January 31, 2025 • 62 mins
In this episode, we dive into Romani representation in Robert Eggers' Nosferatu with Madeline Potter, Romani scholar of 19th century Gothic literature! We also get into vampire lore, Romani folklore, mulo, strigoi, and Romani tropes in Gothic literature and media.
Madeline Potter is a research and teaching fellow at the University of Edinburgh, in the literature of the long 19th century (Romanticism to Victorianism). At Edinburgh, she teaches on a range of courses, including one on vampire literature in the long 19th century, which she has designed. Her work primarily looks at Gothic literature and theology: her first academic book is called Theological Monsters: Religion and Irish Gothic and will be published by University of Wales Press. Her first trade book is called The Roma: A Travelling History and will be launched later this year, published by The Bodley Head in the UK and Harper Collins in the USA.
Follow her work on madeline-potter.com and on X and Instagram .
This episode's Romani crush in Katarina Taikon. The two folklore books mentioned are Rromane Paramicha by Hedina Sijercic & Gypsy Folktales by Diane Tong
Our festival, Welcome to Romanistan, is taking place March 28-30, 2025 in New Orleans! Please visit https://www.romanistanpodcast.com/romanistan-festival-neworleans for tickets, and spread the word!
Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.
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Follow Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele & Paulina @romaniholistic.
You can get our book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. Visit romanistanpodcast.com for events, educational resources, merch, and more. Please support our book tour fundraiser if you can.
Email us at romanistanpodcast@gmail.com for inquiries.
Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens
Conceived of by Paulina Stevens
Edited by Viktor Pachas
With Music by Viktor Pachas
And Artwork by Elijah Vardo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jezmina (00:00):
Hello Romanesan listeners.
It's Jezmina with some newsfrom me and Paulina.
First, the Romanesan Festivalis on.
It will be in March.
We had to reschedule fromDecember, but you know what?
This lineup is even strongerand we are excited to share some
events.
(00:21):
So I'm going to give you arundown of the festival and then
mention a few other things thatPaulina and I are doing.
So hang in there, but all ofthis information is available on
romanistanpodcast.
com.
If you are going to be in NewOrleans March 28th to March 30th
or you want to come, we will bedoing so many things.
(00:41):
We're starting off strong onthe morning of the 28th of 1130
at the Tennessee WilliamsFestival with a panel on Romani
tropes and contributions in popculture and it's a conversation
with me, paulina and MaraRajajewski, and then later that
night on the 28th, we will bedoing Tales from Romanistan, a
live Romanistan podcast event.
(01:03):
It will be a night of Romanistorytelling.
It will be hosted by me andPaulina, with Tsarina, hellfire,
moonbear, millie, raccoon,bimbo, yaga and Victor, our
Romanistan musician.
Then the next day, on the 29th,there will be a divination
pop-up at Cottage Magic andtheir Mystic location.
(01:23):
So they have a new location.
It's called Mystic and that'swhere we will be.
Paulina and I will be offeringtarot and palm readings and
Paulina will also be offeringwellness consultations from 12
to 5 on the 29th.
Later that night we will hostStewarding Traditions, a
Literary Salon and BlessingRitual with Lilith Dorsey, an
(01:46):
amazing practitioner, paulinaand me, sponsored by Wiser Books
.
Lilith Dorsey is really giftedand she'll be talking about
ancestral traditions in voodooand indigenous and cultic
bloodlines in her family, aswell as Afro-Caribbean, and
Paulina and I will, of course,be talking about Romani
ancestral traditions.
(02:07):
And then the following day wewill be offering a workshop on
tarot and ancestor communicationon the 30th, and that will be
from 1 to 3 pm, also at CottageMagic Mystic.
And then the last event will beBebe's Kitchen, a culinary
ritual, and this will be alsopart of the Tennessee Williams
(02:29):
Festival.
It's hosted by Bembo Yaga orIlva, mara Rajejevski and Moon
Bear, and it'll be featuring tealeaf readings with me and
Paulina and there will be musicby Millie, raccoon and Victor.
So you can get tickets and allthe information on our website,
romanistanpodcastcom.
(02:51):
So this will be the end ofMarch.
Super fun.
Please spread the word.
We need help getting the wordout and also, if you would like
to attend a virtual event.
Caitlin Foisy, who we haveinterviewed, and I will be
hosting a ritual called Honeyand Roses and this will be a
virtual ritual for clarity,connection and confidence, and
(03:15):
you'll get a PDF and you canjoin the live recording or watch
it yourself.
So if you need a little spaceholding, that will be on
February 16th at 8 pm EST and,if you happen to be in New
Hampshire or Boston, I'll bedoing some events a poetry
brothel party called the Loverson February 14th, and on the
(03:36):
15th I'll be hosting a tea leafreading ritual for heart healing
and love with Deadwicks andPortsmouth, and you can also
book with Paulina and I.
If you ever want a reading.
You can find Paulina atromaniholisticcom and I'm at
jesminavontilacom.
Thanks for listening to ourannouncements.
(03:57):
We really appreciate you beinghere, but we just could not wait
to tell you that the festivalis finalized.
Come party with us, it will beso much fun.
Okay, enjoy this episode.
We're so excited to talk aboutNosferatu and all the fun things
coming up next Bye, welcome toRomanistan.
(04:32):
I am one of your friendlyneighborhood gypsies.
Again, paulina is so busy thismonth, and so it's me, jasmina.
I'm really happy to be here,but Paulina will be back soon,
do not fear, and I am so excitedto invite Madeline Potter onto
the show today.
Maddie is a research andteaching fellow at the
University of Edinburgh in theliterature of the long 19th
(04:53):
century romanticism toVictorianism.
At Edinburgh she teaches on arange of courses, including one
on vampire literature in thelong 19th century, which she has
designed.
Her work primarily looks atGothic literature and theology.
Her first academic book iscalled Theological Monsters,
(05:13):
religion and Irish Gothic andwill be published by University
of Wales Press.
Her first trade book is calledthe Roma A Traveling History and
will be launched later thisyear, published by the Bodley
Head in the UK and HarperCollinsin the USA.
Madeline (05:33):
Welcome, maddie.
I'm so happy to have you here,thank you.
Thank you so much for theinvitation.
I'm really, really pleased tobe on and, yeah, very excited,
thank you.
Jezmina (05:41):
We have both been admiring your work for a long
time and we love following youon Twitter or, you know, x,
whatever and yeah, just thethings that you, you write about
are so interesting, and we'rehere especially today to talk
about Nosferatu and your viewson on the latest release, the
(06:04):
Robert Eggers version.
But also we'll talk about otherthings too, and so we're going
to start with some of ourfavorite questions.
The first one is just tell usabout yourself.
Where are you from?
Where's your family, from yourvisa, anything you want to share
about your background?
Madeline (06:19):
Yeah, so I'm originally from Romania.
I was born in a small town onthe kind of western side of the
country called Reșița and I grewup there.
We moved in a slightly kind ofbigger town in the area.
My family lived locally andthen basically as a young adult,
(06:42):
I came to England, I gotmarried, I did a PhD and now I
live in Scotland because of myjob.
And yeah, that's kind ofgeneral sort of background and
yeah, my Vita is Calderash.
Jezmina (07:07):
I love that.
Thank you for sharing.
We always love a little bit ofa background.
I almost moved to Edinburghwhen I was living in Ireland,
and it's one of those placesthat I've never been to, but I
think I just built it up so muchand so, um, yeah, I have this
like chance to visit.
Madeline (07:18):
Let me know um.
It's a really, really lovelyplace.
I'm really enjoying living here.
It looks like such a beautifultown it is.
It's very pretty and verygothic.
Jezmina (07:28):
And Paulina and I love to travel, so we probably will
take you up on that.
Madeline (07:32):
Yeah, yeah, take me up on that.
Jezmina (07:35):
Our next favorite question, because we think of
this podcast as an opportunityto talk to Roma who maybe don't
fit the mold of like what theperfect ideal Roma is.
And what is that?
Even you know, we don't know,and so, um, we like to ask this
question do you consideryourself a rebel?
But people interpret the wordrebel in a lot of different ways
.
We get a lot of interestinganswers.
(07:56):
So, just based on things, doyou?
Yeah?
No, because I've been listeningto.
Madeline (08:01):
I've been listening to episodes and it's always that
question, that very loadedquestion, and I think in a way,
yes, but not a rebel without acause, if that makes sense.
I don't think I rebel againstthings just for the sake of it.
I do what I'm interested in, Ido what drives me.
I've always had these, I'vealways been interested in the
(08:23):
Gothic, I've always beeninterested in pursuing this line
of research, um, so I'm quitestubborn as well, which I
suppose goes hand in hand withbeing a rebel.
I think, also, if you are romain europe, you have to be a
little bit of a rebel becauseyou have to find that space for
(08:45):
yourself.
Whatever you know, I mean,things can be hostile to you
from different angles.
A lot of institutions you knowpractice well systemic racism,
exclusion and so on and so forth.
So you kind of have to rebelagainst these systems that
(09:07):
continue to keep the Roma inthis situation of precarity, of
marginalization, of wellracialized violence and so on
and so forth.
I think, yeah, I think in a wayI have to be a rebel from that
point of view yeah, no, thatabsolutely makes sense.
Jezmina (09:31):
Gotta change the system , break the system yeah, yeah,
yeah.
I have to resist it and to toactively just try to make a
better space and place andsociety for us yeah, I mean,
that's the dream, and it's sointeresting how um so many of
the people we've interviewedhave really different skills,
(09:53):
backgrounds, jobs, and everyonehas their own way of trying to
change things with where they'recoming from, and I just love it
and I think that's part of thebeauty of it, that everybody can
channel the skills that they'vegot, that they're good at, and
it's part of the diversity ofthe Roma across well, the world
really, not just Europe.
Yeah, absolutely your work as anacademic focuses on the
(10:34):
intersection of monstrosity andtheology in 19th century gothic
literature.
So first I love monsters.
Paulina does too.
Amazing, yes.
So like we're so excited, um,can you tell listeners a little
bit more about what, what itmeans, what that means, what do
you study and write about?
Madeline (10:52):
yeah, so in my academic book I look at irish
gothic literature.
So I look at brown stoker, theauthor of dracula, um, and two
of his contemporary, or slightlybefore him, writers Joseph
Sheridan-Lefonu, who wrote thenovella Carmilla, a really
interesting vampire novella, andCharles Robert Maturin as well,
(11:13):
who wrote the Gothic novelMount with the Wanderer.
Now what I do is sotraditionally Gothic literature
has been approached in terms ofa binary the monsters being the
othered.
The monsters are just beingmonstrous and bad and evil and
ugly and all of those bad things.
So what I'm asking is actuallymaybe perhaps there is a sense
(11:39):
of reclaiming these monstrousidentities, maybe they're not
just being othered, maybe weshouldn't look at the gothic in
terms of a black and whitedistinction, but rather as kind
of ways of thinking about theimportant things in life, and
one of those important things inlife is religion and
spirituality.
(11:59):
So that takes me to the secondthing that I do in my work.
These authors have generallybeen read in terms of kind of.
They were protestants, so theywere Irish protestant writers,
and they've been read in termsof the theology of their works
pretty much being a kind ofprotestant framework, if that
(12:22):
makes sense.
But if you start looking at it.
It's actually, I think, alittle bit more complicated,
because inevitably, when you dowrite about vampires
specifically, there's all thesefolk traditions, all these folk
beliefs, all these variousmagical traditions as well that
come into it.
