Romanistan

Madeline Potter on Nosferatu and Romani Representation in Gothic Literature

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 5 • Episode 2

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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.

You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook @romanistanpodcast, and on Twitter @romanistanpod. To support us, Join our Patreon for extra content or donate to Ko-fi.com/romanistan, and please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us so much. 

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 


 

Jezmina:

Hello Romanesan listeners. It's Jezmina with some news from me and Paulina. First, the Romanesan Festival is on. It will be in March. We had to reschedule from December, but you know what? This lineup is even stronger and we are excited to share some events. So I'm going to give you a rundown of the festival and then mention a few other things that Paulina and I are doing. So hang in there, but all of this information is available on romanistanpodcast. com.

Jezmina:

If you are going to be in New Orleans March 28th to March 30th or you want to come, we will be doing so many things. We're starting off strong on the morning of the 28th of 1130 at the Tennessee Williams Festival with a panel on Romani tropes and contributions in pop culture and it's a conversation with me, paulina and Mara Rajajewski, and then later that night on the 28th, we will be doing Tales from Romanistan, a live Romanistan podcast event. It will be a night of Romani storytelling. It will be hosted by me and Paulina, 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 and their Mystic location. So they have a new location. It's called Mystic and that's where we will be. Paulina and I will be offering tarot and palm readings and Paulina will also be offering wellness consultations from 12 to 5 on the 29th. Later that night we will host Stewarding Traditions, a Literary Salon and Blessing Ritual with Lilith Dorsey, an amazing practitioner, paulina and me, sponsored by Wiser Books. Lilith Dorsey is really gifted and she'll be talking about ancestral traditions in voodoo and indigenous and cultic bloodlines in her family, as well as Afro-Caribbean, and Paulina and I will, of course, be talking about Romani ancestral traditions. And then the following day we will be offering a workshop on tarot and ancestor communication on the 30th, and that will be from 1 to 3 pm, also at Cottage Magic Mystic. And then the last event will be Bebe's Kitchen, a culinary ritual, and this will be also part of the Tennessee Williams Festival. It's hosted by Bembo Yaga or Ilva, mara Rajejevski and Moon Bear, and it'll be featuring tea leaf readings with me and Paulina and there will be music by Millie, raccoon and Victor. So you can get tickets and all the information on our website, romanistanpodcastcom. So this will be the end of March.

Jezmina:

Super fun. Please spread the word. We need help getting the word out and also, if you would like to attend a virtual event. Caitlin Foisy, who we have interviewed, and I will be hosting a ritual called Honey and Roses and this will be a virtual ritual for clarity, connection and confidence, and you'll get a PDF and you can join the live recording or watch it yourself. So if you need a little space holding, that will be on February 16th at 8 pm EST and, if you happen to be in New Hampshire or Boston, I'll be doing some events a poetry brothel party called the Lovers on February 14th, and on the 15th I'll be hosting a tea leaf reading ritual for heart healing and love with Deadwicks and Portsmouth, and you can also book with Paulina and I. If you ever want a reading. You can find Paulina at romaniholisticcom and I'm at jesminavontilacom.

Jezmina:

Thanks for listening to our announcements. We really appreciate you being here, but we just could not wait to tell you that the festival is finalized. Come party with us, it will be so much fun. Okay, enjoy this episode. We're so excited to talk about Nosferatu and all the fun things coming up next Bye, welcome to Romanistan. I am one of your friendly neighborhood gypsies. Again, paulina is so busy this month, 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 excited to invite Madeline Potter onto the show today.

Jezmina:

Maddie 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 Traveling History and will be launched later this year, published by the Bodley Head in the UK and HarperCollins in the USA.

Madeline:

Welcome, maddie. I'm so happy to have you here, thank you. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm really, really pleased to be on and, yeah, very excited, thank you.

Jezmina:

We have both been admiring your work for a long time and we love following you on Twitter or, you know, x, whatever and yeah, just the things that you, you write about are so interesting, and we're here especially today to talk about Nosferatu and your views on on the latest release, the Robert Eggers version. But also we'll talk about other things too, and so we're going to start with some of our favorite questions. The first one is just tell us about yourself. Where are you from? Where's your family, from your visa, anything you want to share about your background?

Madeline:

Yeah, so I'm originally from Romania. I was born in a small town on the kind of western side of the country called Reșița and I grew up there. We moved in a slightly kind of bigger town in the area. My family lived locally and then basically as a young adult, I came to England, I got married, I did a PhD and now I live in Scotland because of my job. And yeah, that's kind of general sort of background and yeah, my Vita is Calderash.

