This paper will look at how the people from Eastern Europe are portrayed in Western Media. The focus of this paper will be on the stereotyping of Russian women as being beautiful, the Roma as thieves and the people of the Balkans as violent.
The popular opinion of Russia women is that they are beautiful and mysterious. They believe that they walk around on the ice in high heels, do not sweat even in fur coats and avoid public transportation. The goal of the article The Most Beautiful Russian Girls is to ascertain the kind of lives that these women would have later in life. What is it that changes the beautiful young women that Russia is associated with to the bitter old women that media depicts in movies and on TV.
The reasoning is simple, the stresses of everyday life combined with child bearing and poor health causes the once thin and beautiful Russian woman to gain weight and creates the strong, stocky, sturdy type of older Russian woman that is depicted in Western media. Another factor is that after WWII the many women were raising their children by themselves, while also trying to rebuild the country from the war. This was also the time in which Communist rose is the Soviet Union and one of the things that the Communists were adamant about was children worship. This was to strengthen their position that communism results are children having happier childhoods.
The Romani people get stereotyped as thieves and beggars. It is alleged that they are untrustworthy people who choose to be vagrants and nomads so that they continue living a life of theft and treachery. The biases of western culture against the Romani can be seen in regards to the authors of the two articles used for this paper. In the first article, Real Gypsies Contrast with Disney Depiction. Drea Tran speaks of how the Disney portrayal of Gypsies is different from real life. Tran says that while she was forbidden from watching the movie as a child, that is was probably for the best because she would have had “unrealistic expectations about gypsies” (Tran).
Tran had saw Gypsies as being similar to Hippies and while is France she realized that Gypsies do not fit her idealized Disney image of them. This happened for the author when a raggedy old woman approached her and her friend and handed them a note that said that her husband died, and she had cancer and could not feed her children. The author then goes on to claim that because the woman was a Gypsy it was most likely she was lying. “But the thing with gypsies is that it’s almost impossible to know if they’re lying or just trying to get your attention long enough to pilfer your wallet” (Tran). Her solution is to ignore the woman and walk away because according to her just being in the presence of someone with Gypsy blood means that something is going to be stolen. This article was full of blatant generalizations such as Tran’s description of the woman being toothless and therefore a gypsy.
Then there is the fact that Tran seemed quite upset that the old woman she met was not singing and dancing like Esmeralda, the gypsy from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. The thing is Tran had no idea if this woman was a gypsy or if she was lying, and while it is perfectly fine to doubt the sob story of someone asking for money. It is extremely judgmental and racist to assume that just because someone is asking for money that they are a Gypsy and that they are going to pickpocket you. It is articles such as these that have a parasitic relationship with the portrayal of Gypsies in Western media. Where the Romani people are either depicted as being unkempt, unruly vagabonds, living in mobile homes filled with trinkets and defective wares that they will try to sell to the unsuspecting buyers. The Gypsies that are not trying to sell bad products or cheat people out of money by doing bad labor are fortune tellers. This is the most popular depiction of the Roma people in Western media, the fortuneteller, who while a fraud has enough of a gift to give the protagonist a clue that aids him in the quest that they are on.
In the second article on the Roma people the author Josh Harris states that going into the interview with Professor Hancock a person of Roma lineage. He was skeptical of Hancock’s agenda and felt that Hancock’s only goal may have been to get more for his people (Harris pg. 89). This is bothersome because the author was conducting an interview with biases already lurking over how he was going to approach his article and his interviewee. There is also the fact that the author was judging Hancock for possibly doing what many other people and groups do to advocate change and raise funds for causes, which is to speak about is. However, the author did admit that his assumptions going into the interview were wrong.
In regards to the interview itself. In 2004 Ian Hancock was an advocate for the Roma people. He was also the first Roma in the country to obtain his PhD. In 2004 he was also Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Roma ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He is also a member of the International Romani Parliament and was the White House appointee serving as the Romani delegate to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council (Harris pg. 86). He was an activist for the Roma people, who fought for them to be given recognition and integrated into European societies. During his time working on his Doctorate in Britain he was mostly exiled from academic life and very few professors paid attention to him due to his Romani heritage. Hancock stated that most Romani people had no idea what a PhD was and therefore did not understand the significance of the degree (Harris pg. 87). Hancock also admitted that he does not think that the Roma people will be treated equal to non-Roma people.