So what I'm saying is thatactually these theologies and I
(12:46):
define theology broadly toinclude these systems of
spirituality, of magic, ofoccultism, of esotericism and so
on and so forth that they allcome together in quite
interesting ways, that thesetheologies aren't just
protestant, but actually they'rea really interesting eclectic
(13:07):
mix that then use these monstersas a way of thinking about the
afterlife, of kind of makingsomething tangible, because the
monsters unlike, say, ghosts orspirits, they have actual bodies
.
You touch a body, you touch amonster, then you can understand
something through the senses,physically, and then what if
(13:30):
what we understand through thesemonsters can tell us about, can
tell us something about theafterlife?
So basically, the gist of mywork is how vampires like god,
oh, interesting.
Jezmina (13:45):
I mean, the whole idea of the undead is such an
interesting alternativeafterlife and I think in a lot
of vampire lore it's like onceyou kill the undead, then
they're totally obliterated.
Yeah, has that been?
Um, yeah, um, that's sointeresting.
How do you think vampires arelike god?
I would love to know a littlemore.
Madeline (14:08):
I mean, it's kind of Lestat who really should be
credited with the idea, becausehe says it in the book Something
like no creature under God ismore like him than we are.
And Lestat says something alongthe lines of well, we we got,
kills indiscriminately.
He takes the richest and thepoorest, and so do we.
(14:29):
There's that sense of existingoutside of the world, of
mortality, but there is alsothis sense of undeath, of
eternal life, right, which inthese sort of theological
frameworks exists in heaven orin hell, depending um, but that
(14:54):
we cannot access as humans inthis world.
So what the vampire's body doesis actually makes us imagine.
That makes us imagine eternallife.
And there's the whole thing ofblood consumption.
Right, the blood is the lifewhich is normally understood to
be the body of the blood ofchrist, but that's removed from
(15:20):
the immediacy of experience.
So vampires help us to kind ofimagine those questions of the
afterlife in very bodily andcorporeal terms, which are
usually again associated withgod or with christ.
So I think that's how they arelike god I love that.
Jezmina (15:40):
Yeah, I mean, midnight mass was really full on about
that too, which was, I mean, Ithought that was a fascinating
series and they didn't evenreally use the word vampire.
But that's, you know the energy.
Madeline (15:49):
But again, it's just kind of because Midnight Mass
was engaging particularly withthis kind of Catholic setting.
But in these texts it's just somany traditions that are coming
(16:11):
together.
Again, it's just sort ofspirituality, various occult
theologies.
Folklore is a big one becausein Dracula they use the crucifix
and the consecrated bread, thehost, but also the garlic flour
and the mountain ash, so it'skind of really coming together
(16:32):
of magic and religion there andscience as well.
So they're all.
They don't exist in thattension, precisely because the
monster doesn't necessarily makesense.
Jezmina (16:44):
So they need to use everything, exercise of trying
to imagine and know things, andthat process of knowledge
doesn't actually fit into veryclear categories yeah, that's so
interesting because I find youknow, I, both Paulina and I do
fortune telling work and we workwith people from all different
(17:08):
types of faiths and backgroundsand what we're doing is really
spiritual work and it, I feellike just spirituality in
general, is like let's let'stake what we can to, um, to make
sense of these things thatdon't make sense, and you, might
within a tradition, or or youknow several yeah, exactly 100
percent.
(17:37):
So this leads me to my nextquestion about folklore,
especially so we're here, firstand foremost because Nosferatu
came out.
There's really interesting Romarepresentation.
We wanted to talk to you aboutyour thoughts, just in case any
listeners are not familiar.
Just in case any listeners arenot familiar, the recent release
of Nosferatu is by RobertEggers and it was inspired by
(17:59):
the 1897 Gothic horror novelDracula by Irish writer Bram
Stoker, who we've been talkingabout, and also the 1922 film
adaptation Nosferatu by FWMurnau.
So the big question that I haveis why are Roma such an
integral part of stories aboutvampires?
Madeline (18:24):
And what role do Roma usually play in these stories?
Yeah, so that's a really goodquestion and it's something that
I've been thinking a lot about.
So why I've got some theories.
So obviously it is Bram Stokerwho popularizes the trope um,
specifically in connection todracula and the vampire himself.
Because when he goes to, whenthe character jonathan harker
(18:47):
goes to transylvania, he writesat the castle and there are some
, uh, roma people there who workfor the count and they're
presented to be his littleallies.
So they're essentially baddiesin the novel.
Right, they work for the Count.
Jonathan Harker at some pointtries to escape and he tries to
give them a letter so that theycould take it, and they betray
(19:10):
him and take it to the Count.
So they're a very threateningpresence.
It doesn't start with um, bramstoker.
The whole trope of the wholekind of role, the presence of
the roma in gothic literaturegoes back pretty much to the
development of gothic literature.
I mean, if we think about, forexample, in jane eyre by
(19:33):
Charlotte Bronte, when MrRochester disguises himself as a
Romany fortune teller, and thenwe have Heathcliff in Wuthering
High, so it's a very closerelationship.
Why does it happen?
So my theory is that the gothicthrives.
(19:59):
One of the most gothic thingsthat I think we can experience
as humans is uncertainty andunknowability.
That's why we're afraid of thedark because we can't see what's
there.
And then we can see an outlineand what's actually a wardrobe
might look like some sort ofmonster.
So it's to do withdestabilizing our perception,
our senses and us not reallyknowing what that is.
(20:21):
Yeah, so when europeans seeroma, obviously there are
non-european people, they don'tlook european but they're also
nomadic.
So this makes them strange,this makes them mysterious, this
makes them also fascinating.
But because they don't knowthem, that makes them gothic and
(20:44):
particularly so.
It was in the 18th century thata linguist discovered the
relationship between the romanilanguage and ind Indian
languages, which confirmed thatthe Roma originated in India.
But before then nobody reallyknew what these uncanny nomads,
as it were, had come from.
(21:05):
So they had no sense of origin,that was unknown.
So that feeds into that senseof the Gothic, because where did
they come from?
Where are they going?
And then also it was freud whospoke about the uncanny as,
quite literally, the unhomely.
Um, and how things are.
(21:25):
Uncanny threaten, I think hesays, the full world, the safety
within the walls of the home.
If you have a people you don'tknow their origins, that's
already mysterious.
And then the nomadic they don'teven threaten that safety of
the home.
They don't have the home.
Those four walls are completelydone away with.
(21:47):
They can't be pinned down inthe minds of Europeans.
So I think that just increasesthat sense of mystery.
Then add to that the practice ofmagic traditions and fortune
telling as well, which makespeople, I think, fear the Roma
even more, because a lot of thetropes in Gothic literature are
(22:09):
very often to do with curses,with being associated with
places and beings that arethreatening or monstrous, right.
So I think there are all thesedifferent strands that come
together so they become literaltropes of the gothic.
(22:31):
They're not presented, or very,very, very rarely presented.
It's kind of fully developedcharacters with a lot of
background.
Instead, what's happening isthat they're kind of thrown in
there very often, even just as areference.
You know that when the gypsiesarrive or are spotted in a 19th
(22:52):
century novel, something isabout to go wrong.
They're an indication thatsomething is about to be
destabilised, that something'sjust a bit off there.
So that kind of essentially Ilike to say it cannibalises a
whole culture, a whole people.
They become just basicallysigns that something's about to
(23:17):
go wrong and then they becomeassociated with vampires and
monsters.
So there's very littleengagement with the actual
culture, with the actual history.
Even after we know, even afterit's elucidated that the roma
had come from india, writersstill cling on to this mystery
of origin, this unknown abilityand impossibility to to pin down
(23:41):
where, where they're comingfrom, where they're going, and
yeah yeah, I mean, and writersstill do that today.
Jezmina (23:49):
I mean, even one of my friends would say was mentioning
hemlock grove and they werelike, oh, but you know, then I
got a little older and realizedhow racist it was and I hadn't
seen it and just sharing thepremise that it's like well,
yeah, roma are werewolves.
Madeline (24:04):
None of them are played by Roma and they're just
inherently 100% and I was very,very disappointed by the film
the Last Voyage of the Demeter,which adapts the scene in
Dracula that's happening on theship when Dracula's coming to
England, and that's one of myfavourite things in the novel
(24:25):
and I think it's got so muchpotential.
They cast a Romany characterwho's not Romany and also seem
to confuse because there's aspoiler alert for those of you
who've not seen it.
Um, there's a scene where achild says the captain's taught
me a few words in Romany andthen he speaks broken Romanian.
(24:47):
So there seems to be aconfusion between Romany and
Romanian.
But also, yeah, me growing upand this is not that recent, but
still me growing up, I was,I've always been a huge vampire
girl.
I always enjoyed these storiesabout vampires, so I watched,
but through the vampire slayerand then later angel, and I
(25:09):
never could really get into it,particularly because of the way
the roma flattened in just justkind of absolutely caricatured
vision of a Romani woman, of aCalderash woman, his cursing
angel, and I know and peoplehave said to me yeah, but it's a
good thing that they give him asoul, it may be, but it's still
(25:30):
very caricatured and it's veryinaccurate and it's very
grotesque, um, and again thatthe actor none of the actors, as
far as I'm aware, certainly themain actress wasn't roma.
And then they had in the in thecamp, in the romney camp, they
had these, um, really fancywagons that are far more aligned
(25:52):
with kind of Romani, childRomani, gypsy tradition in the
UK than they would be with theKaldurash.
We wouldn't have had those, andI get that that's getting into
far more kind of fine detail,but still just everything about
it was very off-putting to me.
Jezmina (26:13):
So yeah, I mean, that's so frustrating too.
Is, um, you know, romani?
Uh sorry, my dog is definitelygoing to be barking in the
background.
There's no way around I lovedogs she has so much to say
about this.
Romani advisors exist like that.
We, we write, we make things,like you could just hire someone
(26:35):
and make something good andthen have bragging rights to it,
but it's just so.
Yeah, it just feels likelaziness and we'll.
I'll definitely get into thatwith some more questions, but I
want to do a little pivot too,because you know I'm a really
big fan of the book of poetryDuk by Hedina Szyżyk, and I'm
not sure if I'm saying her lastname correctly, but I am giving
(26:58):
it a shot.
She writes about the nightbutterfly, this vampiric kind of
figure in Romani, bosnianfolklore, and I've heard of
other vampiric-like creatures.
I don't know the name of it,but I remember hearing from
someone else about an embodimentof the wind that can suck the
(27:19):
life out of you, and so Iwondered if you wanted to share
a little bit about the role ofvampires or vampiric monsters in
Romani folklore.
Madeline (27:30):
Yeah, and Romani folklore, and obviously it
really varies not only fromVitsa to Vitsa, but literally
from community to community,from sometimes even from family
to family, but I think it's it'sfine to say that traditional
Romani communities are veryporous in terms of those
(27:50):
boundaries between life anddeath.
Yeah, so these threats arealways there.
There's all these kinds ofquasi vampiric figures in
folklore.
One of the worst ones, one ofthe most terrifying ones, I
think, is the Moolah, which isquite literally the dead,
(28:12):
meaning dead in the Romanilanguage quite literally the
dead, meaning dead in the Romanilanguage, which entails the
return of a dead body to hauntthe living.
And there are so many storiesabout these various vampire
figures.
(28:40):
Vampire figures, um, varioustales about bodies showing up,
um at the cemetery, walkingaround.
Uh, obviously it's doublyterrifying if they're going to
touch you, because it crossesmany purity laws.
