ILLUSTRATIONS OF EUROPEAN SECULAR PUBLICATIONS, AS A MEANS OF COMPREHENSIVE OPPRESSION OF THE ROMA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY

Abstract

Prejudice against the Roma is a social chasm that is already burying itself today. The Roma are the nationality about which there is a lot of misinformation, and even more so, against which an ideological policy of extermination has been deployed, based mostly on audacious and false human prejudices. Public opinion in general sees the representatives of the Gypsy population as negative, pre-programmed qualities, supported not by reality, but by racist prejudices and misinformation from the press. Roma people continue to be mostly victims of false accusations and have been labeled as criminals, liars and thieves for several centuries. The purpose of the work is to analyze the illustrations, the artistic features of which demonstrate a biased attitude towards the coverage of the heterogeneous gypsy life in Europe. Constant reviews and interest of the public in scandalous situations related to the Roma make it possible for the mass media to encourage the reader with increasingly fanciful and sometimes even absurd news with images of the Roma. The subject of the study is the most frequently repeated and widespread illustrative stereotypes that the Roma are a deviant marginal group of people who devote their lives only to crimes. The press and editorial artists at the beginning of the 20th century increasingly represented the gypsy community as a band of barbarians who, in the age of symbolism, were depicted in endless attempts to commit crimes. The scientific problem is contemporary artistic carelessness and stereotypical thinking, which can provoke and encourage brazen prejudice against Roma. The persecution of Gypsies in the press was presented somewhat ironically, with regular mockery, which increased the demand and caused even possible negative consequences for one or another publication on the part of the Roma people, who always kept aloof, and who for decades fell into the cycle of brutal, executed by the society of the time in the Art Nouveau style of illustrations in the popular European press.