Roma Filmic Representation as Postcolonial “Object”

Abstract

In post-Yugoslav film, depictions of Roma abound in associations with inferiority and an inability to conform to cultural and social norms of the majority. This projection mirrors the position of Balkan states in relation to the outside “European” gaze as they remain European internal outsiders; the spaces and people, like Roma, have been burdened by perceptions of Balkan difference, and present to the outside with non-conforming cultures and politics in need of a civilizing mission of European normalization. In this essay I employ postcolonial analysis to illustrate how film represents the neocolonial centre–periphery relationship of former Yugoslav states – as representatives of the Balkans to Brussels – and highlight difference between those who are assimilated – i.e., European Union member states – and those who are deemed unassimilable by way of neocolonial expectations. This is replicated in a form of internal colonization mediating expectations and representation of Romani populations, rendering them postcolonial “objects” in the Fanonian sense, knowable by way of their presumed difference predicated on racial hierarchies, stereotypes, and cultural difference.

• double-consciousness
• neocolonial
• object
• postcolonial
• Roma

ORCID

Sunnie Rucker-Chang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6728-9780

Notes

1 The term Roma has gained in popularity both as a political and ethnonym for people once termed Gypsies. Roma is preferred as it was self-selected, whereas Gypsy is a term projected and attributed from the outside. For more on this topic, see Hancock (1997).