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"In Romani, there is the saying that kon mangel te kerel tumendar roburen chi shocha phenela tumen o chachimos pa tumare perintonde , 'he who wants to enslave you will never tell you the truth about your forefathers.'"
—Ian Hancock, Romani scholar
You probably know of them as "Gypsies." This is understandable. But put what you think you know about them aside for one moment, and let's get things straight.
First and most insulting, "Gypsies" are usually dishonest: thieves, pickpockets, con-men, trespassers, and all-around tricksters who wouldn't think twice about taking everything you own that isn't nailed down (and a few things that are).
Slightly less insulting but no less inaccurate, "Gypsies" are almost universally romantic nomads. They wear brightly colored clothes and travel in brightly decorated caravans. They have dark skin and speak with an Uberwald accent, regardless of where they are and where they're supposed to be from. They're mysterious and usually "magical" people — Europe's nomadic answer to the Magical Native American — as the sheer number of "Gypsy Fortune Tellers" and " Gypsy Curses" demonstrates. They're also associated with Tarot cards, and sometimes credited with inventing them. They dance in flamenco outfits to Hungarian music.
In Real Life, the Roma are an ethnic group found throughout Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. They originally emigrated from India, but were mistaken for Egyptians by Medieval Europeans, which is how they came to be called "Gypsies" by everyone else. (They don't care for that name, by the way.) Nomadic Roma were certainly a historical fact, but by this day, the majority of Roma live in permanent housing, and are every bit as modern and tech-savvy as their neighbors. For all their depictions of backwards Gypsies, the Media are the ones stuck in the past. However, reports of minor Roma girls in forced marriages are all too often found to be true.
In addition to perpetuating stereotypes about the Roma, the media is largely blasé about slurs against them, airing "gypo" or "pikey" uncensored on programs that wouldn't dare describe other ethnicities in similar terms. Apparently the Roma are still Acceptable Ethnic Targets — another holdover from previous centuries when the Roma were one of the Western world's Butt Monkeys.
As an aside, we'd like to point out that the Roma gave the world some damn good music.
For all you sticklers for Grammar: Rom (also spelled Rrom) is singular. Roma (or Rroma or Romanies) is plural. Romany (Rromany, Romani) is an adjective.
No relation (ethnic or etymological) to the Romans or the Romanians, though Roma can be found in Italy and Romania.
See also: Irish Travellers.
Depictions of Roma in fiction:
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Anime and Manga
- Ed had a mystical dream-reading Gypsy best friend, Noa, in the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. Incidentally, she's not all that honest, either.
- Oddly enough, in the "Chibi Party" OVA Ed specifically mentions that the proper term is "roma".
- Faye deliberately played into this stereotype in Cowboy Bebop (for whatever reason) in an attempt to get Spike to let her go. Since she's actually from Singapore, it's a miracle he bought it in the first place.
- Serge Battour, the protagonist of Kaze To Ki No Uta, is half Romani and completely avoids all the associated stereotypes. He is probably the most sympathetic and endearing character in the entire series.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- The heroine Gypsy is sometimes Romani, sometimes not, Depending On The Writer. She did start as basically a street thief.
- A plotline in the Batman Comic Strip of the 1940s had a Gypsy lad framed for murder. Colorful clothing, check. Hot-tempered, especially when it comes to the honour of his sister, check. Strong distrust of the police and legal system, check. Actual murderer? Not so much.
- Nightwing has Romani blood, unless someone retconned it, in which case this troper needs to kill them.
- It was retconned in a few years back by D.K. Grayson while she was dragging Nightwing through a Dork Age. If it's stuck fair enough, as long as nothing else from that period has.
- The Marvel Universe:
- Doctor Doom is a Rom from Latveria. Unambiguously villainous, but a complete aversion of the Gypsy stereotypes. So... yeah.
- Well, he's a technical genius. He still grew up amongst superstitious folk living in horse-drawn caravans though. And let's not even get started on his mother, the demon-summoning sorceress...
- On the other hand, Doom is a vocal activist for Roma rights, and they are some of the few people associated with a villain who are treated sympathetically in Marvel Comics.
- Wanda aka Scarlet Witch and her twin Pietro aka Quicksilver are half-Romani, half-Jewish. They were raised in a pretty stereotypical Gypsy caravan. (By a cow)
- Their father Magneto was retconned as being a Gypsy, rather than Jewish, in the early 90s. Apparently when Marvel decided to build him up as a major villain in the Fatal Attractions crossover, they worried about negative response to having a clearly Jewish villain. However Gypsies were still Acceptable Targets. Fortunately, a later Authors Saving Throw returned Magneto to his Jewish roots.
