thelaststrega

[thelaststrega]

The Vampire Academy Series: By Richelle Mead

A fascinating example of Romanian lore at work, and one of the only vampire-based legends I have found that details mortal vampires as well as immortal. These books are centered around St. Vladamir’s Academy, which is an elite boarding school for moroi, a race of mortal vampires and dhamphir, half vampires that originate in Romania. Moroi is a word I haven’t heard in any context aside from these books, another race in these books, the dhamphir, though, is very common in vampire lore. The dhamphir is a half vampire, and what is extremely interesting about these books is that they explain in explicit detail the genetic workings of vampire lineage. The dhamphir comes from the union of a moroi and a human or a moroi and another dhamphir. Interestingly enough dhamphirs cannot produce offspring together, they are infertile in the same way the mules are, the horse and the donkey can mate, but two mules cannot make another mule. Dhamphirs are physically strong and hardy, they are designated to be the bodyguards in this world. They do not drink blood, but they can be fed from by vampires, making reference to the ‘blood whores’. There is a large subpoint in the text that the main character has a fear of becoming a ‘blood whore’ (a dhamphir who has sex with moroi men and allows them to feed off of them for money) so she throws even more of her abilities into her physical training as a guardian (body guard) she feels that she must prover herself all the more because people who allow moroi to feed them are no different than drug addicts, because in this world, the vampire bite is full of euphoria inducing hormones. So, classically, we have a ‘junkie whores’ who ‘take the easy way’ and then we have female guardians who sacrifice any hope of a domestic life for servitude, and to probably die protecting their moroi. By virtue of their birth they will serve with their bodies. The moroi, the mortal vampires, appear as typical vampires do with their pale skin, slender builds, and in this case, also a tall frame. Most importantly, they also drink blood to sustain their life, as is essential to make a vampire. A unique quality they possess is also their ability to wield magics: earth, air, fire, and water, and later on spirit. What I found so fascinating about these books is the way they presented the information, it is essentially a blend of Romanian vampire lore and some new(ish) age metaphysical magic. These books do not have a werewolf legend, instead they have the strigoi, who are the immortal vampires, they are undead and cannot access the same magic the moroi can. They are the primal, animal side of these vampires, acting only for themselves and hunting for the thrill of it. They are the werewolves in this story, they a nomadic, disgraced, and hunted. These books exemplify our romance with the supernatural and folklore, and the way that the original needs that this lore satisfied have evolved into the hunger we have today for all matters of the supernatural, that insatiable curiosity that will not allow us to let go of the idea that there might be something out there. These vampires are high society, and more often than not, in popular culture vampires are seen as rich and influential, alluring and with an otherworldly beauty. This contrasts sharply to the usual image of the werewolf in pop culture, who is almost always a ‘redneck’ of some sort, uncivilized and beastly, to further drive home the point that the werewolf symbolizes the beast inside us, our primal natures. The vampire versus the werewolf is the rich versus the poor, Vlad “The Impaler” versus the Romani people. The symbolic other who must always be feared and regarded with suspicion. These books may not include the werewolf element of pop culture, but they certainly shed some light on our obsession with power. The vampire represents everything many people desire, to live upon the life of others, rich, steeped in pleasure, beautiful, and most of all immortal, deathless.

[thelaststrega]

I had a visit with my librarian a few weeks ago, and now looking back on it, I am reminded why I originally wanted to be a librarian as a child. The environment that a library provides is ideal for research and study, and like Lemony Snicket told me in A Series of Unfortunate Events, as long as you have a library, you have access to knowledge, and we are constantly forgetting how valuable that is. Things have changed a lot now that we all have access to trillions of bits of data in the form of our smart phones than can fit in our pocket, instead of an entire building dedicated to it. But we undervalue libraries, and the environment is just as important as the information itself sometimes. When I spoke with Mr. Robert Flatley at our Rohrbach library, we discussed the various research methods at our disposal as students of Kutztown University. I love to research casually, but the problem with that is citation isn’t really a casual practice, its precise and also a legal matter of plagiarism. However, in a University, you have even more available to you in not just books, but also in the form of databases full of peer reviewed scholarly articles and primary sources. With my topic being Romanian Folklore in Popular Culture, I decided to begin by finding a print book of general Romanian Folklore, which was indescribably difficult. I requested a book through interlibrary loan only to have it denied, (insert me gasping here). Either the book was too far away, or the library system in America is out on a conspiracy to prevent me from blogging about this topic. My efforts eventually turned up an eBook on Gypsies in general, and much to my surprise, the reason folklore is so scant, is because the majority of gypsises are a nomadic people, and most of the myths about them are derived from racial stereotypes, not their own stories. So perhaps a more accurate re-branding here would be Gypsy Stereotypes in Popular Culture. 