Yes, touching that, um.
So, yeah, loads of loads ofstories also, um, about.
(29:02):
There was one that I heardgrowing up about a boy rose
which he puts in a vase next tohis bed and every night he gets
(29:23):
weaker and weaker, and weakerand weaker, and it's the rose
that's kind of sucking his lifeenergy that's then going to her.
So this is not, you know, theblood-sucking, um vampire that
we know today, but it's, it'sthat kind of vampiric theme, uh,
(29:44):
absolutely.
And then there's the wholething in romania, which is again
a kind of undead body and it'sbody and it's a very fluid sort
of concept.
It can be a little bit of avampire, a little bit of a
werewolf, but there's this senseof a revenant.
It's definitely a revenantthat's coming back ah, so
(30:25):
interesting.
Jezmina (30:26):
Do you have any suggestions for good romani
folklore books that you're like,yeah, this is, this is what
that's interesting, not that I'maware of.
Madeline (30:36):
I mean, it's such an oral culture.
Um, I do get into some of thesethemes in in my book.
Jezmina (30:44):
Um and um, that's which ?
Which book is that?
Because you have two bookscoming out the roma, the roma
okay, wonderful, oh my gosh yeah, because you know, I've I've
read diane tong's compilation offolklore and you know that I'm
always looking for new sources,but so many of them are edited
(31:04):
by non-roma and you just youknow it's, it's complicated.
Madeline (31:08):
Yeah, also just thinking about covering mirrors
so that because if you boughtthe dead body in a mirror, then
it's going to come back to life.
Jezmina (31:26):
Yes, my, my mother actually died in front of a
mirror which yeah, I was, it was.
It's very strange, um, yeah,and I mean I just I love these,
uh folk practices, but then theyalso enter.
When they interweave with yourlive, your lived experience too,
they can be quite terrifying.
(31:46):
Yes, absolutely.
Madeline (31:48):
I was terrified of mirrors as a young girl,
especially at night.
I just if I needed to get outof bed, for whatever reason, I
would just look down.
I wouldn't dare to even try andget a glimpse of myself in the
mirror at all yeah, I mean,because what are you gonna see
at night?
I didn't like it.
Jezmina (32:06):
I'm not, I wasn't, I wasn't dead, not dead.
Madeline (32:09):
I'm not right, but I think there was something in my
child's mind about that wholething yeah.
Jezmina (32:16):
No, I didn't like it either, because I always thought
I would see spirits behind meand I was just like, don't look
especially in the dark, likelooking in a mirror in the dark.
And kids also, you know, inAmerica, do the um Bloody Mary
recitation in front of a mirrorin the dark.
Because yeah all some spirits inon a sleepover because they'll
feel left out.
Yeah, um, so interesting.
(32:38):
So let's get into egger'snosferatu and let's start with
the positives.
What did you feel like was donewell in the representation of
roma, or even just theadaptation of the story in
general?
Um, and why?
Madeline (32:52):
yeah.
So I mean, as we've just said,like we just talked about this
romney, representation inmainstream films and mainstream
media, especially in gothicfilms and gothic media, has been
so poor, it's been so bad.
But I really didn't know whatto expect when it came to the
(33:17):
new Nosferatu adaptation.
So what I liked was, first ofall, the fact that the Roma
featured in the film werenon-professional.
Romani actors.
It's.
It's a rare occasion and it'snot.
It's a low bar.
Yes, one of my friends said thebar is so low that you can
(33:38):
tiptoe over it.
Jezmina (33:40):
It's on the floor but eggers did that.
Madeline (33:46):
So there was a real engagement with non-professional
roma actors.
They weren't cast by non-Romaactors.
That was great.
They were speaking Romani.
And not only were they speakingRomani.
I looked into this.
They filmed in the CzechRepublic, but obviously at story
(34:10):
level it's meant to be set inTransylvania.
So they did a voiceover.
They recorded the speech withroma in romania so that they can
then do a voiceover.
So they actually got thedialect right, which was pretty
impressive, especially after, asI was mentioning the whole
(34:30):
confusion between the red kneelanguage and Romanian in the
previous film.
I thought the attention todetail not even to get the
language right but to get thedialect right was impressive.
I really enjoyed that.
I thought it was good.
I thought there's a scene andagain spoiler alert if you
(34:54):
haven't seen the film whenHutter, the Jonathan Harker
character, essentially arrivesinto Transylvania.
He's surrounded by the Roma andthen the kind of Romanian
non-Roma comes out of the houseand calls them you filthy
gypsies.
Get away from him, you're goingto scare the man.
(35:15):
So I think that was a realattempt at kind of showing those
racialized power dynamics andinteractions that exist and well
, that have historically existed, but that existed this day as
well.
So I thought that wasinteresting.
Another thing that I liked is Imentioned, um, you know, um,
(35:40):
when we talked about brownstorkas dracula, that they worked for
the count, that they're hislittle minions, that they're his
little servants, um, and sothat they've traditionally been
interpreted as the bad guysbecause obviously they helped
the vampire.
I mean, obviously we couldthink about why they might be
doing that and provide extracontext because of the history
(36:03):
of enslavement in romania.
Although and people forgetoften that dracula is a fiction
the enslavement wasn't happeningas much in Transylvania.
It was happening inTransylvania just on the borders
.
It was mostly in Wallachia andMoldavia that was happening, but
then Vlad Tepes, vladim Pela,was actually a Wallachian ruler,
(36:26):
not a Transylvanian ruler.
So there's this all kind of youknow, blurred out history
that's happening there, but Ithink it is a context that is
worth mentioning when we readthose passages about the Roman
Transylvania that they couldhave been enslaved by him.
There's a sense of they're notjust evil characters but maybe
(36:48):
they've got their restrictionsand fears and so on and so forth
.
So in Nosferatu they're notworking for Count Dracula quite
like that.
Instead they're vampire hunters.
So I thought that was aninteresting kind of decoupling
between Doraemon and Dracula.
(37:11):
They were there and I think wedo have our role in in.
I wouldn't necessarily be happyif someone did an adaptation of
Dracula.
It was set in Transylvania, itwas set in Romania and there was
no mention of the Roma, becausewe are part of the
Transylvanian ethnic mosaic.
Yeah, so I don't think erasureis the question, but I don't.
(37:37):
I didn't like therepresentations until now.
So I think that sense ofdecoupling them, giving them
their own autonomy, not workingfor the count, not being his
minions, but instead beingvampire hunters, was pretty
clever.
Jezmina (37:50):
So I did enjoy that I really appreciated that too, and
you know, um, the famoustiktoker had an you know, a
critique of it.
That, um, you know, roma arealways in this position where
they are warning you about the,their superstitions and the, the
danger that lurks ahead.
(38:11):
That's mystic, and I totallyget the frustration because it
it is consistently that if we'regoing to have a role in
something and we're being good,it's often something like that.
But at the same time, in thisstory, though, it really makes
sense to do that, I'm okay withit here.
Madeline (38:29):
I agree.
I agree both with you and withFlorian, because it's exactly
that.
I think he's absolutely rightand this is what I'm saying to
you.
They're just so tropified sooften that I would very much
love to see a film or a book ora story where they're not linked
to that, where they don't haveto be a warning.
(38:51):
Yeah, absolutely I agree.
But I think with Nosferatu andespecially, I think, in the
vampire genre, it's so difficultto do anything new, and I think
it's particularly difficult todo anything new in an adaptation
, ultimately, of Dracula.
I think you're constrained towork with particular elements
(39:13):
that are there in the originaltext and in the original film,
because it's dracula vianosferatu 22 and now.
So I think there's always thatquestion of we have this story,
we can't just write a new story,we have to adapt this story.
So how do we rejig the elements?
(39:34):
So I think, in a way, in thisparticular case, the director
had to work with those pieces ofthe puzzle and I think, at
least up to a point and I'll getinto that in a minute I think
that that kind of not beingvampire hunters, not being
slaves to the vampire, butvampire hunters, was a
(39:56):
successful um exercise ofadaptation yeah, I would have
loved.
Jezmina (40:03):
so like whenever I watch a film, I'm always
imagining I'm the writer,because I I write things, and I
would have loved a moment whenthey were trying to warn him,
where they were establishingcredibility.
That was like you have tolisten to us, because and that
could have been so many thingsof like these people have
enslaved us.
We've had to live on themargins, we've seen things like
(40:24):
you know, and just like a littlebit to maybe even contextualize
the word gypsy as a slur,because not everyone listening
would have known that, althoughI feel like you can definitely
infer it, but like I don'talways trust the audience and it
would have been cool just tohave, like it wouldn't have to
be more than 10 seconds of alittle bit of exposition of like
(40:44):
trust us, because we have beenpersecuted in these ways and
we've been pushed into themargins and we know about this
stuff.
Madeline (40:51):
I would, yeah, that.
That would have been reallygreat and that could have, as
you say, just taken 10 seconds,but really carried so much and
done so much yeah yeah, I mean,I just it's.
Jezmina (41:04):
I think it's nice to talk about this.
I don't know if Robert Eggersis ever going to listen to this,
but it's like it's cool tobring these things up because I
think sometimes people you know,both Paulina and I do cultural
sensitivity writing and a lot ofpeople just don't even know
where to start, and so I thinkit's worth talking about these
things, even if you know we'renot sure who's going to a
(41:58):
critique.
So what do you feel like wasnot done so well or could have
done better?
Madeline (42:05):
um, I mean, for me personally, it was the scene
where they're looking to thegrave of the vampire and the
group of roma are leading awhite horse towards it and on
top of the horse is a naked lady.
(42:25):
So I understand that there is,but this is not Romani folklore,
specifically, it's Serbianfolklore, and of course, in the
Eastern European space thesethings transfer culturally.
So there is the idea, again,not specifically, it is not
(42:45):
Romani folklore, it's just morebroadly Eastern European
folklore.
The Roma inhabit an EasternEuropean space there, but a
horse will not walk over avampire's grave, so that it will
kind of shy away from it.
So that's how you find thevampires and that's how you
destroy them.
Fair enough.
(43:07):
But then the naked lady, evenif you have to have a virgin,
that's that's not, that's notthe way to do it, and that is
not only not part of romanyfolklore at all, it also crosses
uh it basically breaks puritylaws when it comes to romany
(43:31):
culture, because this girl isagain completely naked, the
lower part of her body iscompletely exposed and it's
touching everything.
Um, no traditional Romanicommunity would have that,
because it's one of the mostimportant cultural boundaries
(43:53):
that you cannot cross.
And again they are presented,they're speaking Romani, they're
dressed, and another positivewas that the costumes look
accurate for what they wouldhave been in the 19th century or
kind of early 20th century.
So they're very clearly atraditional community.
A traditional community wouldabide by those cultural purity
(44:18):
laws.
Jezmina (44:19):
Yeah, yeah, and I don't want to do that?
Madeline (44:23):
No, and it felt as if it was there, and obviously we
are talking about the vampirestory, which is there's always
going to be that sense of thesexiness and the sensuality, and
it's a titillating scene forthe audience and so on and so
forth.
And if that had to be in there,I just think it needed to be
(44:44):
not with, not associated with,the rhema.
I thought that was not, not ityeah, I felt the same.
Jezmina (44:53):
I felt like it really just existed to um sexualize
romani people and it just felt,um, yeah, like more of a western
fantasy, and it was one ofthose moments where it was like
if he had only had hired oneadvisor, like he would have
known not to do that, and andfor so many good reasons,
especially because he paid somuch attention to cultural
(45:15):
authenticity, before you know itjust it's felt so discordant
exactly, precisely because it'ssetting this a whole and then
it's a brief, that the rhemaappear very briefly in this
variety.