The European Union had begun what is called the Decade of Roma Inclusion in the 1990’s. This was a program that was meant to give a higher profile to Romani leaders, legislations and organizations. Hancock however remained skeptical because he did not believe that the EU did enough to help the Romani. Hancock fears that in order for the Romani to get the rights that they are entitled to as European citizens. In his book We Are the Romani People, he wrote “So what makes a European? It is a state of mind, a sense of belonging to a part of the world and being a part of its history and its different regional and ethnic cultures. In all of these, Romani’s are in no way different from other people inhabiting Europe” (Hancock pg. 78). He fears that they will have to assimilate which will result in the Romani people losing their unique culture and language.
One of the negative stereotypes that effects the lives of the Romani people is that they are nomadic. This is true but it is not by choice. The Roma people have long been denied the right to settle down by European legislation that had denied them the right to settle any place permanently and now even though the laws have changed and the Romani are no longer forbidden from taking permanent residence in Europe. They still have the reputation of being nomadic, which affects their ability to find permanent residency.
Hancock believes that the misinformation put out by Romani scholars comes from either misunderstanding Roma culture or racism towards the Romani people. The problem according to him is that “novelists and journalists are trying to convey the stereotypical Gypsy image, without acknowledging any of the major problems facing the Roma” (Harris). Hancock compares the Romani people to the Hasidic Jews because both have no roots, have certain dietary restrictions and are likely to be blamed for the negative things that have happened in Europe. He hopes that like the Hasidic Jews that the Romani people can obtain a more positive future.
Finally, this paper will look at the biggest misconception of the Baltic and Slavic people. This misconception is that they are backwards and violent. The reason for this seems to be the area’s Ottoman past. This is because most of the Christian based countries of Western Europe such as France and England depicted the Ottoman Empire as being cruel, heretics. This view of the area continues even today. As many people associate violence with the Balkan region due to the numbr of conflicts that have plagued the area in the past 30 or more years "violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans: all I knew of the South Slavs”, said by Rebecca West in "Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia." (Bakić-Hayden pg. 918). The amount of violence in the region has caused to seem that the people are predisposed to such things.
The fact is the Balkan’s because of their past Ottoman rule exist on the outside of being European. The problem with this is that the Balkan people purposely created a self-identity that would be opposite that of the Ottoman people. They did this by identifying as Byzantine, nonetheless they are still seen by the Western European countries as being “other” (Bakić-Hayden pg. 920). This is because of the Ottoman influences on their land and the fact that many past writers had a habit of describing both Balkan and Asian cultures and lands the same way. The overall depiction being that the people living in the lands were unintelligent, lacking in reason, weak, and submissive. They also believed that these areas be ripe with misery and despair. According to Bakić-Hayden it was believed that the areas were inhabited by people who were “unsubdued or ungoverned by reason" (pg.921). The people still blame the hostilities and violence that occurs in the region on religion "we hear even nowadays that what explains dramatic conflicts, like the one in the former Yugoslavia, is the difference between "catholic" and "orthodox" Europe, as if atrocities were inspired by piety” said by Alexander Dutu in Small Countries and quoted by Bakić-Hayden (pg. 923).
In conclusion, it seems that much of Western media’s depiction of the Balkan and Slavic people may be derived from both the aloofness and separation of the people as well as the portrayal of them in books and in European media (Bakić-Hayden pg.925). This lack of knowledge along with racial intolerance has effected the way that Slavic and Balkan people are portrayed.
Works Cited
Bakić-Hayden, Milica. "Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia." Slavic Review 54.4 (1995): 917-31. Web.
Hancock, Ian F. We Are the Romani People = Ame Sam E Rromane Dz̆ene. Paris, France: Centre De Recherches Tsiganes, 2002. Print.
Harris, Josh. "We, the Roma: An Interview with Ian Hancock." RADOC. Spring 2006. Web. 04 June 2016.
"The Most Beautiful Russian Girls The Most Beautiful Russian Girls." N.p., n.d. Web. 4 June 2016.
Tran, Drea. "Real Gypsies Contrast with Disney Depiction." The Daily Nexus Real Gypsies Contrast with Disney Depiction Comments. N.p., 23 Apr. 2010. Web. 04 June 2016.
