Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between popular culture and discourses of securitization by examining the trend of ‘the Gypsy’ in reality television. Notions such as ‘suspect communities’, people as ‘existential threats’ and the need for ‘exceptional measures’ are all concepts used in securitization studies and are also circulated in popular television shows that include Roma minorities. The conflation of ‘security threat’ with the ‘entertaining’ Gypsy characters in such shows highlights the particular mode of securitization used in current popular culture output. This chapter shows how the logic of security can be used to ‘sell’ popular representations of the Roma, revealing the system of beliefs about ‘the Gypsy’ as an entertaining enemy perpetuated by this political economy at a time of securitization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For example, Roma singer Vlastimil Horvath won the 2005 season of SuperStar in the Czech Republic, in the same year as Caramel, aka Ferenc Molnár, won Megasztár in Hungary. Shane Ward and Cher Lloyd, contestants of the UK’s X-Factor (2005 and 2010) revealed, respectively, Irish Traveller and Welsh Romany roots. The Eurovision song contests of recent years have also provided a ‘European playing field’ for the performance of ‘non-normative ethnic and sexual identities’ (Imre 2009: 125), with Hungary’s Roma singer Ibolya Oláh performing in the 2005 contest (one of her popular songs starts ‘I can hear my father’s voice. You may not like this, but this is my country’); Bulgaria entered singer ‘Azis’, a gay Roma ‘superstar’ drag queen in 2006; ‘Gipsy.cz’, a Roma rap group from the Czech Republic performed in 2009.
- 2.
For example, see: reports from Traveller Education Support Services staff in the report ‘Bigger Fatter Gypsier’ by Brian Foster (available at: http://acert.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Report_of_Brian_Foster_7.6.pdf [accessed 21 November 2016]; Harper v Housing 21, in which the Employment Tribunal upheld all of Irish Traveller Ms Harper’s claims of racediscrimination and harassment when her employer likened her to a character from Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (details available at http://www.redmans.co.uk/blog/employment-law-posts/harper-v-housing-21-banter-about-protected-characteristics-will-normally-constitute-discrimination [accessed 21 November 2016]; the open letter written to Channel 4 by Pip Borev ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding Ruined My Life’ (18 February 2012, available on his blog, http://pipopotamus.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/open-letter-to-chanel-4.html (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 3.
See Channel 4’s ‘Features and Factual Entertainment’ section of their website, available at http://www.channel4.com/info/commissioning/4producers/features (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 4.
Available at: http://www.channel4.com/info/commissioning/4producers/factualentertainment (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 5.
The fact that so many men have their faces blurred does also suggest that consent was not straightforward. As film scholar Bill Nichols (2001: 9) said ‘Ethics becomes a measure of the ways in which negotiations about the nature of the relationship between filmmakers and subject has consequences for subjects and viewers alike’. Anecdotally, reports on the way consent was garnered by the production company, Firecracker films, suggest that younger Traveller women and men were targeted, as they would give their consent more easily. See the report in the Travellers’ Times, ‘Big fat film crew descends on Traveller Christmas party,’ published 4 January 2014, available at: http://travellerstimes.org.uk/News/Big-fat-film-crew-descends-on-Traveller-Party.aspx (accessed 20 May 2016).
- 6.
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2012/aug/24/jay-hunt-channel-4-audiences-video (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 7.
Available at: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/keeping-up-with-the-khans/episode-guide (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 8.
These figures were reported as estimates from the local council in The Guardian newspaper, 15 November 2013, available at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/15/sheffield-page-hall-roma-slovakia-immigration (accessed 21 November 2016) and also in The Observer, which gave the higher figure of 3000, available at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/17/roma-page-hall-sheffield (accessed 21 November 2016). There are no reliable figures of Roma minorities in the UK. In October 2013, Migration Yorkshire in partnership with the University of Salford estimated that about 200,000 Roma were living in Britain, see their report available at: http://www.salford.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/363118/Migrant_Roma_in_the_UK_final_report_October_2013.pdf (accessed 21 November 2016). This caused a huge controversy in the media and academic circles. The media used the figures to comment on problems on integration and the increasing numbers of EU migrants, while academics defended and refuted the figures (see Brown et al. 2014; Matras et al. 2015).
