![]() Meanwhile, the Gypsies were being portrayed as flirtatious females, petty thieves, kidnappers of white babies, fortunetellers and pickpockets as portrayed in Caravaggio’s famous painting, “The Fortune Teller,” where the pretty Gypsy girl reading a young man’s palm slyly removes his ring. ![]() It is the slavery issue that begins the African American-Roma association and molds many of the cultural similarities that follow. It starts with the propaganda around the plantation labeling the slaves as “soulless” “talking animals,” helping to justify the lucrative trade against an increasing religious and political conscience declaring “all men are created equal.” These derogatory images went viral, creeping into popular literature, stereotyping the African American as a buffoon or the feared “black brute.” The Gypsy slaves – like the African slaves a few years later – were sold on the block to the highest bidder. He brought back nearly 12,000 Gypsy slaves from campaigns in Bulgaria during his reign in the 15th century. But even Dracula, called the Impaler, who usually chose staking his prisoners, preferred Gypsies with their heads on. ![]() In the East European country of Romania, land of iron-fisted ruler Prince Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula, the “undesirable” Gypsies were being systematically rounded up and enslaved. Gypsy history is a series of expulsions, beginning with an exodus out of India, across Persia, into the Balkans ‘til they were swept to the edge of the European continent, over gangplanks, onto ships sending them to the Americas. ((“The Roots of Anti Gypsyism: to the Holocaust and After,” Center of Romani Archives and Documentation, 1997)) Serbia, tsingani in Greece, tsigani in Bulgaria, tsyganski in Russia and cygan in Poland.)), the East-European equivalent of Gypsy, “which was a synonym for ‘slave’ during the five and a half centuries of Gypsy slavery in that country (Romania), is as offensive for Romas as the word ‘nigger’ is for African Americans,” writes Roma scholar Ian Hancock. Tsigan ((East European terms for Gypsy – all following the tsigan root – include tsigan in Romania, cigany in Hungary, cigani in ((Alan Parker,ĭirector, “The Commitments,” 1991)) But the real “niggers” of Europe aren’t the Irish that mark belongs to the detested Gypsies. I’m Black an’ I’m proud,” echoes a memorable quote of ‘90s cinema. For all his evil, the ruthless vampire has fascinated generations of readers, eventually becoming an acclaimed (anti)hero of contemporary pop culture.“The Irish are the niggers of Europe … Say it loud. Its mystique is as powerful as the psychologism of the characters is deep. ![]() Narrated in the form of an epistolary, Bram Stoker’s novel captivates the reader from the first pages. The novel received acclaim from the public and critics, but also from famous writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde, who called it “the best-written horror work of all time.” His fertile imagination took care of the rest. To establish the appearance of Count Dracula, he was inspired by the physical appearance of the British actor Henry Irving and the Austro-Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt. To write his novel, he drew on the knowledge of Arminius Vámbéry, a Hungarian orientalist scholar, and other literary and historical works that allowed him to recreate nature, folklore, and the customs of the inhabitants of the Carpathian Mountains. Suffering from poor health since childhood, Bram Stoker never traveled to Romania.
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