I want to make one thing clear from the outset: I am not writing this commentary to criticize Zdeněk Godla or any other Romani actors in the Czech Republic. What I want to discuss is how gadje [non-Romani] directors or screenwriters, in tandem with Romani actors, promote all the (long outdated!) clichés about Romani people that we see here on TV in the Czech Republic.
Imagine, for example, that you're watching a recent public service announcement. We hear Romani csardas music and we see a Romani man walk into a building and up to reception desk, behind which sits what appears to be some kind of hipster nurse.
A Romani man is standing in a hole in the ground in a tracksuit (Adidas, more, of course!). A gadjo man asks him: "Patrik, do you know how to dig?" and the Romani man answers "You're kidding, right? You're asking a black guy if he knows how to dig, right? I was born with a pickaxe in my hand!" and as if that isn't enough, he launches into an intellectual outpouring explaining that "whatever Patrik fucked into the ground with a pickaxe, he didn't fuck into a woman."
Link: http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/commentary-romani-actors-should-refuse-to-perpetuate-stereotypes-in-czech-television-programs