- 9.
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/15/sheffield-page-hall-roma-slovakia-immigration (accessed 21 November 2016).
- 10.
11. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24949349 (accessed 21 November 2016).
References
Allen, K., I. Tyler, and S. De Benedicts. 2014. Thinking with “White Dee”: The Gender Politics of “Austerity Porn”. Sociological Research Online 19 (3): 1–7.
Andrejevic, M. 2004. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
ASA Report. 2012. ASA Adjudication on Channel Four Television Corporation. October 3. Available at: http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/10/Channel-Four-Television-Corporation/SHP_ADJ_197451.aspx. Accessed 12 Jan 2013.
Balzacq, T., ed. 2011. Securitisation Theory. London: Routledge.
Bauman, Z. 2004. Wasted Lives. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Berg, O., and H. Schwenken. 2010. Masking, Blurring, Replacing. In Images of Illegalized Immigration, ed. C. Bischoff, F. Falk, and S. Kafehsy, 111–127. Bielefeld: transcript.
Bigo, D. 2002. Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27 (1): 63–92.
———. 2014. The (In) Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control. Security Dialogue 45 (3): 209–225.
Blanchet, E. 2016. Bigger, Fatter, Staged and Manipulated. The Travellers’ Times, April 22. Available at: http://travellerstimes.org.uk/Blogs--Features/Bigger-fatter-staged-and-manipulated.aspx. Accessed 21 Nov 2016.
Brown, K. 2008. The Promise and Perils of Women’s Participation in UK Mosques. British Journal of Politics & International Relations 10 (3): 472–491.
Brown, P., P. Martin, and L. Scullion. 2014. Migrant Roma in the United Kingdom and the Need to Estimate Population Size. People, Place and Policy 8 (1): 19–33.
Collier, H. 2014. Channel 4’s Benefits Street Claims 4.3 Million Viewers. January 6. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/07/tvratings-channel4. Accessed 21 Nov 2016.
Corner, J. 2002. Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions. Television & New Media 3 (3): 255–269.
Cudworth, E. 2013. Armed Conflict, Insecurity and Gender: The Resilience of Patriarchy? Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses 1 (1): 69–75.
Deans, J. 2011. Big Fat Gypsy Weddings Invites 5.6m Viewers. The Guardian, January 20. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/20/ratings-big-fat-gypsy-weddings Accessed 21 Nov 2016.
DeVolld, T. 2016. Reality TV. An Insider’s Guide to TV’s Hottest Market. Studio City, CA: Michael Wises Productions.
Hall, S. 1992. The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In (2006) The Indigenous Experience, ed. R. Maaka and C. Andersen, 165–173. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Hill, A. 2008. Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. London: Routledge.
Huysmans, J. 2014. Security Unbound. London: Routledge.
Huysmans, J., and A. Buonofino. 2008. Politics of Exception and Unease. Political Studies 56 (4): 766–788.
Imre, A. 2009. Identity Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Imre, A., and A. Tremlett. 2011. Reality TV Without Class: The Post-Socialist Anti-celebrity Docusoap. In Reality Television and Class, ed. H. Wood and B. Skeggs, 88–103. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jensen, T. 2014. Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy. Sociological Research Online 19 (3), 3. Available at: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/3.html. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Jensen, T., and J. Ringrose. 2014. Sluts that Choose vs Doormat Gypsies. Exploring Affect in the Postfeminist, Visual Moral Economy of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Feminist Media Studies 14 (3): 369–387.
Jones, O. 2011. Chavs. The Demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso.