I found an article titled “Serbian Gypsy witch Narratives: 'Wherever Gypsies Go, There the Witches Are, We Know!'.” and the abstract sounds fascinating but I can’t seem to access the full text of this article either. So far the gist of it appears that Gypsies have an unusually high mortality rate in infants, and the common explanation for this is “the deadly doings of witches” which is very interesting to me being that I have a particular interest in witchcraft and all the folklore that surrounds it. The Gypsy and the Witch are sisters in superstition, they are both often depicted as practitioners of magic and seductive females. So it is interesting that there is a separated association that gypsies have with witches being malevolent and not counting themselves amongst them. What really seems to be the central theme here is that superstitious belief is chiefly regarded as fact here, which can be incredibly damaging in matters of life and death. These gypsies are in Serbia, where the standard of living is not exactly stellar. They live in abject poverty where children die more often due to a lack of proper resources, we always need someone to blame when tragedy occurs and because of the racism against the Romani people, they have remained on the fringes of society and have beliefs that rival those of Salem in 1692.

[thelaststrega]

(Jews and Romani, side by side)

The Romani Holocaust

One of the first things to be asserted in this documentary is how the narrator cannot believe that today we are still murdering people based on their skin color, religion, and sexual orientation. This is not a new story; this is a reboot of an exhaustive narrative for eugenicists to scapegoat marginalized peoples. I feel my anger rising as I watch this documentary because it is difficult to not see the parallels between what is being described here and what is currently taking place in America. 

The purpose of this documentary is to dispel the gypsy stereotype, and it is said several times in several different ways that gypsy is considered to be synonymous with a liar, a thief, or a con. The word gypsy itself does not have a negative connotation, it is not the same as the N word in America, it only means to be derived from Egypt, where the gypsy people were believed to have come from, the Romani, on the other hand only means ‘dom’ which means man, so it really only seems to refer to ‘the people’. To begin, the documentary outlines the myth of the gypsy (woman) who is a either a seductress/dancer/musician or an out and out thief, these images have all largely been derived from Hollywood depictions of gypsies who almost never share in the ‘less desirable’ qualities, such as their dark skin, the main point of contention for what makes them outsiders to the rest of Europe, ala white washing. 

The documentary goes on to note that for people of color (anyone dark skinned, including the Romani), the only way to transcend this life sentence of poverty is to ‘make it’ in the entertainment or sports industry, only when they are ‘dancing’ for the white people’s amusement do they earn a position among them, and even then, it pales in comparison, they still remain outsiders.

The Romani people are angry, but they are also tired, everyone in this documentary appears so worn down and exhausted of humanity’s ever diligent efforts to exterminate one another. The holocaust we think of when imagining the genocide of a peoples is the Jewish holocaust carried out by the Germans, but the Romani people were also in those same deportation wagons. They aided each other and a man even recalls attempting to smuggle bread to some Jewish prisoners he was being transported with. Showing some of the kindness that is possible for truly good people in a time where morals are in sort supply. Many of the people interviewed in this documentary are elder survivors of the holocaust and their children who grew up still being discriminated against all throughout Europe. A survey was conducted, and one in five people, that’s 20% of Romani people admitted to having been the victim of a racially motivated assault. Now we obviously can’t expect surveys to have whole accuracy, but that is still a staggering amount, and not unheard of by minorities. One woman interviewed even went as far as having her identity concealed, as not to potentially shame her children or grandchildren with making an appearance. That in itself says a lot about what it means to be Romani, even today. 

I am reminded of the casual racism I see every day, where white classmates cannot understand why their classmates of color struggle. They do not understand the simple cause and effect of the damage that racism can have on a people. If you began in this country as one who is not even considered to be a human being, how hard would you have to work to get where you are now? If you begin as a slave, you are devalued as less than human, it is difficult to find work because why should anyone pay a slave? Generations of this hardship yields to the vicious cycle destitution through no fault of their own, but today we still blame a people’s culture and practices on their lack of work ethic or morals. The Romani did not want to wander, they were forbidden from owning land in some places throughout Europe. They had difficulty finding employment and because of this they learned crafts and became entertainers because these are easily travelled skills. Every adaptation was for survival, and they were still condemned for it.