Madeline (45:30):
I think it's I don't know, I haven't timed it
probably two minutes no morethan that yeah, um, but
precisely because so much carehas gone into getting the
dialect right, getting thecostumes right, it presents a
community that bears a sense ofauthenticity and then that just
(45:51):
goes away in that scene with thenaked virgin on the horse,
because it's just counter to theculture, to the laws and purity
.
Jezmina (46:13):
I actually met Robert Eggers, um, just by chance.
I didn't actually even know whohe was because he walked into
the shop where I tell fortunesand we sell books and I had
requested we carry yeah, I hadrequested that we carry um
Hadina Sishashik's folklore,because it's one of the few
(46:33):
folklore books Actually now Ihave to keep the same because I
have to promote that but it'sone of the few folklore books
that I found that's actuallywritten by a Romani person and
she's a genius.
I love her so much and I forgetwhat it's called.
I think it's something like RomaParamija or something, but
basically it's Bosnian Romanifolklore and he came in
(46:55):
specifically looking for localfolklore and he asked about New
Hampshire folklore, becausethat's where we are.
And I gave him all these booksand I was like try this.
And also, if you love folklore,this is the book.
It's really special.
It's really hard to findanywhere Like it's.
It's not there, aren't that?
(47:23):
It's, there's not a big run ofit, you should get this book.
And he was like, oh, I'll pass.
And I was like, okay, and nowI'm just like dude, dude,
because now I found out who hewas after when he yeah, oh, you
know the cashier saw his nameand then we looked him up and we
were like, oh my god, that wasrobert eggers.
And I didn't know this film wasin the works.
And I'm just like dude, whywould you pass on this like $15
book?
Madeline (47:40):
wow, that's yeah, and that would have come in handy,
yeah.
Jezmina (47:47):
I, you know, just just saying, uh, yeah that's.
That's an amazing anecdote buthe was really lovely, like he
was very, he was very polite,very kind, um, but uh, moving on
, what would you like to see inthe future of roma
representation and literatureand media, like?
What are some guidelines orhopes or dreams?
Madeline (48:10):
um more romany involvement, to begin with.
Um, so I would, in an idealworld, like to see films
directed and produced,mainstream film directed and
produced by romany directors.
Um, that's so many.
They're brilliant.
Uh, I would like to see moreliterature written by Romani
(48:32):
people as well.
Um, that, and gothic literaturewritten by Romani people.
Um, the sense of engaging withthe tropes of the gothic by
reclaiming them and by writingauthentic stories.
Um, I think you know part ofthe problem is you're growing up
(48:55):
, you're consuming this type ofliterature and you see yourself
represented in such flattenedways and you just want something
more.
But then, beyond that, so manycharacters, main characters, are
just non-ramer.
There's this gap, there's thisdisconnect between your world
and theirs.
So I would like to see my worldrepresented a bit more in
(49:19):
authentic ways.
Beyond that, um, just more.
As you said, you know,sensitivity, reading um people
involved in.
You know consultants, romanyconsultants, advising on how to
represent romany people in, infilm, in literature, so on and
(49:41):
so forth, um romany actors castin romany roles.
Yeah, that's a big one andthat's one I feel particularly
strong about because there's somuch you know growing up in
Romania, for better or for worse, people know who you are, and
(50:02):
sometimes it's very for worse.
Yeah, um, but what struck me inthe English-speaking world is
just how little is known aboutthe Roma, even yet, just the
term gypsy it's.
People don't really know aboutits context, its history um so I
(50:26):
think when we cast non-Romanyactors, and how many roles
there's just this reinforcementof confusion.
I think so many these thingsare popular.
People consume media so much.
People watch films, people readbooks.
There's so much in it.
(50:47):
So people read theserepresentations or watch these
representations and they'rewrong.
They're gonna go away fromengaging with that particular
story, thinking that's how aromaare you know?
So I think there's aresponsibility, there's a
cultural responsibility andthere's a cultural wave of
(51:11):
education, just opportunitiesfor Romani people.
There's so many talented Romaniactors who are trying very hard
to make it in the industry andwho would be perfect to these
roles.
Jezmina (51:25):
It's so true, I mean, and I think it's interesting how
, um, the internet and socialmedia helps us become more
visible.
It can also be, you know, areally challenging place, from
infighting to racism coming fromother places, you know.
But, yeah, um, I was so excited, uh, when we were we
interviewed Florian, by the way,who I mentioned earlier, that
(51:46):
he's also training to be anactor and I'm like, oh, thank
god, yeah, that's wonderful, ohbrilliant, who I mentioned
earlier that he's also trainingto be an actor and I'm like oh,
thank God.
Yeah, that's wonderful, oh,brilliant.
Yeah, I was like, oh, that'sjust so great.
Madeline (51:54):
He would be brilliant and, yeah, I can see him in so
many different Romney roles.
I know I'm rooting for him.
Jezmina (52:00):
So, yeah, it just it feels like such a interesting
time where Roma yeah, it just itfeels like such an interesting
time where Roma, because of ouryou know our use of technology
and creating our own platforms,we are more visible.
There's really no excusesanymore not to include us.
Madeline (52:19):
I agree, yeah, I absolutely agree.
And there's been a lot ofself-advocacy on social media.
So yeah, absolutely.
Social media.
Jezmina (52:29):
so yeah, absolutely so we're going to talk more about
(53:08):
this in a future episode, but Iwas wondering if you would just
tease your forthcoming book, theRoma, and also you know your
other book as well TheologicalMonsters.
Tell us a little bit about whatthose are about.
Madeline (53:21):
Let's see Theological Monsters.
As I mentioned earlier, it's anacademic book.
It's, yeah, looking at 19thcentury gothic literature, irish
gothic literature, and askinghow the monsters are used to
kind of tease out knowledge ofthe divine through this and you
know kind of range oftheological and spiritual
(53:42):
traditions.
Um, and the Roma is, it'shybrid in genre.
So essentially, as the titlesuggests, it's a history and
it's a history of the Romanipeople across time and space, so
it's place-based.
In that, um, I tell the storypart of.
(54:05):
I think what the problem is whenwe talk about the Roma is this
tendency to just lump everybodytogether.
There are so many differentvici, there are so many
subgroups, each with their ownfolklore, each with their own
history, each with their ownchallenges and traditions, and I
think that's very important toacknowledge.
So the Roma tries to do that.
(54:28):
My book tries to do that.
My book tries to do that byzooming in in particular on
particular places, particularcountries in Europe and also the
United States, um, throughwhich the Roma have traveled.
So I start in the UK, where Ilive now, and then go back to my
native Romania, and then thereis a chapter on Bulgaria, one on
(54:52):
Germany, one on the UnitedStates, among other places as
well, and in each of thesechapters I tell the history of
the Roma in that particularplace.
So it spans these variousgeographical locations.
It also spans various timelines.
(55:14):
Through these chapters there areelements of memoir.
There are always my ownexperiences, growing up in
Romania, living in the UK,travelling across these places.
How am I perceived and how do Iperceive them as a Romani woman
(55:39):
?
So there are accounts of racismthat I've suffered.
There are positive accountsencountering other Romani people
across my travels as well.
So there's that element ofmemoir.
And then there's that littlebit of an element of just kind
of traveling, of moving um.
Another thing that the bookdoes is zoom in on particular
(56:01):
individuals.
So I I look at individualstorytelling.
In each chapter I've got abouttwo stories of real Romani
people who existed and just telltheir lives and their
contributions and stories ofpersecution and resilience in
(56:22):
various places across varioustimes.
So I really wanted to bring outthese actual individual Romney
stories rather than just tell abroad history without that kind
of human element.
Jezmina (56:35):
That feels so important , especially when telling the
story of people who are somythologized and, yes, you know,
not really seen or evenrepresented as human in so many
ways and in racist ways but alsoin like supernatural ways, and
so I love that you included yourown story too and that Paulina
and I felt like it was reallyimportant in our book um Secrets
(56:57):
of Romani Fortune Telling toinclude a little bit of memoir
as well, because it waspersonalizing and, yeah, it
feels essential almost in thiskind of writing absolutely.
Madeline (57:09):
It's humanizing and it's it's also.
I think what I wanted to do isjust to add my own story to this
mosaic of other stories andvoices and to show us as complex
humans and in that sense of theour humanity and complexity so
(57:31):
wonderful.
Jezmina (57:32):
I can't wait to read both of these when.
When are they coming out?
Um?
Madeline (57:37):
so the roma launches in may in the uk and in july, I
believe, in the US.
Awesome.
The other one I'm not so sureyet because I'm still um
finalizing some edits on themanuscript awesome.
Jezmina (57:57):
It's so much work, too, to write a book.
I love that you have two comingout like more or less in the
same year.
It's like so, so impressive.
Um, so we have our last couplequestions coming up.
Our favorite one to ask reallyI think this is our favorite is
who is your Romani crush?
It's basically just a Romaniperson you admire, although
sometimes we do have people tellus their real crushes, which is
(58:19):
really fun, but you don't havefor how many people I admire.
Madeline (58:23):
There's so many, yeah, um.
So one of the favoritecharacters, I mean one of the
favorite historical people thatI write about in the book, is
katarina taikon, who was ashiromani activist whose work is
absolutely inspirational.
Just, she was so brilliant inevery single way.
(58:45):
Yes, she was, um, so yeah,she's, she's, she's a huge
inspiration for me, I think.
So I picked Katerina, butthere's just so, so many who are
so brilliant and yeah, you know, there are children's books by
her too.
Jezmina (59:03):
Like I, actually, I would like to read more of her
work because she's incredible.
Madeline (59:08):
Yeah, so brilliant.
Jezmina (59:11):
And what is coming up on the horizon for you.
We talked about your books, butif there's anything else you
want to share, and also, wherecan people follow your work and
support you?
Madeline (59:22):
What's coming up.
So I'm starting a new researchproject about blood in the 19th
century, a kind of intersectionbetween sense of medical realism
and spirituality.
Apart from that, I'm continuingto teach, um, yeah and yeah,
(59:43):
you can follow me on x ortwitter at Madeline underscore
CCT, on Blue Sky, madelinePotter On Instagram, on Madeline
underscore CCT again, and I'vegot a website which is Madeline
hyphen Potter dot com, so youcan find me there as well and
(01:00:07):
get in touch with me if you wantto, and I'm always happy to
hear from people.
Jezmina (01:00:13):
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you so much for talkingwith us.
It was so fun to get into alittle pop culture with you and
literature and we're lookingforward to talking to you again
about your books.
Madeline (01:00:24):
Me too, and thank you so much again for the invitation
oh my gosh.
And thank you to Paulina too.
Jezmina (01:00:31):
Yes, she was so sad she couldn't be here, but we'll
have you back on and it'll begreat and you can meet her.
And don't worry, listeners,Paulina is not going to be
continually absent.
Sometimes life happens and bothof us work full time and do
this out of our own pockets andour passion, so we can't always
(01:00:51):
do everything together, which is, you know, we're doing our best
, um, but thank you for beinghere and, uh, have a great day.
Thank, you.
Madeline (01:00:58):
You too, have a great day.
I think it's probably morningthere for you yeah, yeah this
evening for you.
What is the time amazing.
Thank you so much.
This is so fun.
I hope you have fun too.
Thank you for listening toRomanistan Podcast.