Malmvig, H. 2005. Security Through Intercultural Dialogue? Mediterranean Politics 10 (3): 349–364.
Matras, Y., D.V. Leggio, and M. Steel. 2015. “Roma Education” as a Lucrative Niche. ZEP: Zeitschrift für Internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik 38 (1): 11–17.
McGarry, A. 2017. Romaphobia. London: Zed Books.
Messing, V., and G. Bernáth. 2017. Disempowered by the Media: Causes and Consequences of the Lack of Media Voice of Roma Communities. Identities 24 (6): 650–667.
Neocleous, M. 2007. Security, Commodity, Fetishism. Critique 35 (3): 339–355.
Nichols, B. 1991. Representing Reality. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
———. 2001. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Pasqualino, C. 2008. The Gypsies, Poor But Happy. A Cinematic Myth. Third Text 22 (3): 337–345.
Said, E. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Simeziane, S. 2010. Roma Rap and the Black Train: Minority Voices in Hungarian Hip Hop. In Languages of Global Hip Hop, ed. M. Terkourafi, 96–119. London: Continuum.
Skeggs, B., and H. Wood. 2008. The Labour of Transformation and Circuits of Value ‘Around’ Reality Television. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22 (4): 559–572.
Skeggs, B., N. Thumin, and H. Wood. 2008. “Oh Goodness, I Am Watching Reality TV” How Methods Make Class in Audience Research. European Journal of Cultural Studies 11 (1): 5–24.
Street, B. 1993. Culture Is a Verb. In Language and Culture, ed. D. Graddol, L. Thompson, and M. Byram, 23–43. Clevedon: British Association of Applied Linguistics.
The Independent. 2012. Channel 4 Apologises Over Big Fat Gypsy Weddings Photo Requests. October 16. Available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/channel-4-apologises-over-big-fat-gypsy-weddings-photo-requests-8213687.html. Accessed 21 Nov 2016.
Timmer, A. 2010. Constructing the “Needy Subject”: NGO Discourses of Roma Need. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33 (2): 264–281.
Tremlett, A. 2009. Bringing Hybridity to Heterogeneity: Roma and the Question of “Difference”. Romani Studies 19 (2): 147–168.
———. 2013. “Here are the Gypsies!” The Importance of Self-Representations & How to Question Prominent Images of Roma Minorities. Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (11): 1706–1725.
———. 2014. Demotic or Demonic? Race, Class and Gender in “Gypsy” Reality TV. The Sociological Review 62 (2): 316–334.
———. 2017. Visualising Everyday Ethnicity: Moving Beyond Stereotypes of Roma Minorities. Identities 24 (6): 720–740.
Turner, G. 2006. The Mass Production of Celebrity. “Celetoids”, Reality TV and the “Demotic Turn”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (2): 153–165.
Tyler, I. 2013. Revolting Subjects. London: Zed Books.
Tyler, I., and B. Bennett. 2010. Celebrity chav: Fame, Femininity and Social Class. European Journal of Cultural Studies 13 (3): 375–393.
van Baar, H. 2011. Europe’s Romaphobia: Problematization, Securitization, Nomadization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2): 203–212.
———. 2014. The Emergence of a Reasonable Anti-Gypsyism in Europe. In When Stereotype Meets Prejudice. Antiziganism in European Societies, ed. T. Agarin, 27–44. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag.
Wood, H., and B. Skeggs, eds. 2011. Reality Television and Class. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
I am grateful to the editors of this volume for their useful comments on this chapter. Many thanks to organizer Huub van Baar for the invitation to the University of Giessen, and to all the attendees for the days of lively discussions.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tremlett, A. (2019). The Entertaining Enemy: ‘Gypsy’ in Popular Culture in an Age of Securitization. In: van Baar, H., Ivasiuc, A., Kreide, R. (eds) The Securitization of the Roma in Europe. Human Rights Interventions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77035-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77035-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77034-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77035-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)