A co-founder of feminist Romani theatre troupe, Giuvlipen - which means feminism in Romani - Drâgan and her fellow co-founder Romani actress Zita Moldovan recently produced a filmed play, ROMACEN: The Age of the Witch, about Romani cyberwitches who curse fascist politicians with magic and malware and time-travel to try stop the oft-forgotten genocide of Roma and Sinti in World War II. Inspired by similarly identity-based sci-fi aesthetics Afrofuturism and Sinofuturism, Drâgan created the cyberwitch archetype, a hybrid of the traditional hex-casting Romani witch and code-writing tech genius. The first who comes to mind is the award-winning actress, writer, and filmmaker Mihaela Drâgan, who pioneered the burgeoning movement, Roma Futurism. Now, there are many excellent Romani actresses who could have been considered for the role. This is the context that most people miss when creating (or, in this case, adapting) Romani witch characters like Wanda Maximoff, and while the Scarlet Witch has plenty of magic, she does not need to fall into the stereotype, nor have her identity erased.
I was trained by my grandmother, I studied hard, I started a business, and I take bookings in my Google calendar. Today, some Roma do call themselves witches, and serve as healers and spell-casters in a community, but make no mistake, being a witch is a job like any other. Roma women were cast as witches, and discriminated against, but made the most of this means of income to survive. Palmistry, card reading, tea leaf and coffee reading, and other forms of divination were brought by Roma from India and the Middle East, and Roma were consulted by Europeans for their magical, un-Christian needs because they were seen, along with other nonbelievers, as dangerous, demonic, and mystical. Enslaved, legally hunted, murdered, and shunted off into the margins of society, Roma were allowed to work as performers, metal workers, horse traders, craftspeople, agricultural workers, and fortune tellers, but little else. Roma are a diasporic ethnic group originating in 10th-century India, and when they arrived in Europe in the 1300s and 1400s, dark-skinned with many gods, they were relentlessly persecuted. The few Roma who work as fortune tellers and witches, like myself, do not do so because we are magical, but because it’s a job that we were historically forced into. Make no mistake, being a witch is a job like any other. While it is a stereotype, it’s rooted in a fascinating truth. What many viewers may not realize, however, that the powerful Romani witch archetype dates back to the Middle Ages. As the show goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Wanda is wielding her mutant powers to construct and control their reality, driven by her agonizing grief over the family she has already lost. When fellow residents ask the couple where they come from, or why they’re in the perfectly off-kilter town of Westview, Wanda and Vision don’t know, and the veneer of their pleasant domestic life is temporarily shattered as they struggle to remember.
Scarlet witch wandavision android#
Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision presents a vintage sitcom world in which Wanda is suddenly reunited with her husband, the android superhero Vision, who had been killed in Marvel’s Infinity Wars by Thanos, a clue that reality isn't what it seems. While the Scarlet Witch has plenty of magic, she does not need to fall into the stereotype, nor have her identity erased. Many Roma like myself are frustrated that a rare opportunity for mainstream representation character boils down to a white lady in cosplay, especially when so many talented Roma actresses abound. the Scarlet Witch (played by Elizabeth Olsen) appears in her retro costume - red headband, leotard, tights, and cape - announcing that she’s a “Sokovian fortune teller.” The reference is a sidelong nod to the comic-book character Wanda’s part-Romani ethnicity that Olsen, a white actress, says she fought for.īut it should be painfully obvious that neither the Scarlet Witch’s headband nor leotard is part of our culture - it is not, as Olsen offensively claimed, "a gypsy thing" - and passing it off as such only layers on the misrepresentation.
In a recent episode of WandaVision, “All-New Halloween Spooktacular!” the titular superhero Wanda Maximoff a.k.a.
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