Jezmina:

I love that. Thank you for sharing. We always love a little bit of a background. I almost moved to Edinburgh when I was living in Ireland, and it's one of those places that I've never been to, but I think I just built it up so much and so, um, yeah, I have this like chance to visit.

Madeline:

Let me know um. It's a really, really lovely place. I'm really enjoying living here. It looks like such a beautiful town it is. It's very pretty and very gothic.

Jezmina:

And Paulina and I love to travel, so we probably will take you up on that.

Madeline:

Yeah, yeah, take me up on that.

Jezmina:

Our next favorite question, because we think of this podcast as an opportunity to talk to Roma who maybe don't fit the mold of like what the perfect 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 consider yourself a rebel? But people interpret the word rebel in a lot of different ways. We get a lot of interesting answers. So, just based on things, do you? Yeah? No, because I've been listening to.

Madeline:

I've been listening to episodes and it's always that question, that very loaded question, and I think in a way, yes, but not a rebel without a cause, if that makes sense. I don't think I rebel against things just for the sake of it. I do what I'm interested in, I do what drives me. I've always had these, I've always been interested in the Gothic, I've always been interested in pursuing this line of research, um, so I'm quite stubborn as well, which I suppose goes hand in hand with being a rebel.

Madeline:

I think, also, if you are roma in europe, you have to be a little bit of a rebel because you have to find that space for yourself. Whatever you know, I mean, things can be hostile to you from different angles. A lot of institutions you know practice well systemic racism, exclusion and so on and so forth. So you kind of have to rebel against these systems that continue to keep the Roma in this situation of precarity, of marginalization, of well racialized violence and so on and so forth. I think, yeah, I think in a way I have to be a rebel from that point of view yeah, no, that absolutely makes sense.

Jezmina:

Gotta change the system, break the system yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jezmina:

I have to resist it and to to actively just try to make a better space and place and society for us yeah, I mean, that's the dream, and it's so interesting how um so many of the people we've interviewed have really different skills, backgrounds, jobs, and everyone has their own way of trying to change things with where they're coming from, and I just love it and I think that's part of the beauty of it, that everybody can channel the skills that they've got, that they're good at, and it's part of the diversity of the Roma across well, the world really, not just Europe.

Jezmina:

Yeah, absolutely your work as an academic focuses on the intersection of monstrosity and theology 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 it means, what that means, what do you study and write about?

Madeline:

yeah, so in my academic book I look at irish gothic literature. So I look at brown stoker, the author of dracula, um, and two of his contemporary, or slightly before him, writers Joseph Sheridan-Lefonu, who wrote the novella Carmilla, a really interesting vampire novella, and Charles Robert Maturin as well, who wrote the Gothic novel Mount with the Wanderer. Now what I do is so traditionally Gothic literature has been approached in terms of a binary the monsters being the othered. The monsters are just being monstrous and bad and evil and ugly and all of those bad things. So what I'm asking is actually maybe perhaps there is a sense of reclaiming these monstrous identities, maybe they're not just being othered, maybe we shouldn't look at the gothic in terms of a black and white distinction, but rather as kind of ways of thinking about the important things in life, and one of those important things in life is religion and spirituality. So that takes me to the second thing that I do in my work.

Madeline:

These authors have generally been read in terms of kind of. They were protestants, so they were Irish protestant writers, and they've been read in terms of the theology of their works pretty much being a kind of protestant framework, if that makes sense. But if you start looking at it. It's actually, I think, a little bit more complicated, because inevitably, when you do write about vampires specifically, there's all these folk traditions, all these folk beliefs, all these various magical traditions as well that come into it.

Madeline:

So what I'm saying is that actually these theologies and I define theology broadly to include these systems of spirituality, of magic, of occultism, of esotericism and so on and so forth that they all come together in quite interesting ways, that these theologies aren't just protestant, but actually they're a really interesting eclectic mix that then use these monsters as a way of thinking about the afterlife, of kind of making something tangible, because the monsters unlike, say, ghosts or spirits, they have actual bodies. You touch a body, you touch a monster, then you can understand something through the senses, physically, and then what if what we understand through these monsters can tell us about, can tell us something about the afterlife? So basically, the gist of my work is how vampires like god, oh, interesting.

Jezmina:

I mean, the whole idea of the undead is such an interesting alternative afterlife and I think in a lot of vampire lore it's like once you kill the undead, then they're totally obliterated. Yeah, has that been? Um, yeah, um, that's so interesting. How do you think vampires are like god? I would love to know a little more.

Madeline:

I mean, it's kind of Lestat who really should be credited with the idea, because he says it in the book Something like no creature under God is more like him than we are. And Lestat says something along the lines of well, we we got, kills indiscriminately. He takes the richest and the poorest, and so do we. There's that sense of existing outside of the world, of mortality, but there is also this sense of undeath, of eternal life, right, which in these sort of theological frameworks exists in heaven or in hell, depending um, but that we cannot access as humans in this world.

