I make good life decisions.

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story

See my post I’ve shared where I’ve mentioned you and some other users:

[Seeking] Advice on reworking The Hunchback of Notre Dame for its 30th anniversary

From your post linked above: Some of it was influenced by the Romani YouTuber Florian, who goes in depth about Romani culture. Since he kind of gives some points, I agree with. Which I can greatly sympathize for all of you, even if I’m not Roma. This is also to help commemorate a flawed but underrated Disney movie that’s turning 30 as of this year. Since I want to know what parts of the story need changing, at least the Romani parts that need improving.

Since I’m wanting to find some advice on how to rework parts of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Specifically the Romani parts that I do agree is a bit misguided and ignorant at best, while very dubious at worst in representation. So if you were to rework the story(Even when you keep the basic outline of the story of either the novel or the film adaptations, mostly Disney), what would you change or alter to make it more accurate to the Romani people? As well as what do you think of the 4 notes of some of the story ideas I’ve came up with after looking at some of Florian’s YouTube videos?

Hi @ke96​

As the WWC mod team knows well - HoND is a special interest of mine, so although I am not Roma and will not be speaking to that, I got this. 

Also, I invite and defer to any Roma readers’ feedback and insights in the comments. 

SHORT ANSWER:

If you’re celebrating the anniversary, just write the version you want. You have to choose which version you’d like, that’s not our job here – we don’t tell you how or what to write. As you describe the role and jobs, or appearances and actions of the Romani cast, feel free to adjust as needed to whatever you feel is more appropriate. Just write it. You can’t fix what doesn’t exist. How do you know if it works or not, if you don’t do it? Just go do it. Everything else is getting ahead of yourself. 

LONG ANSWER / An Open Letter to Writers on Media Literacy and Introspection:

Your goal as stated is “course correcting” and better “educating” audiences on Roma in HoND. Those goals imply the authority to both know and educate, but self admittedly, you’re having trouble meeting the bare minimum for that standard. 

Your question about “reworking” or “fixing” HoND for better Roma representation is a question of media literacy. First off, why you? Specifically, why you? I don’t think the savior trope is intentional, and I know you’re self aware of it, so I won’t address it other than to say it’s there in the margins. 

As Florian has said himself, HoND has the most widely known Roma heroine, and yet its many iterations were and are written by white western men who use Roma as props. Yes, Roma are expanded in media representation and yet their representation is simultaneously often regressive and harmful in how they are portrayed. This fact is not new to Roma audiences. On writing this – surely Roma readers could do it themselves, and yet have chosen not to. Might there be a reason for that? I think so.

For the same reason I’m not holding my breath for a Thai writer to rewrite The King and I, or a Desi author to rewrite the Jungle Book, or an Arab poet to reimagine Aladdin, etc. I don’t believe that BIPOC writers spend our creative labor, energy or imagination trying to live in the stories that fetishize us. In that same vein, while I would totally be down for a Roma writer to reimagine the story – I also recognize that, believe it or not, the story might not be worthy of their time.  

As Mod Rina and former Mod Marika went over in regards to writing cultures not your own: “If you aren’t ready to engage with a culture and its people directly, then I think you should wait until you are.” - Marika

Now, I know you’ve tried. You’ve tried many ways – but your efforts so far just don’t stick the landing, given your goals, although it isn’t for lack of trying. Wanting to set the record straight and speaking from a position of authority are not the same thing. Because feeling strongly about something, and also having the knowledge and skillset to enact change around that are… again, different. 

So, I think your enthusiasm is fantastic but also possibly obscuring the bigger picture, which is that there is a bigger picture. It’s a hard sell for anyone to come in and say they want to re-write a story that’s progressive in visibility, but regressive in construction by… revising the story’s regressive elements NOT from the lived perspective of those portrayed. 

If you want to write it for yourself, or to celebrate - that’s great. Do it. But when an author takes on the goal of ‘educating’ on someone else’s culture, the expectations and community response will grow stronger, and it becomes a bigger thing. 

Good luck and Godspeed,

- Melanie 🌻 

We currently do not have active Rromani mods as of this post, but you can see past posts under the “Rromani” tag

Te aven baxtale, I am a Romani artist and freelance editor! {General disclaimer: I cannot speak for all Roma, as we are a global people and not a monolith, but while I acknowledge that I am neither Manouche nor Sinti (I'm siberyaki), I would hazard a guess and say that ppprobably I know better than any gaʒo would}

I generally agree that you should approach the reason you want to rewrite this with an appropriate amount of caution. Watching Florian's content and coming to WWC was a great start because it means you're trying to come to this from a place of cultural respect, but do not ever stop asking during any step in this process. If you ever move forward under the assumption that you know, you run the risk of stepping in something you didn't intend or, worse, on someone, which is more likely from a disparate people like us who are culturally closed off specifically for this very reason.

That out of the way, the way to start is by looking at the original work vs the Disney animated retelling side by side to examine the cultural biases present in one or both. For example, it is implied in both that Quasimodo was was a stolen gaʒikano raklo or given away under the sentiment of "who could want him but those dirty g*psies," both stemming from the belief that we are here to target white children or otherwise covet them over our own, when historically the inverse has been the case. It is not unheard of for lighter-skinned children to be seized by the state under the assumption that they were trafficked in some way. My own mother has been accused of this with me even here in the States, where Romani people and our struggles are far less visible.

In my opinion, both of these can be subverted by simply having him just be a disabled child of Romani origin. People have complex, overlapping identities, and this includes intersectional ones. People can be, and often are, multiply marginalized. To my eyes, this preserves the tragedy of him being ripped from a loving family in a way that is honest both to Romani history and our struggles as well as the original work, and also serves to paint Frollo in an even more villainous light that is in line with his later action.

The case of Esmerelda is a similar fix, one that Disney interestingly did... way better than the original book. In the movie, she is properly a romni, while in the book she is — you guessed it!! — a stolen white child. Keep her romni.

There are... a plethora of other issues with regards to how we Roma are portrayed (enough to fill a book you might say!), so with a retelling, you have to go through them one by one like this and ask yourself why Roma in the story are presented this way? Why did the author/filmmakers choose this option? What inherent biases may have steered them to making this decision? How do these biases negatively affect real Romani people, both historically and today?

None of the answers to these questions are clear-cut, and all of them have lengthy, living answers. It is not enough to point and say "racism" because that does not even begin to cover the specific way it has taken shape and still continues to.

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.