- Nightcrawler was raised by gypsy sorceress Margali Szardos.
- And his Excalibur teammate Meggan AKA Gloriana is Roma too. In Captain Britain and MI:13 Annual #1, a flashback of her childhood shows her and her family running into some bigoted Englishmen and she shapeshifts into a hideous Gypsy stereotype.
- The Tintin book The Castafiore Emerald had a camp of Gypsies setting up in a dump just downwind from Marlinspike. Captain Haddock then generously lets them camp out closer to his house, to the objection of his butler. Things soon went missing from the manor, which led to everyone looking at the gypsies suspiciously. Turns out a magpie did it.
- One issue of the Belgian "Kiekeboe" comics deals with this. Most Gypsies are actually honest people whose worst crime is begging, though there is one who gives the rest a bad name by stealing.
- When we first see Gypsies in Castle Waiting, they're horse thieves, murderers, and scoundrels with ties to people who buy babies. Fits with the fairy tale themes, but still has Unfortunate Implications. Thus, the next Gypsy we see is honest, upstanding, and likable, and although we don't see the band he came from, every indication is that they're generally nice people.
- The Roma make a brief appearance in Maus, with Anja seeking the services of a fortune teller who says Vladek is still alive. In tune with the rest of the book's Funny Animals theme, the fortune teller is portrayed as a gypsy moth.
Film
- Borat calls himself a "Gypsy catcher" and claims to have run them over in a Hummer. Apparently, it was supposed to be too blatantly, over-the-top racist to be taken seriously, but the European Center for Antiziganism Research didn't agree, and filed a complaint against Sacha Baron Cohen.
- In Mel Brooks's Dracula: Dead and Loving It, a stereotypical old Rom woman warns Renfield that Dracula is evil and gives him a crucifix to protect him. When he tries to go, she asks him to pay for it. This troper isn't sure if this was intended as a parody of the stereotype or not.
- It was. The early Dracula films were among the Trope Makers for stereotypes applied to both Roma and Eastern European people in general (see Literature below).
- ...You seriously had to ask if something from a Mel Brooks film was a parody?
- Disney's Adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame presents the Gypsies as extremely colorful and eccentric people; Esmeralda is the most sympathetic version. The stereotyped depiction is somewhat justified by the setting, and the film even removes the fortune-telling from the original story. The group as a whole are presented as sympathetic victims of Frollo's overzealous desire for Religious Purity in Paris.
- This troper interpreted said characters as being played as desperate refugees.
- Basically, the bad guys in Hunchback think the Gypsies are the first type, but they're really the second type.
- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies (featured on MST3K) features a Gypsy fortune teller who hypnotizes the Designated Hero into murdering for her. She also keeps a collection of acid-burned (and probably acid-tripping) mutants in her carnival tent.
- The Elusive Avengers (a Soviet Ostern movie) had Yashka the Gypsy as a permanent cast member, a Lovable Rogue of the protagonist team.
- The Sam Raimi horror flick Drag Me To Hell centers around a banker who's cursed by an elderly Gypsy woman after she forecloses on her house.
- Gypsy / Return of Budulai TV miniseries (USSR). Both did well as they were almost destined to do: come on, as long as you haven't any related phobia or something, horses, whip-cracking Bad Ass riders plus some cool mildly exotic song and dance make surefire audiovisuals.
Literature
- The Gyptians are Roma/Gypies with Alternate Etymology in His Dark Materials. They are still portrayed in an archaic and "mysterious" way, but they are at least pretty damn heroic and invaluable allies of Lyra.
- They're a slight variant in that rather than having caravans they live in barges on the East Anglian Fens, and seem to have a strong Dutch influence in their language. It can be speculated that in the setting's Alternate History for whatever reason they moved from the Netherlands to settle in East Anglia; in real life a lot of Dutch people did migrate there.
- Alternatively, they moved to the water to become a seafaring culture.
- A strong example of heroic, subversive gypsies are the Rovers in Terry Brooks' Shannara series. Rovers are mysterious and definitely play by their own roguish rules, but they're as likely to be heroic as opposed to the heroes, make fantastic scouts, traders, sailors, and rogues, and dominate the eventual airship trade with their bravery and acumen.
- Piers Anthony's Roma are often magical, but he seems to avert the stereotype in every other way.