Madeline:

So what the vampire's body does is actually makes us imagine. That makes us imagine eternal life. And there's the whole thing of blood consumption. Right, the blood is the life which is normally understood to be the body of the blood of christ, but that's removed from the immediacy of experience. So vampires help us to kind of imagine those questions of the afterlife in very bodily and corporeal terms, which are usually again associated with god or with christ. So I think that's how they are like god I love that.

Jezmina:

Yeah, I mean, midnight mass was really full on about that too, which was, I mean, I thought that was a fascinating series and they didn't even really use the word vampire. But that's, you know the energy.

Madeline:

But again, it's just kind of because Midnight Mass was engaging particularly with this kind of Catholic setting. But in these texts it's just so many traditions that are coming together. Again, it's just sort of spirituality, various occult theologies. Folklore is a big one because in Dracula they use the crucifix and the consecrated bread, the host, but also the garlic flour and the mountain ash, so it's kind of really coming together of magic and religion there and science as well. So they're all. They don't exist in that tension, precisely because the monster doesn't necessarily make sense.

Jezmina:

So they need to use everything, exercise of trying to imagine and know things, and that process of knowledge doesn't actually fit into very clear categories yeah, that's so interesting because I find you know, I, both Paulina and I do fortune telling work and we work with people from all different types of faiths and backgrounds and what we're doing is really spiritual work and it, I feel like just spirituality in general, is like let's let's take what we can to, um, to make sense of these things that don't make sense, and you, might within a tradition, or or you know several yeah, exactly 100 percent.

Jezmina:

So this leads me to my next question about folklore, especially so we're here, first and foremost because Nosferatu came out. There's really interesting Roma representation. We wanted to talk to you about your thoughts, just in case any listeners are not familiar. Just in case any listeners are not familiar, the recent release of Nosferatu is by Robert Eggers and it was inspired by the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula by Irish writer Bram Stoker, who we've been talking about, and also the 1922 film adaptation Nosferatu by FW Murnau. So the big question that I have is why are Roma such an integral part of stories about vampires?

Madeline:

And what role do Roma usually play in these stories? Yeah, so that's a really good question and it's something that I've been thinking a lot about.

Madeline:

So why I've got some theories. So obviously it is Bram Stoker who popularizes the trope um, specifically in connection to dracula and the vampire himself. Because when he goes to, when the character jonathan harker goes to transylvania, he writes at the castle and there are some, uh, roma people there who work for the count and they're presented to be his little allies. So they're essentially baddies in the novel. Right, they work for the Count. Jonathan Harker at some point tries to escape and he tries to give them a letter so that they could take it, and they betray him and take it to the Count. So they're a very threatening presence. It doesn't start with um, bram stoker.

Madeline:

The whole trope of the whole kind of role, the presence of the roma in gothic literature goes back pretty much to the development of gothic literature. I mean, if we think about, for example, in jane eyre by Charlotte Bronte, when Mr Rochester disguises himself as a Romany fortune teller, and then we have Heathcliff in Wuthering High, so it's a very close relationship. Why does it happen? So my theory is that the gothic thrives. One of the most gothic things that I think we can experience as humans is uncertainty and unknowability. That's why we're afraid of the dark because we can't see what's there. And then we can see an outline and what's actually a wardrobe might look like some sort of monster. So it's to do with destabilizing our perception, our senses and us not really knowing what that is. Yeah, so when europeans see roma, obviously there are non-european people, they don't look 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 know them, that makes them gothic and particularly so.

Madeline:

It was in the 18th century that a linguist discovered the relationship between the romani language and ind Indian languages, which confirmed that the Roma originated in India. But before then nobody really knew what these uncanny nomads, as it were, had come from. So they had no sense of origin, that was unknown. So that feeds into that sense of the Gothic, because where did they come from? Where are they going? And then also it was freud who spoke about the uncanny as, quite literally, the unhomely. Um, and how things are.

Madeline:

Uncanny threaten, I think he says, the full world, the safety within the walls of the home. If you have a people you don't know their origins, that's already mysterious. And then the nomadic they don't even threaten that safety of the home. They don't have the home. Those four walls are completely done away with. They can't be pinned down in the minds of Europeans. So I think that just increases that sense of mystery.