[thelaststrega]

In popular culture, the supernatural is having quite the decade in film and television. Hemlock Grove, which came out when I was graduated high school in 2013, is a Netflix Original Series centered around a town in my home Pennsylvania, called Hemlock Grove. This is not a typical vampire/werewolf story, and the folklore that frames the show is significantly more researched than many other adaptations of the same kind. Peter is a werewolf, and Roman is an upir, or a vampire. A string of murders is afflicting the town and Peter is the main suspect, because he is an outsider.

The origins begin in Romania, where the main character, Peter, and his mother call their ancestral home. They are ‘gypsies’ and as a result, they are the victims of profound levels of racism from the townspeople. However, though the story is equal parts gruesome and compelling, a significant step was not made to seal the deal of this show for me: the Romanian natives are just as pale as any other European and it does nothing to show the true reasons for the gypsy stereotype. Gypsies have darker skin, more similar to latinx peoples. And I feel it is an excellent example of how subtle people’s unconscious bias is. The story focuses more on the horror aspect than the ‘outsider’ stereotype, but I feel that it is a bit of a missed opportunity. Though, they did include a scene where Peter talks about his grandfather (great uncle?) where he recalls being wounded as a child by a woman who was compelled by an upir (a vampire) who also happened to be clad in a Nazi soldiers uniform. This is indicative of the Holocaust, where the Romany people were herded into deportation wagons and slaughtered, right alongside the Jews, a lesser known fact about WWII. 

The two main characters, Peter and Roman, become close friends, much to the disgust of Roman’s mother, who displays constant revulsion for gypsies and misses no chance to degrade Peter or his mother. It is only later we find that she was robbed and abandoned, pregnant, by a gypsy boy when she was a girl. We see a notable shift here in her opinion as she recalls the story, when she gives birth to the child she insists that the child work as a slave, because the blood of a slave begets a slave. A pretty fine example of how one bad experience with a people who are already victims of prejudice can go a long way towards displaced hatred. The gypsies are wanderers here too, and Peter’s mother is seen stealing at a general store and is also essentially a drug dealer to Roman’s mother, yet again showing the hypocrisy of how socioeconomic status/race is the only real barrier between being a criminal and an asset to society. Roman is a cocaine addict with a stereotypical rich boy persona that only adds to this.

Even with the supernatural elements dominating this story, we are still shown a fair example of the gypsy prejudice, eventually Peter’s house is vandalized with Molotov cocktails and racial slurs as they demand the killer is brought to justice, and even when the killer is caught, and we discover it was a young girl native to the town, they still choose the easiest target. 

[thelaststrega]

Introductions

(Source)

With the beautiful scenery in Romania, it is not difficult to imagine as a setting for our childhood fairy tales. The people of Romania, the Romany, Roma, or as most know them, the gypsies. Encyclopedia Britannica says they are “an ethnic group of traditionally itinerant people who originated in northern India but live in modern times worldwide, principally in Europe.” They are infamously regarded in folklore as superstitious wanderers.

A popular depiction of the Romany is shown in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In this film, the Catholic church seeks to exterminate the gypsy underground, where the Romani have refuge underneath the city. The church employs the stereotypes of the Romany being untrustworthy and thieving to turn the public opinion, as well as means to justify robbing them of their earnings. Not the most popular of Disney’s stories, but it is worth a mention. Another common theme is the gypsy curse. With the Romany holding superstition as a chief tenant of their beliefs, thinking negatively about someone can be just as bad as doing the harm by your own hand. It is easy to spread negative intention, so when a Romany curses you, it means a great deal to them, even if it is just superstition to you. (?) These beliefs held close to heart develop to satisfy some need or to quell some common fear. We all hope for the same things: health, good fortune, happiness, but we ask for them in a different way. Where the Romany believe that wearing their wealth and displaying it loudly is a way of pulling in good fortune, and not at all impolite, this the church sees as a mockery to royalty, who are the only ones who should wear jewel-encrusted crowns and robes spun from gold. The clashing of customs creates tall tales and myths, and as these intermingle and pass on from nation to nation, the tales evolve to suit the needs of whoever tells it. The common themes of royalty, monsters, and bargains can be seen here, but the roles played in the story can change dramatically, whether to sanitize the tale for child consumption or because it better suited the purpose at the time.  Perhaps most famously, the legend of Vlad the Impaler is native to Transylvania, as are many other tales of inhuman creatures that stalk the night. Even the name ‘Transylvania’ means across or through the forest, a great forest that is expansive enough to house all kinds of things that we would rather not ever see in the light of day. Why are we so afraid of the forest? We have destroyed a lot of the wilderness in this world, but much of the forests in Romania have gone untouched and may still potentially hold secrets that we have yet to discover. In the same sense that we fear the depths of the ocean and the dark of a starless night, the forest still holds that intrigue.