My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding

[kelsa]

Has anyone else watched this? I caught an episode earlier and I'm intrigued and confused, and finding non biased and judgmental information on the Romni (I think that's what they prefer to be called?) is hard! Does any one have any resources/advice/experience or seen the show?

I grew up with horror stories about Irish Travellers and actually had a friend stabbed by one, and its interesting to see them talked about together and I imagine a lot of the prejudice is similar.

[rowan]

I think it's Romani, but I could be wrong. I haven't watched the show. The only experience I have personally is that when I was abroad there was a lot of negative stereotyping, e.g. watch out in subways etc. But I never had any encounters that were weird or anything. Begging sometimes, but then there were other people doing that too.

[lillerina]

Romany (or Rom/Roma) are not the same as Irish Travellers, are not the same as British Travellers, are not the same as Gypsies (who have roots in Egypt). I've seen My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and it's a troubling account, rife with fetishisation, exoticising and incredibly judgemental editing. It reflects a very small subset of a largely Irish Traveller population and paints all travellers with the same brush. Here's an open letter written by a Romany boy about the problems with it; here's an article written by an Irish Traveller woman about the backlash it's caused in the UK.

[Butterfly North]

There's a big problem about information both on the history of travellers and just general ignorance amongst the population about them. I'm assuming from the title that they've made an american version of the show, which doesn't surprise me because here it's phenomenally popular. But yeah, as lilly said, incredibly problematic. I would object to watching it if someone tried to switch it on in front of me purely because it seems to be edited for the purpose of inflaming prejudice. Not sure about the US version.

They're a hugely marginalised group. Fairly recently the french government decided to play some politics about vilifying travellers, and I can remember the Italians having done that too. It's worth noting that while some romany will refer to themselves as gypsies, others find the term offensive. Others use the word to refer to all people who have travelling as a part of their lifestyle. There's also a big problem determining the origin of the word. Very few people who are called gypsies (by others or themselves) have their roots in egypt, but at a particular time that was the mistaken belief of most Europeans (who wouldn't go and ask a traveller because there was such a stigma attached to associating with them).

[edit the sad parts]

Not sure about the US version.

The U.S version is exactly the same.

[kelsa]

I would object to watching it if someone tried to switch it on in front of me purely because it seems to be edited for the purpose of inflaming prejudice. Not sure about the US version.

Its the same in the US version, and even more problematic because the populations are so disparate and so many Americans won't have any real interactions with any gypsies/roma and take all their beliefs and observations from this tv show...and then its sort of hard to find clear information so if you're even inspired to google you come up a bit confused. I remember a LJ from a Roma woman but unfortunately can't find it again.



Thanks Lilly, those are exactly what I was looking for.

[A.K.A. Z]

Well, my mom's half-Romani, and she said the show's pretty insulting. She also said that the people depicted on it are what her grandmother used to refer to as "Slav pick-pockets." I don't really have much appreciation for my heritage, honestly (my dad's Welsh and Irish; personally don't give a shit, I'm American), so I just take her word for it that it's fairly insulting, and she grew up in the North where there was more emphasis on ethnicity/nationality of immigrants. Here in the south, the rare occasions I've mentioned I'm part-gypsy, I have heard, "Wait, that's, like, a people?" before.
Also, just on a weird personal note, but when my mom tans she just plain does not look white, some of her family including her mom in old photographics don't really look white, and the people I saw on the one episode I bothered glancing at looked, well... white.

I thought "gypsies" was simply a racial slur (and a misnomer) attributed to the Romani because the Europeans during the Renaissance (Middle Ages?) couldn't tell them apart from Egyptians and other Middle Eastern peoples, and the Romani came from areas further east than most immigrants or nomads of the time.
The Rom had no written language. They kept an oral tradition, with lots of loan-words, portmanteaus and some huge differences between groups and geographic locations.
This is basically just stuff my mom reminisced about, and cross-checking Wikipedia it looks about right, but I don't know how really accurate it is.