Madeline:

Then add to that the practice of magic traditions and fortune telling as well, which makes people, I think, fear the Roma even more, because a lot of the tropes in Gothic literature are very often to do with curses, with being associated with places and beings that are threatening or monstrous, right. So I think there are all these different strands that come together so they become literal tropes of the gothic. They're not presented, or very, very, very rarely presented. It's kind of fully developed characters with a lot of background. Instead, what's happening is that they're kind of thrown in there very often, even just as a reference.

Madeline:

You know that when the gypsies arrive or are spotted in a 19th century novel, something is about to go wrong. They're an indication that something is about to be destabilised, that something's just a bit off there. So that kind of essentially I like to say it cannibalises a whole culture, a whole people. They become just basically signs that something's about to go wrong and then they become associated with vampires and monsters. So there's very little engagement with the actual culture, with the actual history. Even after we know, even after it's elucidated that the roma had come from india, writers still cling on to this mystery of origin, this unknown ability and impossibility to to pin down where, where they're coming from, where they're going, and yeah yeah, I mean, and writers still do that today.

Jezmina:

I mean, even one of my friends would say was mentioning hemlock grove and they were like, oh, but you know, then I got a little older and realized how racist it was and I hadn't seen it and just sharing the premise that it's like well, yeah, roma are werewolves.

Madeline:

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 the ship when Dracula's coming to England, and that's one of my favourite things in the novel and I think it's got so much potential. They cast a Romany character who's not Romany and also seem to confuse because there's a spoiler alert for those of you who've not seen it. Um, there's a scene where a child says the captain's taught me a few words in Romany and then he speaks broken Romanian. So there seems to be a confusion between Romany and Romanian. But also, yeah, me growing up and this is not that recent, but still me growing up, I was, I've always been a huge vampire girl.

Madeline:

I always enjoyed these stories about vampires, so I watched, but through the vampire slayer and then later angel, and I never could really get into it, particularly because of the way the roma flattened in just just kind of absolutely caricatured vision of a Romani woman, of a Calderash woman, his cursing angel, and I know and people have said to me yeah, but it's a good thing that they give him a soul, it may be, but it's still very caricatured and it's very inaccurate and it's very grotesque, um, and again that the actor none of the actors, as far as I'm aware, certainly the main actress wasn't roma. And then they had in the in the camp, in the romney camp, they had these, um, really fancy wagons that are far more aligned with kind of Romani, child Romani, gypsy tradition in the UK than they would be with the Kaldurash. We wouldn't have had those, and I 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:

So yeah, I mean, that's so frustrating too. Is, um, you know, romani? Uh sorry, my dog is definitely going to be barking in the background.

Jezmina:

There's no way around I love dogs 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 and make something good and then have bragging rights to it, but it's just so. Yeah, it just feels like laziness and we'll. I'll definitely get into that with 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 poetry Duk by Hedina Szyżyk, and I'm not sure if I'm saying her last name correctly, but I am giving it a shot. She writes about the night butterfly, this vampiric kind of figure in Romani, bosnian folklore, 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 embodiment of the wind that can suck the life out of you, and so I wondered if you wanted to share a little bit about the role of vampires or vampiric monsters in Romani folklore.

Madeline:

Yeah, and Romani folklore, and obviously it really varies not only from Vitsa to Vitsa, but literally from community to community, from sometimes even from family to family, but I think it's it's fine to say that traditional Romani communities are very porous in terms of those boundaries between life and death. Yeah, so these threats are always there. There's all these kinds of quasi vampiric figures in folklore. One of the worst ones, one of the most terrifying ones, I think, is the Moolah, which is quite literally the dead, meaning dead in the Romani language quite literally the dead, meaning dead in the Romani language, which entails the return of a dead body to haunt the living. And there are so many stories about these various vampire figures.

Madeline:

Vampire figures, um, various tales about bodies showing up, um at the cemetery, walking around. Uh, obviously it's doubly terrifying if they're going to touch you, because it crosses many purity laws. Yes, touching that, um. So, yeah, loads of loads of stories also, um, about. There was one that I heard growing up about a boy rose which he puts in a vase next to his bed and every night he gets weaker and weaker, and weaker and weaker, and it's the rose that's kind of sucking his life energy that's then going to her. So this is not, you know, the blood-sucking, um vampire that we know today, but it's, it's that kind of vampiric theme, uh, absolutely. And then there's the whole thing in romania, which is again a kind of undead body and it's body and it's a very fluid sort of concept. It can be a little bit of a vampire, a little bit of a werewolf, but there's this sense of a revenant. It's definitely a revenant that's coming back ah, so interesting.

Jezmina:

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'm aware of.

Madeline:

I mean, it's such an oral culture. Um, I do get into some of these themes in in my book.