- But damn can they dance. A 60+ year old Romani man is able to kick up his heels in a very sexual dance with a 16 year old. And she's the one who gets tired first.
- Henry Fielding's Tom Jones has an incident with gypsies being presented as a utopian community.
- A Trope Maker here were the novels of gothic literature, in particular Dracula, which portrayed several different Eastern-European ethnic groups as 'gypsies', including Dracula's Szgany henchman, against whom the final battle of the book is fought.
- Roma caravans are usually depicted as very important factors in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years Of Solitude, magical or not.
- Melquiades was more of an alchemist though...
- Inverted, though, in that Melquíades is an honest and genuinely good man, and at first it's José Arcadio who doesn't believe him. Later, they become best friends, and on thinking that Melquíades could be dead, José Arcadio breaks down sobbing.
- Also keep in mind that in the works of Gabriel García Márquez, everything is magical.
- Gypsies are briefly mentioned in the Discworld novel Equal Rites. A town-based witch is worried they might kidnap Esk. Granny Weatherwax, who knows a bit about gypsies, finds this unlikely. (Don't ask what the Discworld origin of the word "gypsy" is by the way, since their Egypt is called Djelibeybi.) Twist: They absolutely can't lie.
- The people who cannot lie (actually, some can, but it's a unique and respected skill among them) are called Zoons and live in barges. Maybe calling them gypsies earlie was a Translation Convention.
- There's a gypsy caravan in Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones, who travel between different worlds.
- In Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles series, the heroine travels with a gypsy caravan for a while and becomes good friends with some of them.
- Jacqueline Carey's Kushiels Legacy novels have a semi-historical fantasy setting featuring the Roma-analogues the Tsingani, or "Travellers". They're pretty stereotypical gypsies (bright clothes, dancing, stealing from the non-Travellers) but the way they're treated is at least mentioned.
- Tsingani actually means 'gypsies' in Russian, so she got kinda lazy there...
- There's the gypsy clan in Stephen King's Thinner. One of them knows magic and curses the main character after the latter became responsible for his daughter's death.
- The Wheel Of Time has a culture of 'Tinkers', which is clearly intended to mimic gypsy stereotypes, right down to thievery. Although they do add a twist of pacifism.
- The books make it pretty clear though that they don't actually steal or do anything else bad-thats just an unfair sterotype. They're presented as very sympathetic caracters, though they are Straw Pacifists
- The family of the hero Kvothe from The Name Of The Wind is a band of Edema Ruh, traveling entertainers with a somewhat unsavory (and mostly unearned) reputation.
- In Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, a Gypsy caravan is suspected when a teenaged girl goes missing. They're completely innocent of any wrongdoing, however, and join in the search for her.
- Similarly, 'gipsies' are suspected of complicity in the sudden death of a young woman in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ''The Adventure of the Speckled Band', but Sherlock Holmes proves they had nothing to do with it; it was her stepfather.
- The Ryn of Star Wars's EU are basically this trope in - oh, guess. They have all the trappings - live in roaming caravans (of spaceships, no less), run fortune-telling games (though they might be on to something), and are generally used as punching bags by the rest of everybody. This is the same 'Verse that spawned Han Solo, though, so they get a sympathetic portrayal, with family loyalty and ingenuity high on their list of traits. Also have a top-notch spy network, run on gossip. And their patchwork fleet comes through awesomely in one of the later NJO novels.
- Most of the heroes in Bardic Voices are either Gypsies or allied with them.
- Sophia from the Cal Leandros series is a particularly virulent example.
- The Thieves' World stories have the S'Danzo as their version of the Roma. They are very traditional, men are known to sometimes invoke curses on those who seriously annoy them, many women live on fortune-telling and some are very good in this. A major difference is that the S'Danzo we read most about are not nomads, but a settled community in the city of Sanctuary.
- The Cats of Ulthar has the misconception that the Roma are from Egypt as a plot point, with a Gypsie caravan who worship the cat goddess Bast. Not surprising, considering HP Lovecraft's various old-fashioned ideas about race.
- On the other hand, since this story is part of his "Dream Cycle", this may be justified. Since their world is basically humanity's collective unconscious, there are Roma who are associated with Egypt there because so many people think there are.
- Something similar happens in Holes. Madame Zeroni fits the "Gypsie Fortune Teller" archetype, but she's explicitely said to be an actualy Egyptian, or at least North African, rather than Romany stock.
- Katarina Taikon's "Katitzi" book series were based on the author's own WWII wartime Roma upbringing.
