INSIDE GENDER DOMINATION IN ROMANIAN CONTEMPORARY GIPSY SONGS
2014; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2378-3524
Autores Tópico(s)Gender Politics and Representation
ResumoIntroductionThis article looks at the specificities of gender representation in the texts of contemporary Gipsy songs, belonging to the so-called, Turkish-derived term, manele genre (often named Turkish music/ Rom.> muzica turceasca). This is a popular, wide spread type of music in Romania, generally regarded as being of low quality by the people belonging to the educated class. Nowadays, manele music can be considered a popular culture phenomenon in Romania. present study also analyses the images and values that have been associated with the Romanian women in the lyrics of these popular songs.The article has two main objectives:1. To identify the strategies that men use in order to impose their power over women and over other fellow men as well.2. To define the roles, attitudes, behavior patterns and values associated with Romanian women as resulting from the lyrics of the Romanian manele music.Theoretical BackgroundSince ancient the songs of a people have been the traditional means of transmitting the society's beliefs and cultural values of that world. popular song sums up the ethics, habits, slang, and intimate character of a generation and will tell as much to future students of current civilization as any histories, biographies or newspapers of the times (Spaeth, 1953: 185).The cultural significance of the Romanian contemporary Gipsy songs' contents cannot be understood without a general awareness of the dominance of male values, ideas and symbols in Roma society and culture present in the Romanian society. Roma society is a deeply patriarchal one with strong gender roles attributed to men and women. Hence one has to take this into consideration in analyzing their cultural products (see Dragomir and Miroiu 2002: 275-280; for important discussions on patriarchy, see also Kuhn and Wolpe 1978, Hartman 1979, Walby 1990 and Barrett 1988). The concept of patriarchy refers to the unequal power relationship between men and women which serves as a key determinant of how women and men will be represented in popular culture, and of how they will respond to those (Strinati 1998: 198).Regarding the images and representations approach to women in popular culture, as Katherine Fishbum points out (Fishbum 1982: 3), women's most significant relationship to popular culture has been in providing its major images, so the amount of attention devoted by feminists to images should not be surprising. work in this area has looked for answers to several related questions: (1) what kind of images are present and what do those images reveal about women's position in culture? (2) whose images are they and whom do they serve? (3) what are the consequences of those images? and (4) how do such images have meaning? (apud. Rakow 1998: 279).The texts of these songs belonging to popular culture promote among the audience images of women used as means through which social control is achieved and socially accepted behaviors of women are reproduced and reinforced. It is the case in which some classes, ethnicities, and communities have understood that the «complete» or «successful» woman particularly is a nurturer, that is, in an industrial-age narrow way, she is a devoted, giving wife who is a mother, cook, seamstress, and house manager whose domain is inside the home (Holmberg 1998: 41). Thus, the lyrics of these Gipsy songs deliver such gender stereotypes that are disseminated, and presented as real and natural characteristics. Stereotypes may be unrealistic, but they have impact on everyday life. They affect individuals and groups negatively, forcing them to conform to a social norm or be construed as violating it (Holmberg 1998: 50).Research AssumptionsIn contemporary Romanian society in general, and in Roma society in particular, a multitude of cliches compose the image of woman as generally inferior to man. In this respect, the popular Gipsy song constitutes itself as a cultural tool meant to strengthen and perpetuate these cliches referring to woman. …
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