Jezmina:

Um and um, that's which? Which book is that? Because you have two books coming out the roma, the roma okay, wonderful, oh my gosh yeah, because you know, I've I've read diane tong's compilation of folklore and you know that I'm always looking for new sources, but so many of them are edited by non-roma and you just you know it's, it's complicated.

Madeline:

Yeah, also just thinking about covering mirrors so that because if you bought the dead body in a mirror, then it's going to come back to life.

Jezmina:

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 they also enter. When they interweave with your live, your lived experience too, they can be quite terrifying. Yes, absolutely.

Madeline:

I was terrified of mirrors as a young girl, especially at night. I just if I needed to get out of bed, for whatever reason, I would just look down. I wouldn't dare to even try and get 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:

I'm not, I wasn't, I wasn't dead, not dead.

Madeline:

I'm not right, but I think there was something in my child's mind about that whole thing yeah.

Jezmina:

No, I didn't like it either, because I always thought I would see spirits behind me and I was just like, don't look especially in the dark, like looking in a mirror in the dark. And kids also, you know, in America, do the um Bloody Mary recitation in front of a mirror in the dark.

Jezmina:

Because yeah all some spirits in on a sleepover because they'll feel left out. Yeah, um, so interesting. So let's get into egger's nosferatu and let's start with the positives. What did you feel like was done well in the representation of roma, or even just the adaptation of the story in general? Um, and why?

Madeline:

yeah. So I mean, as we've just said, like we just talked about this romney, representation in mainstream films and mainstream media, especially in gothic films and gothic media, has been so poor, it's been so bad. But I really didn't know what to expect when it came to the new Nosferatu adaptation. So what I liked was, first of all, the fact that the Roma featured in the film were non-professional. Romani actors.

Madeline:

It's. It's a rare occasion and it's not. It's a low bar. Yes, one of my friends said the bar is so low that you can tiptoe over it.

Jezmina:

It's on the floor but eggers did that.

Madeline:

So there was a real engagement with non-professional roma actors. They weren't cast by non-Roma actors. That was great. They were speaking Romani. And not only were they speaking Romani. I looked into this. They filmed in the Czech Republic, but obviously at story level it's meant to be set in Transylvania. So they did a voiceover. They recorded the speech with roma in romania so that they can then do a voiceover. So they actually got the dialect right, which was pretty impressive, especially after, as I was mentioning the whole confusion between the red knee language and Romanian in the previous film. I thought the attention to detail not even to get the language right but to get the dialect right was impressive. I really enjoyed that. I thought it was good.

Madeline:

I thought there's a scene and again spoiler alert if you haven't seen the film when Hutter, the Jonathan Harker character, essentially arrives into Transylvania. He's surrounded by the Roma and then the kind of Romanian non-Roma comes out of the house and calls them you filthy gypsies. Get away from him, you're going to scare the man. So I think that was a real attempt at kind of showing those racialized power dynamics and interactions that exist and well, that have historically existed, but that existed this day as well. So I thought that was interesting.

Madeline:

Another thing that I liked is I mentioned, um, you know, um, when we talked about brownstork as dracula, that they worked for the count, that they're his little minions, that they're his little servants, um, and so that they've traditionally been interpreted as the bad guys because obviously they helped the vampire. I mean, obviously we could think about why they might be doing that and provide extra context because of the history of enslavement in romania. Although and people forget often that dracula is a fiction the enslavement wasn't happening as much in Transylvania. It was happening in Transylvania just on the borders. It was mostly in Wallachia and Moldavia that was happening, but then Vlad Tepes, vladim Pela, was actually a Wallachian ruler, not a Transylvanian ruler. So there's this all kind of you know, blurred out history that's happening there, but I think it is a context that is worth mentioning when we read those passages about the Roman Transylvania that they could have been enslaved by him.

Madeline:

There's a sense of they're not just evil characters but maybe they've got their restrictions and fears and so on and so forth. So in Nosferatu they're not working for Count Dracula quite like that. Instead they're vampire hunters. So I thought that was an interesting kind of decoupling between Doraemon and Dracula. They were there and I think we do have our role in in. I wouldn't necessarily be happy if someone did an adaptation of Dracula. It was set in Transylvania, it was set in Romania and there was no mention of the Roma, because we are part of the Transylvanian ethnic mosaic. Yeah, so I don't think erasure is the question, but I don't. I didn't like the representations until now. So I think that sense of decoupling them, giving them their own autonomy, not working for the count, not being his minions, but instead being vampire hunters, was pretty clever.

Jezmina:

So I did enjoy that I really appreciated that too, and you know, um, the famous tiktoker had an you know, a critique of it. That, um, you know, roma are always in this position where they are warning you about the, their superstitions and the, the danger that lurks ahead. That's mystic, and I totally get the frustration because it it is consistently that if we're going to have a role in something and we're being good, it's often something like that. But at the same time, in this story, though, it really makes sense to do that, I'm okay with it here.