Jezmina (01:01:23):
You can find us on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook
at Romanasan Podcast and onTwitter at RomanistanPod, to
support us, join our Patreon forextra content or just donate to
our Ko-Fi fundraiser, ko-ficombackslash Romanistan, and please
rate, review and subscribe.
(01:01:44):
It helps people find our show.
It helps us so much.
Paulina (01:01:47):
You can follow Jez on Instagram at jasminavantila and
paulina at romani holistic.
You can get our book secrets ofromani fortune telling online
or wherever books are sold.
Visit romanistanpodcastcom forevents, educational resources
and more.
Email us at romanistanpodcastat gmailcom for inquiries.
Jezmina (01:02:13):
Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Vontila and Paulina
Stevens, conceived of by PaulinaStevens, edited by Victor
Pachas, with music by VictorPachas and artwork by Elijah
Vardo.
Hello Romanesan listeners.
It's Jezmina with some newsfrom me and Paulina.
First, the Romanesan Festivalis on.
It will be in March.
We had to reschedule fromDecember, but you know what?
This lineup is even strongerand we are excited to share some
events.
(00:21):
So I'm going to give you arundown of the festival and then
mention a few other things thatPaulina and I are doing.
So hang in there, but all ofthis information is available on
romanistanpodcast.
com.
If you are going to be in NewOrleans March 28th to March 30th
or you want to come, we will bedoing so many things.
(00:41):
We're starting off strong onthe morning of the 28th of 1130
at the Tennessee WilliamsFestival with a panel on Romani
tropes and contributions in popculture and it's a conversation
with me, paulina and MaraRajajewski, and then later that
night on the 28th, we will bedoing Tales from Romanistan, a
live Romanistan podcast event.
(01:03):
It will be a night of Romanistorytelling.
It will be hosted by me andPaulina, with Tsarina, hellfire,
moonbear, millie, raccoon,bimbo, yaga and Victor, our
Romanistan musician.
Then the next day, on the 29th,there will be a divination
pop-up at Cottage Magic andtheir Mystic location.
(01:23):
So they have a new location.
It's called Mystic and that'swhere we will be.
Paulina and I will be offeringtarot and palm readings and
Paulina will also be offeringwellness consultations from 12
to 5 on the 29th.
Later that night we will hostStewarding Traditions, a
Literary Salon and BlessingRitual with Lilith Dorsey, an
(01:46):
amazing practitioner, paulinaand me, sponsored by Wiser Books
.
Lilith Dorsey is really giftedand she'll be talking about
ancestral traditions in voodooand indigenous and cultic
bloodlines in her family, aswell as Afro-Caribbean, and
Paulina and I will, of course,be talking about Romani
ancestral traditions.
(02:07):
And then the following day wewill be offering a workshop on
tarot and ancestor communicationon the 30th, and that will be
from 1 to 3 pm, also at CottageMagic Mystic.
And then the last event will beBebe's Kitchen, a culinary
ritual, and this will be alsopart of the Tennessee Williams
(02:29):
Festival.
It's hosted by Bembo Yaga orIlva, mara Rajejevski and Moon
Bear, and it'll be featuring tealeaf readings with me and
Paulina and there will be musicby Millie, raccoon and Victor.
So you can get tickets and allthe information on our website,
romanistanpodcastcom.
(02:51):
So this will be the end ofMarch.
Super fun.
Please spread the word.
We need help getting the wordout and also, if you would like
to attend a virtual event.
Caitlin Foisy, who we haveinterviewed, and I will be
hosting a ritual called Honeyand Roses and this will be a
virtual ritual for clarity,connection and confidence, and
(03:15):
you'll get a PDF and you canjoin the live recording or watch
it yourself.
So if you need a little spaceholding, that will be on
February 16th at 8 pm EST and,if you happen to be in New
Hampshire or Boston, I'll bedoing some events a poetry
brothel party called the Loverson February 14th, and on the
(03:36):
15th I'll be hosting a tea leafreading ritual for heart healing
and love with Deadwicks andPortsmouth, and you can also
book with Paulina and I.
If you ever want a reading.
You can find Paulina atromaniholisticcom and I'm at
jesminavontilacom.
Thanks for listening to ourannouncements.
(03:57):
We really appreciate you beinghere, but we just could not wait
to tell you that the festivalis finalized.
Come party with us, it will beso much fun.
Okay, enjoy this episode.
We're so excited to talk aboutNosferatu and all the fun things
coming up next Bye, welcome toRomanistan.
(04:32):
I am one of your friendlyneighborhood gypsies.
Again, paulina is so busy thismonth, and so it's me, jasmina.
I'm really happy to be here,but Paulina will be back soon,
do not fear, and I am so excitedto invite Madeline Potter onto
the show today.
Maddie is a research andteaching fellow at the
University of Edinburgh in theliterature of the long 19th
(04:53):
century romanticism toVictorianism.
At Edinburgh she teaches on arange of courses, including one
on vampire literature in thelong 19th century, which she has
designed.
Her work primarily looks atGothic literature and theology.
Her first academic book iscalled Theological Monsters,
(05:13):
religion and Irish Gothic andwill be published by University
of Wales Press.
Her first trade book is calledthe Roma A Traveling History and
will be launched later thisyear, published by the Bodley
Head in the UK and HarperCollinsin the USA.
Madeline (05:33):
Welcome, maddie.
I'm so happy to have you here,thank you.
Thank you so much for theinvitation.
I'm really, really pleased tobe on and, yeah, very excited,
thank you.
Jezmina (05:41):
We have both been admiring your work for a long
time and we love following youon Twitter or, you know, x,
whatever and yeah, just thethings that you, you write about
are so interesting, and we'rehere especially today to talk
about Nosferatu and your viewson on the latest release, the
(06:04):
Robert Eggers version.
But also we'll talk about otherthings too, and so we're going
to start with some of ourfavorite questions.
The first one is just tell usabout yourself.
Where are you from?
Where's your family, from yourvisa, anything you want to share
about your background?
Madeline (06:19):
Yeah, so I'm originally from Romania.
I was born in a small town onthe kind of western side of the
country called Reșița and I grewup there.
We moved in a slightly kind ofbigger town in the area.
My family lived locally andthen basically as a young adult,
(06:42):
I came to England, I gotmarried, I did a PhD and now I
live in Scotland because of myjob.
And yeah, that's kind ofgeneral sort of background and
yeah, my Vita is Calderash.
Jezmina (07:07):
I love that.
Thank you for sharing.
We always love a little bit ofa background.
I almost moved to Edinburghwhen I was living in Ireland,
and it's one of those placesthat I've never been to, but I
think I just built it up so muchand so, um, yeah, I have this
like chance to visit.
Madeline (07:18):
Let me know um.
It's a really, really lovelyplace.
I'm really enjoying living here.
It looks like such a beautifultown it is.
It's very pretty and verygothic.
Jezmina (07:28):
And Paulina and I love to travel, so we probably will
take you up on that.
Madeline (07:32):
Yeah, yeah, take me up on that.
Jezmina (07:35):
Our next favorite question, because we think of
this podcast as an opportunityto talk to Roma who maybe don't
fit the mold of like what theperfect ideal Roma is.
And what is that?
Even you know, we don't know,and so, um, we like to ask this
question do you consideryourself a rebel?
But people interpret the wordrebel in a lot of different ways
.
We get a lot of interestinganswers.
(07:56):
So, just based on things, doyou?
Yeah?
No, because I've been listeningto.
Madeline (08:01):
I've been listening to episodes and it's always that
question, that very loadedquestion, and I think in a way,
yes, but not a rebel without acause, if that makes sense.
I don't think I rebel againstthings just for the sake of it.
I do what I'm interested in, Ido what drives me.
I've always had these, I'vealways been interested in the
(08:23):
Gothic, I've always beeninterested in pursuing this line
of research, um, so I'm quitestubborn as well, which I
suppose goes hand in hand withbeing a rebel.
I think, also, if you are romain europe, you have to be a
little bit of a rebel becauseyou have to find that space for
(08:45):
yourself.
Whatever you know, I mean,things can be hostile to you
from different angles.
A lot of institutions you knowpractice well systemic racism,
exclusion and so on and so forth.
So you kind of have to rebelagainst these systems that
(09:07):
continue to keep the Roma inthis situation of precarity, of
marginalization, of wellracialized violence and so on
and so forth.
I think, yeah, I think in a wayI have to be a rebel from that
point of view yeah, no, thatabsolutely makes sense.
Jezmina (09:31):
Gotta change the system , break the system yeah, yeah,
yeah.
I have to resist it and to toactively just try to make a
better space and place andsociety for us yeah, I mean,
that's the dream, and it's sointeresting how um so many of
the people we've interviewedhave really different skills,
(09:53):
backgrounds, jobs, and everyonehas their own way of trying to
change things with where they'recoming from, and I just love it
and I think that's part of thebeauty of it, that everybody can
channel the skills that they'vegot, that they're good at, and
it's part of the diversity ofthe Roma across well, the world
really, not just Europe.
Yeah, absolutely your work as anacademic focuses on the
(10:34):
intersection of monstrosity andtheology in 19th century gothic
literature.
So first I love monsters.
Paulina does too.
Amazing, yes.
So like we're so excited, um,can you tell listeners a little
bit more about what, what itmeans, what that means, what do
you study and write about?
Madeline (10:52):
yeah, so in my academic book I look at irish
gothic literature.
So I look at brown stoker, theauthor of dracula, um, and two
of his contemporary, or slightlybefore him, writers Joseph
Sheridan-Lefonu, who wrote thenovella Carmilla, a really
interesting vampire novella, andCharles Robert Maturin as well,
(11:13):
who wrote the Gothic novelMount with the Wanderer.
Now what I do is sotraditionally Gothic literature
has been approached in terms ofa binary the monsters being the
othered.
The monsters are just beingmonstrous and bad and evil and
ugly and all of those bad things.
So what I'm asking is actuallymaybe perhaps there is a sense
(11:39):
of reclaiming these monstrousidentities, maybe they're not
just being othered, maybe weshouldn't look at the gothic in
terms of a black and whitedistinction, but rather as kind
of ways of thinking about theimportant things in life, and
one of those important things inlife is religion and
spirituality.
(11:59):
So that takes me to the secondthing that I do in my work.
These authors have generallybeen read in terms of kind of.
They were protestants, so theywere Irish protestant writers,
and they've been read in termsof the theology of their works
pretty much being a kind ofprotestant framework, if that
(12:22):
makes sense.
But if you start looking at it.
It's actually, I think, alittle bit more complicated,
because inevitably, when you dowrite about vampires
specifically, there's all thesefolk traditions, all these folk
beliefs, all these variousmagical traditions as well that
come into it.
So what I'm saying is thatactually these theologies and I
(12:46):
define theology broadly toinclude these systems of
spirituality, of magic, ofoccultism, of esotericism and so
on and so forth that they allcome together in quite
interesting ways, that thesetheologies aren't just
protestant, but actually they'rea really interesting eclectic
(13:07):
mix that then use these monstersas a way of thinking about the
afterlife, of kind of makingsomething tangible, because the
monsters unlike, say, ghosts orspirits, they have actual bodies
.
You touch a body, you touch amonster, then you can understand
something through the senses,physically, and then what if
(13:30):
what we understand through thesemonsters can tell us about, can
tell us something about theafterlife?
So basically, the gist of mywork is how vampires like god,
oh, interesting.
Jezmina (13:45):
I mean, the whole idea of the undead is such an
interesting alternativeafterlife and I think in a lot
of vampire lore it's like onceyou kill the undead, then
they're totally obliterated.
