to show weakness, compassion) is associated in a man with an unresolved internal conflict, as a result of which a person in emotionally significant situations remains helpless in the face of his unconscious impulses. Every teenager faces such a conflict, but not every boy, becoming an adult, gains confidence in his masculinity (and not every girl – in her femininity). In many ways, it is the fear associated with insecurity in one’s own gender identity that is behind the calls to fight against Conchita as a phenomenon.

Striving for self-assertion

But how can one explain that, say, Verka Serduchka does not cause such a violent reaction of rejection? The psychologist is sure that the point here is in the situation of the competition. Comparative studies of cultures show that Russians, in comparison with most Europeans, are much more likely to strive for self-assertion.** This is why it is so important for us to be the first in everything, and even winning a competition, which most Europeans consider socially significant fact. This victory seems to us almost an endorsement of certain values.

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“The type of personality that sees the world as a hierarchy of power relations is referred to in psychology as an authoritarian personality,” Evgeny Osin comments. – Numerous studies conducted in different countries have shown that it is people with high authoritarianism who experience discomfort and show disapproval when they meet everything new, unusual, with any manifestations of behavior that differ from accepted, “traditional” standards, including gender. *** An authoritarian person not only lives in a world where there are “correct” standards, but also considers it his duty to impose these standards on others: therefore, children who grew up in families of authoritarian parents are very afraid of being “wrong”. The psychological problem is that it is very difficult for a person who sees the world in terms of “right” and “wrong” to find himself, to accept the ambiguity and diversity of his inner world. Fear of this diversity is transformed into negative emotions in relation to any of its manifestations in the outside world. Even to such harmless ones as a bearded man who dressed in a woman’s dress to amuse the audience.

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However, perhaps we are more tolerant than it seems at first glance. Data from the iTunes music service, for example, show that two days after the end of Eurovision, Conchita Wurst’s song Rise Like a Phoenix took first place in Russia in terms of sales. What is it for?

* T. Kimchi et al. «A functional circuit underlying male sexual behaviour in the female mouse brain». Nature (2007) 448:1009-1014.

** http://polit.ru/article/2008/06/02/rusvalues

*** For more on the authoritarian personality and gender, see Pascal Quinard’s Sex and Fear (Text, 2000).