Farmers, Fishermen, Gypsies, Guests: Who Identifies?

The story is told of a theatrical performance in Stockholm in 1968 entitled Zigenare (Gypsies). After the performance the actors would engage in discussions with the audience. One evening, someone noticed that there were 20 or so gypsies in attendance but they were not contributing to the conversation. Finally a direct question was posed to them, and one replied, much to everyone’s amazement: ‘Lousy play…not only untrue but also gives a wrong picture of how gypsies are and live’. Feelings of shock and dismay pervaded the atmosphere; the attitude of these living gypsies showed not only lack of appreciation for the efforts but also did not correspond to the image projected in the play. To make matters worse, their ideology seemed to be suspiciously bourgeois, even petty bourgeois, rather than radical or politically progressive, as one had anticipated. At last one participant relieved the cognitive dissonance by shouting: ‘Bloody right wing gypsies’, he snarled. ‘The question is whether you are really gyspies at all’. (Trankell, 1975)