Yeah, has that been?
Um, yeah, um, that's sointeresting.
How do you think vampires arelike god?
I would love to know a littlemore.
Madeline (14:08):
I mean, it's kind of Lestat who really should be
credited with the idea, becausehe says it in the book Something
like no creature under God ismore like him than we are.
And Lestat says something alongthe lines of well, we we got,
kills indiscriminately.
He takes the richest and thepoorest, and so do we.
(14:29):
There's that sense of existingoutside of the world, of
mortality, but there is alsothis sense of undeath, of
eternal life, right, which inthese sort of theological
frameworks exists in heaven orin hell, depending um, but that
(14:54):
we cannot access as humans inthis world.
So what the vampire's body doesis actually makes us imagine.
That makes us imagine eternallife.
And there's the whole thing ofblood consumption.
Right, the blood is the lifewhich is normally understood to
be the body of the blood ofchrist, but that's removed from
(15:20):
the immediacy of experience.
So vampires help us to kind ofimagine those questions of the
afterlife in very bodily andcorporeal terms, which are
usually again associated withgod or with christ.
So I think that's how they arelike god I love that.
Jezmina (15:40):
Yeah, I mean, midnight mass was really full on about
that too, which was, I mean, Ithought that was a fascinating
series and they didn't evenreally use the word vampire.
But that's, you know the energy.
Madeline (15:49):
But again, it's just kind of because Midnight Mass
was engaging particularly withthis kind of Catholic setting.
But in these texts it's just somany traditions that are coming
(16:11):
together.
Again, it's just sort ofspirituality, various occult
theologies.
Folklore is a big one becausein Dracula they use the crucifix
and the consecrated bread, thehost, but also the garlic flour
and the mountain ash, so it'skind of really coming together
(16:32):
of magic and religion there andscience as well.
So they're all.
They don't exist in thattension, precisely because the
monster doesn't necessarily makesense.
Jezmina (16:44):
So they need to use everything, exercise of trying
to imagine and know things, andthat process of knowledge
doesn't actually fit into veryclear categories yeah, that's so
interesting because I find youknow, I, both Paulina and I do
fortune telling work and we workwith people from all different
(17:08):
types of faiths and backgroundsand what we're doing is really
spiritual work and it, I feellike just spirituality in
general, is like let's let'stake what we can to, um, to make
sense of these things thatdon't make sense, and you, might
within a tradition, or or youknow several yeah, exactly 100
percent.
(17:37):
So this leads me to my nextquestion about folklore,
especially so we're here, firstand foremost because Nosferatu
came out.
There's really interesting Romarepresentation.
We wanted to talk to you aboutyour thoughts, just in case any
listeners are not familiar.
Just in case any listeners arenot familiar, the recent release
of Nosferatu is by RobertEggers and it was inspired by
(17:59):
the 1897 Gothic horror novelDracula by Irish writer Bram
Stoker, who we've been talkingabout, and also the 1922 film
adaptation Nosferatu by FWMurnau.
So the big question that I haveis why are Roma such an
integral part of stories aboutvampires?
Madeline (18:24):
And what role do Roma usually play in these stories?
Yeah, so that's a really goodquestion and it's something that
I've been thinking a lot about.
So why I've got some theories.
So obviously it is Bram Stokerwho popularizes the trope um,
specifically in connection todracula and the vampire himself.
Because when he goes to, whenthe character jonathan harker
(18:47):
goes to transylvania, he writesat the castle and there are some
, uh, roma people there who workfor the count and they're
presented to be his littleallies.
So they're essentially baddiesin the novel.
Right, they work for the Count.
Jonathan Harker at some pointtries to escape and he tries to
give them a letter so that theycould take it, and they betray
(19:10):
him and take it to the Count.
So they're a very threateningpresence.
It doesn't start with um, bramstoker.
The whole trope of the wholekind of role, the presence of
the roma in gothic literaturegoes back pretty much to the
development of gothic literature.
I mean, if we think about, forexample, in jane eyre by
(19:33):
Charlotte Bronte, when MrRochester disguises himself as a
Romany fortune teller, and thenwe have Heathcliff in Wuthering
High, so it's a very closerelationship.
Why does it happen?
So my theory is that the gothicthrives.
(19:59):
One of the most gothic thingsthat I think we can experience
as humans is uncertainty andunknowability.
That's why we're afraid of thedark because we can't see what's
there.
And then we can see an outlineand what's actually a wardrobe
might look like some sort ofmonster.
So it's to do withdestabilizing our perception,
our senses and us not reallyknowing what that is.
(20:21):
Yeah, so when europeans seeroma, obviously there are
non-european people, they don'tlook european but they're also
nomadic.
So this makes them strange,this makes them mysterious, this
makes them also fascinating.
But because they don't knowthem, that makes them gothic and
(20:44):
particularly so.
It was in the 18th century thata linguist discovered the
relationship between the romanilanguage and ind Indian
languages, which confirmed thatthe Roma originated in India.
But before then nobody reallyknew what these uncanny nomads,
as it were, had come from.
(21:05):
So they had no sense of origin,that was unknown.
So that feeds into that senseof the Gothic, because where did
they come from?
Where are they going?
And then also it was freud whospoke about the uncanny as,
quite literally, the unhomely.
Um, and how things are.
(21:25):
Uncanny threaten, I think hesays, the full world, the safety
within the walls of the home.
If you have a people you don'tknow their origins, that's
already mysterious.
And then the nomadic they don'teven threaten that safety of
the home.
They don't have the home.
Those four walls are completelydone away with.
(21:47):
They can't be pinned down inthe minds of Europeans.
So I think that just increasesthat sense of mystery.
Then add to that the practice ofmagic traditions and fortune
telling as well, which makespeople, I think, fear the Roma
even more, because a lot of thetropes in Gothic literature are
(22:09):
very often to do with curses,with being associated with
places and beings that arethreatening or monstrous, right.
So I think there are all thesedifferent strands that come
together so they become literaltropes of the gothic.
(22:31):
They're not presented, or very,very, very rarely presented.
It's kind of fully developedcharacters with a lot of
background.
Instead, what's happening isthat they're kind of thrown in
there very often, even just as areference.
You know that when the gypsiesarrive or are spotted in a 19th
(22:52):
century novel, something isabout to go wrong.
They're an indication thatsomething is about to be
destabilised, that something'sjust a bit off there.
So that kind of essentially Ilike to say it cannibalises a
whole culture, a whole people.
They become just basicallysigns that something's about to
(23:17):
go wrong and then they becomeassociated with vampires and
monsters.
So there's very littleengagement with the actual
culture, with the actual history.
Even after we know, even afterit's elucidated that the roma
had come from india, writersstill cling on to this mystery
of origin, this unknown abilityand impossibility to to pin down
(23:41):
where, where they're comingfrom, where they're going, and
yeah yeah, I mean, and writersstill do that today.
Jezmina (23:49):
I mean, even one of my friends would say was mentioning
hemlock grove and they werelike, oh, but you know, then I
got a little older and realizedhow racist it was and I hadn't
seen it and just sharing thepremise that it's like well,
yeah, roma are werewolves.
Madeline (24:04):
None of them are played by Roma and they're just
inherently 100% and I was very,very disappointed by the film
the Last Voyage of the Demeter,which adapts the scene in
Dracula that's happening on theship when Dracula's coming to
England, and that's one of myfavourite things in the novel
(24:25):
and I think it's got so muchpotential.
They cast a Romany characterwho's not Romany and also seem
to confuse because there's aspoiler alert for those of you
who've not seen it.
Um, there's a scene where achild says the captain's taught
me a few words in Romany andthen he speaks broken Romanian.
(24:47):
So there seems to be aconfusion between Romany and
Romanian.
But also, yeah, me growing upand this is not that recent, but
still me growing up, I was,I've always been a huge vampire
girl.
I always enjoyed these storiesabout vampires, so I watched,
but through the vampire slayerand then later angel, and I
(25:09):
never could really get into it,particularly because of the way
the roma flattened in just justkind of absolutely caricatured
vision of a Romani woman, of aCalderash woman, his cursing
angel, and I know and peoplehave said to me yeah, but it's a
good thing that they give him asoul, it may be, but it's still
(25:30):
very caricatured and it's veryinaccurate and it's very
grotesque, um, and again thatthe actor none of the actors, as
far as I'm aware, certainly themain actress wasn't roma.
And then they had in the in thecamp, in the romney camp, they
had these, um, really fancywagons that are far more aligned
(25:52):
with kind of Romani, childRomani, gypsy tradition in the
UK than they would be with theKaldurash.
We wouldn't have had those, andI get that that's getting into
far more kind of fine detail,but still just everything about
it was very off-putting to me.
Jezmina (26:13):
So yeah, I mean, that's so frustrating too.
Is, um, you know, romani?
Uh sorry, my dog is definitelygoing to be barking in the
background.
There's no way around I lovedogs she has so much to say
about this.
Romani advisors exist like that.
We, we write, we make things,like you could just hire someone
(26:35):
and make something good andthen have bragging rights to it,
but it's just so.
Yeah, it just feels likelaziness and we'll.
I'll definitely get into thatwith some more questions, but I
want to do a little pivot too,because you know I'm a really
big fan of the book of poetryDuk by Hedina Szyżyk, and I'm
not sure if I'm saying her lastname correctly, but I am giving
(26:58):
it a shot.
She writes about the nightbutterfly, this vampiric kind of
figure in Romani, bosnianfolklore, and I've heard of
other vampiric-like creatures.
I don't know the name of it,but I remember hearing from
someone else about an embodimentof the wind that can suck the
(27:19):
life out of you, and so Iwondered if you wanted to share
a little bit about the role ofvampires or vampiric monsters in
Romani folklore.
Madeline (27:30):
Yeah, and Romani folklore, and obviously it
really varies not only fromVitsa to Vitsa, but literally
from community to community,from sometimes even from family
to family, but I think it's it'sfine to say that traditional
Romani communities are veryporous in terms of those
(27:50):
boundaries between life anddeath.
Yeah, so these threats arealways there.
There's all these kinds ofquasi vampiric figures in
folklore.
One of the worst ones, one ofthe most terrifying ones, I
think, is the Moolah, which isquite literally the dead,
(28:12):
meaning dead in the Romanilanguage quite literally the
dead, meaning dead in the Romanilanguage, which entails the
return of a dead body to hauntthe living.
And there are so many storiesabout these various vampire
figures.
(28:40):
Vampire figures, um, varioustales about bodies showing up,
um at the cemetery, walkingaround.
Uh, obviously it's doublyterrifying if they're going to
touch you, because it crossesmany purity laws.
Yes, touching that, um.
So, yeah, loads of loads ofstories also, um, about.
(29:02):
There was one that I heardgrowing up about a boy rose
which he puts in a vase next tohis bed and every night he gets
(29:23):
weaker and weaker, and weakerand weaker, and it's the rose
that's kind of sucking his lifeenergy that's then going to her.
So this is not, you know, theblood-sucking, um vampire that
we know today, but it's, it'sthat kind of vampiric theme, uh,
(29:44):
absolutely.
And then there's the wholething in romania, which is again
a kind of undead body and it'sbody and it's a very fluid sort
of concept.
It can be a little bit of avampire, a little bit of a
werewolf, but there's this senseof a revenant.
It's definitely a revenantthat's coming back ah, so
(30:25):
interesting.
Jezmina (30:26):
Do you have any suggestions for good romani
folklore books that you're like,yeah, this is, this is what
that's interesting, not that I'maware of.
