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The gypsy as vanishing mediator in Russian television coverage of interethnic tension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen C. Hutchings
Stephen C. Hutchings*
Affiliation:
Russian Department, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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The article addresses the representation of gypsies in Russian television news bulletins and popular drama series over a 15-month period. It seeks first to explain the prominence of the media image of the gypsy relative to the size of the Roma population and second to account for the relationship between fictional and non-fictional modes of representation. Situating itself within the broader field of post-Soviet Russian identity studies and applying qualitative tools differentiated according to the arena of analysis, it looks at questions of lexicon, voice and viewpoint in relation to news and issues of characterization, fictional space and plot with respect to drama. The two apparatuses are linked through a shared emphasis on narrative, and in particular on its dual orientation toward the exceptional (what makes a story worth telling and capable of embracing “difference”) and the typical (what enables it to represent and project “identity”). In its central argument it maps this dual “identity/difference” dynamic onto the gypsy's liminal status as both “of the self” and “of the other”, and its mediatory function: the ability to serve as a proxy for ethno-cultural difference more generally, and to negotiate the tensions between the cultural and racial aspects of ethnicity.

Keywords

gypsiesRussiatelevisionRoma
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 41 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1083 - 1099
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The Authors

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