- Rudyard Kipling used his ability to find and throw in one view of the question most Europeans would prefer to omit to write beatiful Gypsy Vans.
- in the "gemma doyle trilogy" a group of "gypsies" camp out in the woods behind her school.
Live Action TV
- House had a Romani patient-of-the-week who was intelligent but being held back by his family.
- On the Finnish program Manne TV (the Finnish equivalent of "Gippo TV"), Roma would poke fun at the stereotypes associated with themselves, though most people didn't really see it that way. However, they had a Crowning Moment Of Awesome when they got Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello to appear on the show to express support for the show and it's agenda.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Jenny's left Romani culture, but her uncle is pretty much the stereotype. Oh, and they were responsible for Angel's curse.
- Don't forget "The Gypsies are a disgusting people, we will speak of them no more *Spits*" of course that episode was a Breather Episode before the grand finale.
- On the plus side, Joss did a decent amount of research - the Kalderash are in fact a major Romani clan.
- There was an episode of Judging Amy that showed Roma children being sexually exploited because they began courtship as early as 10. It wasn't presenting it as fiction, either. The entire episode felt like a PSA, telling us that the courts can't do anything about it, but every red-blooded American should. They played up the squick factor by interspacing pictures of real mistreated girls right before and after each commercial break.
- There was several Telenovelas featuring or starring Romani characters. Venezuelan Kassandra has been the most popular of those, although allegedly the author didn't do the research there. Not that the others fared better...
- In Argentina, Zíngara and Soy gitano also relied mainly in stereotypes and was openly despised by the real Roma.
- Let's not forget Romané in Chile, where the writers did some more research but the Roma also weren't amused.
- An episode of Without A Trace had a clan of gypsy (the word "Rom" was nowhere to be heard) con artists involved in a kidnapping. With Tarot, and wandering, and insular secretiveness. So Yeah.
- The Tenth Kingdom had Roma, they were friendly and hospitable although wolf warned the others two rules: 1) Don't eat anything you haven't seen them eating, 2) Never refuse anything, this rule basically meant Tony had to do some really embarrassing singing. They also fit the Gypsy Curse trope but they hardly unprovoked and magic isn't uncommon in The Tenth Kingdom
- Charmed had an episode that revealed Roma shared the same bloodlines as most witches, and centered on a young Romani medical student trying to access her ancestral magic to put the stomp on the Monster Of The Week. So, less conman stereotypes, more European Magical Native American.
- The Criminal Minds episode "Bloodline" centered around a clan of Roma who slaughtered families and take the daughters as brides for their pubescent sons; they also did their share of shoplifting and car theft. It's pointed out by Agent Rossi that these people are following a warped version of Romani culture.
- In one episode of The Secret Adventures Of Jules Verne, there's a camp of gypsies around an old abbey that are suspected of being involved in the episode's events. They are, but they're not gypsies: They're Prussians in disguise.
Tabletop Games
- There was a book written for the Old World Of Darkness that had Gypsies who embodied the 19th century stereotypes — mysterious, sneaky — living in the 21st century. Oh, and it had a statistic that represented "[[ Blood]] Purity." We really try to forget about that one. It even got a Discontinuity Nod in a later edition, which omitted the Gypsy book and mentioned that inaccurate information about Gypsies can be found in RPGs.
- Similarly, there were the Ravnos from Vampire The Masquerade. Their origins were tied to India and the Roma, their unique Discipline gave them the power to craft illusions... and their clan flaw made it so they had to roll to resist engaging in the criminal activity of their choice. Yeah... Rumor has it the ham-fisted portrayal of Romani culture is why most of the clan was killed off by the time of Revised (their Antediluvian rose first, got put down, and drove most of the clan to madness and death during the intervening period).
- Also, Werewolf The Apocalypse has the Silent Striders, who are Egyptian necromancers/travellers with ties to the Roma. It would seem the writers missed the memo that "Gypsies" aren't really Egyptian.
- The Roamers in the Blue Rose RPG are Gypsies of the "brightly coloured caravans and fortune tellers" kind. Their name is a pun on Roma as well as being descriptive of their lifestyle.
- Likewise, the Roamers of Sufficiently Advanced are the same idea Recycled In Space, albeit with full access to the (well) sufficiently advanced technology of the setting.
- Some Dungeons And Dragons settings had Gypsies under other names.