Madeline (30:36):
I mean, it's such an oral culture.
Um, I do get into some of thesethemes in in my book.
Jezmina (30:44):
Um and um, that's which ?
Which book is that?
Because you have two bookscoming out the roma, the roma
okay, wonderful, oh my gosh yeah, because you know, I've I've
read diane tong's compilation offolklore and you know that I'm
always looking for new sources,but so many of them are edited
(31:04):
by non-roma and you just youknow it's, it's complicated.
Madeline (31:08):
Yeah, also just thinking about covering mirrors
so that because if you boughtthe dead body in a mirror, then
it's going to come back to life.
Jezmina (31:26):
Yes, my, my mother actually died in front of a
mirror which yeah, I was, it was.
It's very strange, um, yeah,and I mean I just I love these,
uh folk practices, but then theyalso enter.
When they interweave with yourlive, your lived experience too,
they can be quite terrifying.
(31:46):
Yes, absolutely.
Madeline (31:48):
I was terrified of mirrors as a young girl,
especially at night.
I just if I needed to get outof bed, for whatever reason, I
would just look down.
I wouldn't dare to even try andget a glimpse of myself in the
mirror at all yeah, I mean,because what are you gonna see
at night?
I didn't like it.
Jezmina (32:06):
I'm not, I wasn't, I wasn't dead, not dead.
Madeline (32:09):
I'm not right, but I think there was something in my
child's mind about that wholething yeah.
Jezmina (32:16):
No, I didn't like it either, because I always thought
I would see spirits behind meand I was just like, don't look
especially in the dark, likelooking in a mirror in the dark.
And kids also, you know, inAmerica, do the um Bloody Mary
recitation in front of a mirrorin the dark.
Because yeah all some spirits inon a sleepover because they'll
feel left out.
Yeah, um, so interesting.
(32:38):
So let's get into egger'snosferatu and let's start with
the positives.
What did you feel like was donewell in the representation of
roma, or even just theadaptation of the story in
general?
Um, and why?
Madeline (32:52):
yeah.
So I mean, as we've just said,like we just talked about this
romney, representation inmainstream films and mainstream
media, especially in gothicfilms and gothic media, has been
so poor, it's been so bad.
But I really didn't know whatto expect when it came to the
(33:17):
new Nosferatu adaptation.
So what I liked was, first ofall, the fact that the Roma
featured in the film werenon-professional.
Romani actors.
It's.
It's a rare occasion and it'snot.
It's a low bar.
Yes, one of my friends said thebar is so low that you can
(33:38):
tiptoe over it.
Jezmina (33:40):
It's on the floor but eggers did that.
Madeline (33:46):
So there was a real engagement with non-professional
roma actors.
They weren't cast by non-Romaactors.
That was great.
They were speaking Romani.
And not only were they speakingRomani.
I looked into this.
They filmed in the CzechRepublic, but obviously at story
(34:10):
level it's meant to be set inTransylvania.
So they did a voiceover.
They recorded the speech withroma in romania so that they can
then do a voiceover.
So they actually got thedialect right, which was pretty
impressive, especially after, asI was mentioning the whole
(34:30):
confusion between the red kneelanguage and Romanian in the
previous film.
I thought the attention todetail not even to get the
language right but to get thedialect right was impressive.
I really enjoyed that.
I thought it was good.
I thought there's a scene andagain spoiler alert if you
(34:54):
haven't seen the film whenHutter, the Jonathan Harker
character, essentially arrivesinto Transylvania.
He's surrounded by the Roma andthen the kind of Romanian
non-Roma comes out of the houseand calls them you filthy
gypsies.
Get away from him, you're goingto scare the man.
(35:15):
So I think that was a realattempt at kind of showing those
racialized power dynamics andinteractions that exist and well
, that have historically existed, but that existed this day as
well.
So I thought that wasinteresting.
Another thing that I liked is Imentioned, um, you know, um,
(35:40):
when we talked about brownstorkas dracula, that they worked for
the count, that they're hislittle minions, that they're his
little servants, um, and sothat they've traditionally been
interpreted as the bad guysbecause obviously they helped
the vampire.
I mean, obviously we couldthink about why they might be
doing that and provide extracontext because of the history
(36:03):
of enslavement in romania.
Although and people forgetoften that dracula is a fiction
the enslavement wasn't happeningas much in Transylvania.
It was happening inTransylvania just on the borders
.
It was mostly in Wallachia andMoldavia that was happening, but
then Vlad Tepes, vladim Pela,was actually a Wallachian ruler,
(36:26):
not a Transylvanian ruler.
So there's this all kind of youknow, blurred out history
that's happening there, but Ithink it is a context that is
worth mentioning when we readthose passages about the Roman
Transylvania that they couldhave been enslaved by him.
There's a sense of they're notjust evil characters but maybe
(36:48):
they've got their restrictionsand fears and so on and so forth
.
So in Nosferatu they're notworking for Count Dracula quite
like that.
Instead they're vampire hunters.
So I thought that was aninteresting kind of decoupling
between Doraemon and Dracula.
(37:11):
They were there and I think wedo have our role in in.
I wouldn't necessarily be happyif someone did an adaptation of
Dracula.
It was set in Transylvania, itwas set in Romania and there was
no mention of the Roma, becausewe are part of the
Transylvanian ethnic mosaic.
Yeah, so I don't think erasureis the question, but I don't.
(37:37):
I didn't like therepresentations until now.
So I think that sense ofdecoupling them, giving them
their own autonomy, not workingfor the count, not being his
minions, but instead beingvampire hunters, was pretty
clever.
Jezmina (37:50):
So I did enjoy that I really appreciated that too, and
you know, um, the famoustiktoker had an you know, a
critique of it.
That, um, you know, roma arealways in this position where
they are warning you about the,their superstitions and the, the
danger that lurks ahead.
(38:11):
That's mystic, and I totallyget the frustration because it
it is consistently that if we'regoing to have a role in
something and we're being good,it's often something like that.
But at the same time, in thisstory, though, it really makes
sense to do that, I'm okay withit here.
Madeline (38:29):
I agree.
I agree both with you and withFlorian, because it's exactly
that.
I think he's absolutely rightand this is what I'm saying to
you.
They're just so tropified sooften that I would very much
love to see a film or a book ora story where they're not linked
to that, where they don't haveto be a warning.
(38:51):
Yeah, absolutely I agree.
But I think with Nosferatu andespecially, I think, in the
vampire genre, it's so difficultto do anything new, and I think
it's particularly difficult todo anything new in an adaptation
, ultimately, of Dracula.
I think you're constrained towork with particular elements
(39:13):
that are there in the originaltext and in the original film,
because it's dracula vianosferatu 22 and now.
So I think there's always thatquestion of we have this story,
we can't just write a new story,we have to adapt this story.
So how do we rejig the elements?
(39:34):
So I think, in a way, in thisparticular case, the director
had to work with those pieces ofthe puzzle and I think, at
least up to a point and I'll getinto that in a minute I think
that that kind of not beingvampire hunters, not being
slaves to the vampire, butvampire hunters, was a
(39:56):
successful um exercise ofadaptation yeah, I would have
loved.
Jezmina (40:03):
so like whenever I watch a film, I'm always
imagining I'm the writer,because I I write things, and I
would have loved a moment whenthey were trying to warn him,
where they were establishingcredibility.
That was like you have tolisten to us, because and that
could have been so many thingsof like these people have
enslaved us.
We've had to live on themargins, we've seen things like
(40:24):
you know, and just like a littlebit to maybe even contextualize
the word gypsy as a slur,because not everyone listening
would have known that, althoughI feel like you can definitely
infer it, but like I don'talways trust the audience and it
would have been cool just tohave, like it wouldn't have to
be more than 10 seconds of alittle bit of exposition of like
(40:44):
trust us, because we have beenpersecuted in these ways and
we've been pushed into themargins and we know about this
stuff.
Madeline (40:51):
I would, yeah, that.
That would have been reallygreat and that could have, as
you say, just taken 10 seconds,but really carried so much and
done so much yeah yeah, I mean,I just it's.
Jezmina (41:04):
I think it's nice to talk about this.
I don't know if Robert Eggersis ever going to listen to this,
but it's like it's cool tobring these things up because I
think sometimes people you know,both Paulina and I do cultural
sensitivity writing and a lot ofpeople just don't even know
where to start, and so I thinkit's worth talking about these
things, even if you know we'renot sure who's going to a
(41:58):
critique.
So what do you feel like wasnot done so well or could have
done better?
Madeline (42:05):
um, I mean, for me personally, it was the scene
where they're looking to thegrave of the vampire and the
group of roma are leading awhite horse towards it and on
top of the horse is a naked lady.
(42:25):
So I understand that there is,but this is not Romani folklore,
specifically, it's Serbianfolklore, and of course, in the
Eastern European space thesethings transfer culturally.
So there is the idea, again,not specifically, it is not
(42:45):
Romani folklore, it's just morebroadly Eastern European
folklore.
The Roma inhabit an EasternEuropean space there, but a
horse will not walk over avampire's grave, so that it will
kind of shy away from it.
So that's how you find thevampires and that's how you
destroy them.
Fair enough.
(43:07):
But then the naked lady, evenif you have to have a virgin,
that's that's not, that's notthe way to do it, and that is
not only not part of romanyfolklore at all, it also crosses
uh it basically breaks puritylaws when it comes to romany
(43:31):
culture, because this girl isagain completely naked, the
lower part of her body iscompletely exposed and it's
touching everything.
Um, no traditional Romanicommunity would have that,
because it's one of the mostimportant cultural boundaries
(43:53):
that you cannot cross.
And again they are presented,they're speaking Romani, they're
dressed, and another positivewas that the costumes look
accurate for what they wouldhave been in the 19th century or
kind of early 20th century.
So they're very clearly atraditional community.
A traditional community wouldabide by those cultural purity
(44:18):
laws.
Jezmina (44:19):
Yeah, yeah, and I don't want to do that?
Madeline (44:23):
No, and it felt as if it was there, and obviously we
are talking about the vampirestory, which is there's always
going to be that sense of thesexiness and the sensuality, and
it's a titillating scene forthe audience and so on and so
forth.
And if that had to be in there,I just think it needed to be
(44:44):
not with, not associated with,the rhema.
I thought that was not, not ityeah, I felt the same.
Jezmina (44:53):
I felt like it really just existed to um sexualize
romani people and it just felt,um, yeah, like more of a western
fantasy, and it was one ofthose moments where it was like
if he had only had hired oneadvisor, like he would have
known not to do that, and andfor so many good reasons,
especially because he paid somuch attention to cultural
(45:15):
authenticity, before you know itjust it's felt so discordant
exactly, precisely because it'ssetting this a whole and then
it's a brief, that the rhemaappear very briefly in this
variety.
Madeline (45:30):
I think it's I don't know, I haven't timed it
probably two minutes no morethan that yeah, um, but
precisely because so much carehas gone into getting the
dialect right, getting thecostumes right, it presents a
community that bears a sense ofauthenticity and then that just
(45:51):
goes away in that scene with thenaked virgin on the horse,
because it's just counter to theculture, to the laws and purity
.
Jezmina (46:13):
I actually met Robert Eggers, um, just by chance.
I didn't actually even know whohe was because he walked into
the shop where I tell fortunesand we sell books and I had
requested we carry yeah, I hadrequested that we carry um
Hadina Sishashik's folklore,because it's one of the few
(46:33):
folklore books Actually now Ihave to keep the same because I
have to promote that but it'sone of the few folklore books
that I found that's actuallywritten by a Romani person and
she's a genius.