Madeline:

I agree. I agree both with you and with Florian, because it's exactly that. I think he's absolutely right and this is what I'm saying to you. They're just so tropified so often that I would very much love to see a film or a book or a story where they're not linked to that, where they don't have to be a warning. Yeah, absolutely I agree.

Madeline:

But I think with Nosferatu and especially, I think, in the vampire genre, it's so difficult to do anything new, and I think it's particularly difficult to do anything new in an adaptation, ultimately, of Dracula. I think you're constrained to work with particular elements that are there in the original text and in the original film, because it's dracula via nosferatu 22 and now. So I think there's always that question 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? So I think, in a way, in this particular case, the director had to work with those pieces of the puzzle and I think, at least up to a point and I'll get into that in a minute I think that that kind of not being vampire hunters, not being slaves to the vampire, but vampire hunters, was a successful um exercise of adaptation yeah, I would have loved.

Jezmina:

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 when they were trying to warn him, where they were establishing credibility. That was like you have to listen to us, because and that could have been so many things of like these people have enslaved us. We've had to live on the margins, we've seen things like you know, and just like a little bit to maybe even contextualize the word gypsy as a slur, because not everyone listening would have known that, although I feel like you can definitely infer it, but like I don't always trust the audience and it would have been cool just to have, like it wouldn't have to be more than 10 seconds of a little bit of exposition of like trust us, because we have been persecuted in these ways and we've been pushed into the margins and we know about this stuff.

Madeline:

I would, yeah, that. That would have been really great 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:

I think it's nice to talk about this. I don't know if Robert Eggers is ever going to listen to this, but it's like it's cool to bring these things up because I think sometimes people you know, both Paulina and I do cultural sensitivity writing and a lot of people just don't even know where to start, and so I think it's worth talking about these things, even if you know we're not sure who's going to a critique. So what do you feel like was not done so well or could have done better?

Madeline:

um, I mean, for me personally, it was the scene where they're looking to the grave of the vampire and the group of roma are leading a white horse towards it and on top of the horse is a naked lady.

Madeline:

So I understand that there is, but this is not Romani folklore, specifically, it's Serbian folklore, and of course, in the Eastern European space these things transfer culturally. So there is the idea, again, not specifically, it is not Romani folklore, it's just more broadly Eastern European folklore. The Roma inhabit an Eastern European space there, but a horse will not walk over a vampire's grave, so that it will kind of shy away from it. So that's how you find the vampires and that's how you destroy them. Fair enough. But then the naked lady, even if you have to have a virgin, that's that's not, that's not the way to do it, and that is not only not part of romany folklore at all, it also crosses uh it basically breaks purity laws when it comes to romany culture, because this girl is again completely naked, the lower part of her body is completely exposed and it's touching everything.

Madeline:

Um, no traditional Romani community would have that, because it's one of the most important cultural boundaries that you cannot cross. And again they are presented, they're speaking Romani, they're dressed, and another positive was that the costumes look accurate for what they would have been in the 19th century or kind of early 20th century. So they're very clearly a traditional community. A traditional community would abide by those cultural purity laws.

Jezmina:

Yeah, yeah, and I don't want to do that?

Madeline:

No, and it felt as if it was there, and obviously we are talking about the vampire story, which is there's always going to be that sense of the sexiness and the sensuality, and it's a titillating scene for the audience and so on and so forth. And if that had to be in there, I just think it needed to be not with, not associated with, the rhema. I thought that was not, not it yeah, I felt the same.

Jezmina:

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 of those moments where it was like if he had only had hired one advisor, like he would have known not to do that, and and for so many good reasons, especially because he paid so much attention to cultural authenticity, before you know it just it's felt so discordant exactly, precisely because it's setting this a whole and then it's a brief, that the rhema appear very briefly in this variety.

Madeline:

I think it's I don't know, I haven't timed it probably two minutes no more than that yeah, um, but precisely because so much care has gone into getting the dialect right, getting the costumes right, it presents a community that bears a sense of authenticity and then that just goes away in that scene with the naked virgin on the horse, because it's just counter to the culture, to the laws and purity.

Jezmina:

I actually met Robert Eggers, um, just by chance. I didn't actually even know who he was because he walked into the shop where I tell fortunes and we sell books and I had requested we carry yeah, I had requested that we carry um Hadina Sishashik's folklore, because it's one of the few folklore books Actually now I have to keep the same because I have to promote that but it's one of the few folklore books that I found that's actually written by a Romani person and she's a genius. I love her so much and I forget what it's called.