- Ravenloft had the Vistani, whose writers (thankfully), go out their way to avoid stereotypes about the Roma-they're mysterious and mystical, sure, but they aren't inherently better or worse than any other person. Too bad the other citizens of Ravenloft haven't gotten the memo-much like real gypsies, they get a lot of bad press (which isn't to say some don't deserve it, but the vast majority of them don't).
- Greyhawk had the Rhenee, who were basically Gypsies who lived on barges.
- Spelljammer had the Aperusa. Usually in roles of harmless entertainers, salvage scavengers, petty thieves or scammers, or at most not-too-brave Lovable Rogue. They even travel on unarmed (and patchwork) ships. On the exotic side, they're slightly magic-resistant and immune to mind-reading, but can't have Psychic Powers.
- Forgotten Realms has Valantra, nomadic folk which also gave name to "spellsingers" — very powerful (not bound by Vancian rules) non-combat spellcasters described in Wizards and Rogues of the Realms. Just to remove doubts, artwork shows a fine dark-haired lady clad in wind-friendly clothes and lots of bracers, dancing with tambourine.
- Talislanta has the Sarista, although they're portrayed in a fairly sympathetic light.
- In Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor the Roma are the brightly colored, nomadic, musical type. Given the intentionally vague faux-30s time frame of the game, this may be a bit more forgivable. Notably, they're actually much more honest than the norm for the setting — although they have the same intentionally ill-defined "Dreadful Secrets" as anyone else and an air of mystery, both the local Roma colony in general and the two characters specifically provided are generally likable, although one's a bitter and hot-headed youth, and the other's mysterious. Also notably, they're specifically mentioned to speak perfect English, unless faking bad English serves them better for hiding some of their secrets — we didn't say they were totally honest, just better than the usual level of corruption and nastiness that most of the other characters and groups show.
- Warhammer has the rarely mentioned Strigany, best known for being henchmen to vampires. So Yeah.
- The Doomstones campaign also had regular gypsies, pretty much fitting the trope.
Video Games
- The Quarians in Mass Effect are Gypsies IN SPACE.
- One of the later Ultima RPGs has a pair of Gypsy camps—one is a bunch of sleazy con-artists, but the other contains a fortune-teller who seems to be for real.
- Fable 2 has the hero(ine) raised in a Gypsy caravan after their big sister dies at the end of the childhood segment. The Roma themselves are realistically skin-toned, good people making a normal living; the one who tells fortunes and is mystical is Theresa.
- Raz, the protagonist of Psychonauts is apparently of Gypsy descent. He also states that a family of psychic gypsies cursed his family to die in water, justifying his Super Drowning Skills.
- Maya and Meena (or Mara and Nara in the original translation) of Dragon Quest IV are depicted as Roma characters, from their dress, to their professions (belly dancer and fortune teller, respectively), even their custom battle and overworld music. In the accent overloaded DS release, they inexplicably seem to come from an area where everyone slips in between French and English languages and accents.
Webcomics
- Anja Donlan from Gunnerkrigg Court is a Rom. She is a mage while her husband (who's a Scotsman) is Gadgeteer Genius, but they found a common ground quickly enough: she's pretty tech-savvy (and currently is a science teacher), he somehow got an Amplifier Artifact he gave her. Their daughter Kat took after her father, up to Arbitrary Skepticism, and so far has no magic.
- Mustn't forget the "Goonmanji" story in El Goonish Shive. The Shop Monster looked like a gypsy.
- The Fear in The Cobra Days.
- One of Llewellyn's ancestors falls in with 'Gypsies' in a short Ozy And Millie arc, and his falling out is used as an explanation of Ozy's fur always falling out at some point. Notably, the Rom he meets plays up the stereotype for a living, and the 'curse' she gives to his family (how many dragons have hair?) ends up redundant once you get to know Millie.
Western Animation
- A few times on The Simpsons, though at least that show was in the habit of making fun of everyone.
- On one Treehouse of Horror episode, a gypsy fortune-teller places a curse on the Simpsons after Homer ruins her business (and expresses a fear of police), and later in the episode the rest of her family seems to match up with the "filthy, hairy transient" stereotype, as Marge comments.
- In another episode, Gypsies have take over the playground of Springfield Elementary, and are seen stealing a frisbee from a small child.
- Futurama's Gypsy Fortune Teller robot was also a con artist.
- Courage The Cowardly Dog: Shirley the Fortune Teller (chihuahua). While she can occasionally act as an antagonist, this is either due to "the Stupid One" (read "Eustace") invoking her wrath. She is often willing to help... for a fee. Her magical tool of choice? A saxophone.
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