I love her so much and I forgetwhat it's called.
I think it's something like RomaParamija or something, but
basically it's Bosnian Romanifolklore and he came in
(46:55):
specifically looking for localfolklore and he asked about New
Hampshire folklore, becausethat's where we are.
And I gave him all these booksand I was like try this.
And also, if you love folklore,this is the book.
It's really special.
It's really hard to findanywhere Like it's.
It's not there, aren't that?
(47:23):
It's, there's not a big run ofit, you should get this book.
And he was like, oh, I'll pass.
And I was like, okay, and nowI'm just like dude, dude,
because now I found out who hewas after when he yeah, oh, you
know the cashier saw his nameand then we looked him up and we
were like, oh my god, that wasrobert eggers.
And I didn't know this film wasin the works.
And I'm just like dude, whywould you pass on this like $15
book?
Madeline (47:40):
wow, that's yeah, and that would have come in handy,
yeah.
Jezmina (47:47):
I, you know, just just saying, uh, yeah that's.
That's an amazing anecdote buthe was really lovely, like he
was very, he was very polite,very kind, um, but uh, moving on
, what would you like to see inthe future of roma
representation and literatureand media, like?
What are some guidelines orhopes or dreams?
Madeline (48:10):
um more romany involvement, to begin with.
Um, so I would, in an idealworld, like to see films
directed and produced,mainstream film directed and
produced by romany directors.
Um, that's so many.
They're brilliant.
Uh, I would like to see moreliterature written by Romani
(48:32):
people as well.
Um, that, and gothic literaturewritten by Romani people.
Um, the sense of engaging withthe tropes of the gothic by
reclaiming them and by writingauthentic stories.
Um, I think you know part ofthe problem is you're growing up
(48:55):
, you're consuming this type ofliterature and you see yourself
represented in such flattenedways and you just want something
more.
But then, beyond that, so manycharacters, main characters, are
just non-ramer.
There's this gap, there's thisdisconnect between your world
and theirs.
So I would like to see my worldrepresented a bit more in
(49:19):
authentic ways.
Beyond that, um, just more.
As you said, you know,sensitivity, reading um people
involved in.
You know consultants, romanyconsultants, advising on how to
represent romany people in, infilm, in literature, so on and
(49:41):
so forth, um romany actors castin romany roles.
Yeah, that's a big one andthat's one I feel particularly
strong about because there's somuch you know growing up in
Romania, for better or for worse, people know who you are, and
(50:02):
sometimes it's very for worse.
Yeah, um, but what struck me inthe English-speaking world is
just how little is known aboutthe Roma, even yet, just the
term gypsy it's.
People don't really know aboutits context, its history um so I
(50:26):
think when we cast non-Romanyactors, and how many roles
there's just this reinforcementof confusion.
I think so many these thingsare popular.
People consume media so much.
People watch films, people readbooks.
There's so much in it.
(50:47):
So people read theserepresentations or watch these
representations and they'rewrong.
They're gonna go away fromengaging with that particular
story, thinking that's how aromaare you know?
So I think there's aresponsibility, there's a
cultural responsibility andthere's a cultural wave of
(51:11):
education, just opportunitiesfor Romani people.
There's so many talented Romaniactors who are trying very hard
to make it in the industry andwho would be perfect to these
roles.
Jezmina (51:25):
It's so true, I mean, and I think it's interesting how
, um, the internet and socialmedia helps us become more
visible.
It can also be, you know, areally challenging place, from
infighting to racism coming fromother places, you know.
But, yeah, um, I was so excited, uh, when we were we
interviewed Florian, by the way,who I mentioned earlier, that
(51:46):
he's also training to be anactor and I'm like, oh, thank
god, yeah, that's wonderful, ohbrilliant, who I mentioned
earlier that he's also trainingto be an actor and I'm like oh,
thank God.
Yeah, that's wonderful, oh,brilliant.
Yeah, I was like, oh, that'sjust so great.
Madeline (51:54):
He would be brilliant and, yeah, I can see him in so
many different Romney roles.
I know I'm rooting for him.
Jezmina (52:00):
So, yeah, it just it feels like such a interesting
time where Roma yeah, it just itfeels like such an interesting
time where Roma, because of ouryou know our use of technology
and creating our own platforms,we are more visible.
There's really no excusesanymore not to include us.
Madeline (52:19):
I agree, yeah, I absolutely agree.
And there's been a lot ofself-advocacy on social media.
So yeah, absolutely.
Social media.
Jezmina (52:29):
so yeah, absolutely so we're going to talk more about
(53:08):
this in a future episode, but Iwas wondering if you would just
tease your forthcoming book, theRoma, and also you know your
other book as well TheologicalMonsters.
Tell us a little bit about whatthose are about.
Madeline (53:21):
Let's see Theological Monsters.
As I mentioned earlier, it's anacademic book.
It's, yeah, looking at 19thcentury gothic literature, irish
gothic literature, and askinghow the monsters are used to
kind of tease out knowledge ofthe divine through this and you
know kind of range oftheological and spiritual
(53:42):
traditions.
Um, and the Roma is, it'shybrid in genre.
So essentially, as the titlesuggests, it's a history and
it's a history of the Romanipeople across time and space, so
it's place-based.
In that, um, I tell the storypart of.
(54:05):
I think what the problem is whenwe talk about the Roma is this
tendency to just lump everybodytogether.
There are so many differentvici, there are so many
subgroups, each with their ownfolklore, each with their own
history, each with their ownchallenges and traditions, and I
think that's very important toacknowledge.
So the Roma tries to do that.
(54:28):
My book tries to do that.
My book tries to do that byzooming in in particular on
particular places, particularcountries in Europe and also the
United States, um, throughwhich the Roma have traveled.
So I start in the UK, where Ilive now, and then go back to my
native Romania, and then thereis a chapter on Bulgaria, one on
(54:52):
Germany, one on the UnitedStates, among other places as
well, and in each of thesechapters I tell the history of
the Roma in that particularplace.
So it spans these variousgeographical locations.
It also spans various timelines.
(55:14):
Through these chapters there areelements of memoir.
There are always my ownexperiences, growing up in
Romania, living in the UK,travelling across these places.
How am I perceived and how do Iperceive them as a Romani woman
(55:39):
?
So there are accounts of racismthat I've suffered.
There are positive accountsencountering other Romani people
across my travels as well.
So there's that element ofmemoir.
And then there's that littlebit of an element of just kind
of traveling, of moving um.
Another thing that the bookdoes is zoom in on particular
(56:01):
individuals.
So I I look at individualstorytelling.
In each chapter I've got abouttwo stories of real Romani
people who existed and just telltheir lives and their
contributions and stories ofpersecution and resilience in
(56:22):
various places across varioustimes.
So I really wanted to bring outthese actual individual Romney
stories rather than just tell abroad history without that kind
of human element.
Jezmina (56:35):
That feels so important , especially when telling the
story of people who are somythologized and, yes, you know,
not really seen or evenrepresented as human in so many
ways and in racist ways but alsoin like supernatural ways, and
so I love that you included yourown story too and that Paulina
and I felt like it was reallyimportant in our book um Secrets
(56:57):
of Romani Fortune Telling toinclude a little bit of memoir
as well, because it waspersonalizing and, yeah, it
feels essential almost in thiskind of writing absolutely.
Madeline (57:09):
It's humanizing and it's it's also.
I think what I wanted to do isjust to add my own story to this
mosaic of other stories andvoices and to show us as complex
humans and in that sense of theour humanity and complexity so
(57:31):
wonderful.
Jezmina (57:32):
I can't wait to read both of these when.
When are they coming out?
Um?
Madeline (57:37):
so the roma launches in may in the uk and in july, I
believe, in the US.
Awesome.
The other one I'm not so sureyet because I'm still um
finalizing some edits on themanuscript awesome.
Jezmina (57:57):
It's so much work, too, to write a book.
I love that you have two comingout like more or less in the
same year.
It's like so, so impressive.
Um, so we have our last couplequestions coming up.
Our favorite one to ask reallyI think this is our favorite is
who is your Romani crush?
It's basically just a Romaniperson you admire, although
sometimes we do have people tellus their real crushes, which is
(58:19):
really fun, but you don't havefor how many people I admire.
Madeline (58:23):
There's so many, yeah, um.
So one of the favoritecharacters, I mean one of the
favorite historical people thatI write about in the book, is
katarina taikon, who was ashiromani activist whose work is
absolutely inspirational.
Just, she was so brilliant inevery single way.
(58:45):
Yes, she was, um, so yeah,she's, she's, she's a huge
inspiration for me, I think.
So I picked Katerina, butthere's just so, so many who are
so brilliant and yeah, you know, there are children's books by
her too.
Jezmina (59:03):
Like I, actually, I would like to read more of her
work because she's incredible.
Madeline (59:08):
Yeah, so brilliant.
Jezmina (59:11):
And what is coming up on the horizon for you.
We talked about your books, butif there's anything else you
want to share, and also, wherecan people follow your work and
support you?
Madeline (59:22):
What's coming up.
So I'm starting a new researchproject about blood in the 19th
century, a kind of intersectionbetween sense of medical realism
and spirituality.
Apart from that, I'm continuingto teach, um, yeah and yeah,
(59:43):
you can follow me on x ortwitter at Madeline underscore
CCT, on Blue Sky, madelinePotter On Instagram, on Madeline
underscore CCT again, and I'vegot a website which is Madeline
hyphen Potter dot com, so youcan find me there as well and
(01:00:07):
get in touch with me if you wantto, and I'm always happy to
hear from people.
Jezmina (01:00:13):
Oh, wonderful.
Thank you so much for talkingwith us.
It was so fun to get into alittle pop culture with you and
literature and we're lookingforward to talking to you again
about your books.
Madeline (01:00:24):
Me too, and thank you so much again for the invitation
oh my gosh.
And thank you to Paulina too.
Jezmina (01:00:31):
Yes, she was so sad she couldn't be here, but we'll
have you back on and it'll begreat and you can meet her.
And don't worry, listeners,Paulina is not going to be
continually absent.
Sometimes life happens and bothof us work full time and do
this out of our own pockets andour passion, so we can't always
(01:00:51):
do everything together, which is, you know, we're doing our best
, um, but thank you for beinghere and, uh, have a great day.
Thank, you.
Madeline (01:00:58):
You too, have a great day.
I think it's probably morningthere for you yeah, yeah this
evening for you.
What is the time amazing.
Thank you so much.
This is so fun.
I hope you have fun too.
Thank you for listening toRomanistan Podcast.
Jezmina (01:01:23):
You can find us on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook
at Romanasan Podcast and onTwitter at RomanistanPod, to
support us, join our Patreon forextra content or just donate to
our Ko-Fi fundraiser, ko-ficombackslash Romanistan, and please
rate, review and subscribe.
(01:01:44):
It helps people find our show.
It helps us so much.
Paulina (01:01:47):
You can follow Jez on Instagram at jasminavantila and
paulina at romani holistic.
You can get our book secrets ofromani fortune telling online
or wherever books are sold.
Visit romanistanpodcastcom forevents, educational resources
and more.
Email us at romanistanpodcastat gmailcom for inquiries.
Jezmina (01:02:13):
Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Vontila and Paulina
Stevens, conceived of by PaulinaStevens, edited by Victor
Pachas, with music by VictorPachas and artwork by Elijah
Vardo.
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