Jezmina:

I think it's something like Roma Paramija or something, but basically it's Bosnian Romani folklore and he came in specifically looking for local folklore and he asked about New Hampshire folklore, because that's where we are. And I gave him all these books and I was like try this. And also, if you love folklore, this is the book. It's really special. It's really hard to find anywhere Like it's. It's not there, aren't that? It's, there's not a big run of it, you should get this book. And he was like, oh, I'll pass. And I was like, okay, and now I'm just like dude, dude, because now I found out who he was after when he yeah, oh, you know the cashier saw his name and then we looked him up and we were like, oh my god, that was robert eggers. And I didn't know this film was in the works. And I'm just like dude, why would you pass on this like $15 book?

Madeline:

wow, that's yeah, and that would have come in handy, yeah.

Jezmina:

I, you know, just just saying, uh, yeah that's. That's an amazing anecdote but he was really lovely, like he was very, he was very polite, very kind, um, but uh, moving on, what would you like to see in the future of roma representation and literature and media, like? What are some guidelines or hopes or dreams?

Madeline:

um more romany involvement, to begin with. Um, so I would, in an ideal world, 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 more literature written by Romani people as well. Um, that, and gothic literature written by Romani people.

Madeline:

Um, the sense of engaging with the tropes of the gothic by reclaiming them and by writing authentic stories. Um, I think you know part of the problem is you're growing up, you're consuming this type of literature and you see yourself represented in such flattened ways and you just want something more. But then, beyond that, so many characters, main characters, are just non-ramer. There's this gap, there's this disconnect between your world and theirs. So I would like to see my world represented a bit more in authentic ways. Beyond that, um, just more.

Madeline:

As you said, you know, sensitivity, reading um people involved in. You know consultants, romany consultants, advising on how to represent romany people in, in film, in literature, so on and so forth, um romany actors cast in romany roles. Yeah, that's a big one and that's one I feel particularly strong about because there's so much you know growing up in Romania, for better or for worse, people know who you are, and sometimes it's very for worse. Yeah, um, but what struck me in the English-speaking world is just how little is known about the Roma, even yet, just the term gypsy it's.

Madeline:

People don't really know about its context, its history um so I think when we cast non-Romany actors, and how many roles there's just this reinforcement of confusion. I think so many these things are popular. People consume media so much. People watch films, people read books. There's so much in it. So people read these representations or watch these representations and they're wrong. They're gonna go away from engaging with that particular story, thinking that's how aroma are you know? So I think there's a responsibility, there's a cultural responsibility and there's a cultural wave of education, just opportunities for Romani people. There's so many talented Romani actors who are trying very hard to make it in the industry and who would be perfect to these roles.

Jezmina:

It's so true, I mean, and I think it's interesting how, um, the internet and social media helps us become more visible. It can also be, you know, a really challenging place, from infighting to racism coming from other 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 he's also training to be an actor and I'm like, oh, thank god, yeah, that's wonderful, oh brilliant, who I mentioned earlier that he's also training to be an actor and I'm like oh, thank God.

Jezmina:

Yeah, that's wonderful, oh, brilliant. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's just so great.

Madeline:

He would be brilliant and, yeah, I can see him in so many different Romney roles. I know I'm rooting for him.

Jezmina:

So, yeah, it just it feels like such a interesting time where Roma yeah, it just it feels like such an interesting time where Roma, because of our you know our use of technology and creating our own platforms, we are more visible. There's really no excuses anymore not to include us.

Madeline:

I agree, yeah, I absolutely agree. And there's been a lot of self-advocacy on social media. So yeah, absolutely. Social media.

Jezmina:

so yeah, absolutely so we're going to talk more about this in a future episode, but I was wondering if you would just tease your forthcoming book, the Roma, and also you know your other book as well Theological Monsters. Tell us a little bit about what those are about.

Madeline:

Let's see Theological Monsters. As I mentioned earlier, it's an academic book. It's, yeah, looking at 19th century gothic literature, irish gothic literature, and asking how the monsters are used to kind of tease out knowledge of the divine through this and you know kind of range of theological and spiritual traditions. Um, and the Roma is, it's hybrid in genre. So essentially, as the title suggests, it's a history and it's a history of the Romani people across time and space, so it's place-based. In that, um, I tell the story part of.

Madeline:

I think what the problem is when we talk about the Roma is this tendency to just lump everybody together. There are so many different vici, there are so many subgroups, each with their own folklore, each with their own history, each with their own challenges and traditions, and I think that's very important to acknowledge. So the Roma tries to do that. My book tries to do that. My book tries to do that by zooming in in particular on particular places, particular countries in Europe and also the United States, um, through which the Roma have traveled. So I start in the UK, where I live now, and then go back to my native Romania, and then there is a chapter on Bulgaria, one on Germany, one on the United States, among other places as well, and in each of these chapters I tell the history of the Roma in that particular place. So it spans these various geographical locations. It also spans various timelines.

Madeline:

Through these chapters there are elements of memoir. There are always my own experiences, growing up in Romania, living in the UK, travelling across these places. How am I perceived and how do I perceive them as a Romani woman? So there are accounts of racism that I've suffered. There are positive accounts encountering other Romani people across my travels as well. So there's that element of memoir. And then there's that little bit of an element of just kind of traveling, of moving um. Another thing that the book does is zoom in on particular individuals. So I I look at individual storytelling. In each chapter I've got about two stories of real Romani people who existed and just tell their lives and their contributions and stories of persecution and resilience in various places across various times. So I really wanted to bring out these actual individual Romney stories rather than just tell a broad history without that kind of human element.

Jezmina:

That feels so important, especially when telling the story of people who are so mythologized and, yes, you know, not really seen or even represented as human in so many ways and in racist ways but also in like supernatural ways, and so I love that you included your own story too and that Paulina and I felt like it was really important in our book um Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling to include a little bit of memoir as well, because it was personalizing and, yeah, it feels essential almost in this kind of writing absolutely.

Madeline:

It's humanizing and it's it's also. I think what I wanted to do is just to add my own story to this mosaic of other stories and voices and to show us as complex humans and in that sense of the our humanity and complexity so wonderful.

Jezmina:

I can't wait to read both of these when. When are they coming out? Um?

Madeline:

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 sure yet because I'm still um finalizing some edits on the manuscript awesome.

Jezmina:

It's so much work, too, to write a book. I love that you have two coming out like more or less in the same year. It's like so, so impressive. Um, so we have our last couple questions coming up. Our favorite one to ask really I think this is our favorite is who is your Romani crush? It's basically just a Romani person you admire, although sometimes we do have people tell us their real crushes, which is really fun, but you don't have for how many people I admire.

Madeline:

There's so many, yeah, um. So one of the favorite characters, I mean one of the favorite historical people that I write about in the book, is katarina taikon, who was a shiromani activist whose work is absolutely inspirational. Just, she was so brilliant in every single way. Yes, she was, um, so yeah, she's, she's, she's a huge inspiration for me, I think. So I picked Katerina, but there's just so, so many who are so brilliant and yeah, you know, there are children's books by her too.

Jezmina:

Like I, actually, I would like to read more of her work because she's incredible.

Madeline:

Yeah, so brilliant.

Jezmina:

And what is coming up on the horizon for you. We talked about your books, but if there's anything else you want to share, and also, where can people follow your work and support you?

Madeline:

What's coming up. So I'm starting a new research project about blood in the 19th century, a kind of intersection between sense of medical realism and spirituality. Apart from that, I'm continuing to teach, um, yeah and yeah, you can follow me on x or twitter at Madeline underscore CCT, on Blue Sky, madeline Potter On Instagram, on Madeline underscore CCT again, and I've got a website which is Madeline hyphen Potter dot com, so you can find me there as well and get in touch with me if you want to, and I'm always happy to hear from people.

Jezmina:

Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for talking with us. It was so fun to get into a little pop culture with you and literature and we're looking forward to talking to you again about your books.

Madeline:

Me too, and thank you so much again for the invitation oh my gosh. And thank you to Paulina too.

Jezmina:

Yes, she was so sad she couldn't be here, but we'll have you back on and it'll be great and you can meet her. And don't worry, listeners, Paulina is not going to be continually absent. Sometimes life happens and both of us work full time and do this out of our own pockets and our passion, so we can't always do everything together, which is, you know, we're doing our best, um, but thank you for being here and, uh, have a great day. Thank, you.

Madeline:

You too, have a great day. I think it's probably morning there 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 to Romanistan Podcast.

Jezmina:

You can find us on Instagram, tiktok and Facebook at Romanasan Podcast and on Twitter at RomanistanPod, to support us, join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our Ko-Fi fundraiser, ko-ficom backslash Romanistan, and please rate, review and subscribe. It helps people find our show. It helps us so much.

Paulina:

You can follow Jez on Instagram at jasminavantila and paulina at romani holistic. You can get our book secrets of romani fortune telling online or wherever books are sold. Visit romanistanpodcastcom for events, educational resources and more. Email us at romanistanpodcast at gmailcom for inquiries.

Jezmina:

Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Vontila and Paulina Stevens, conceived of by Paulina Stevens, edited by Victor Pachas, with music by Victor Pachas and artwork by Elijah Vardo.