CULTURAL DIFFUSION AS DIFFUSE KNOWLEDGE: YOUNG ADULT FICTION (MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING, 2006) AND COMEDY COP SHOWS (COMRADE DETECTIVE, 2017)

Notions of dissemination across cultures as one-dimensional flows are increasingly challenged by paradigm shifts in cultural diffusion studies. This is also true among niche-market commodities of (young) popular English-language cultures whenever they build on the legacy of Dracula. Plots that feature mainly British and American storytellers, historically-situated in Romanian-set narratives, indicate that totalitarian settings (with a focus on Nicolae Ceauseșcu, the former dictator of Socialist Romania) are gaining some traction as well. Such cultural contact is documented, for instance, by My Swordhand is Singing (2006), a British young-adult novel, and by the Amazon television series Comrade Detective (2017), an American comedy cop show. The former’s plot develops into a vampire novel that references The Ewe Lamb (i.e., the folk ballad Miorita), widely considered to be the Romanian national epic; the latter is allegedly produced by the government of Communist Romania and introduces Ceaușescu’s regime to international audiences, not to mention young (English-speaking) Romanian audiences. This suggests that culture bound meanings, believed to be entrenched in Romanian (literary) culture, potentially make their way to the cultural market of the English-speaking world. However, national distinctiveness is likely lost on a large majority of the international public. Only Romanian-speaking audiences – and those interested in the rare subject of Romanian studies – are likely to ponder on its (ir)relevance. For everyone else, narrative fictions (literature and/or moving images) ostensibly reinforce the dichotomous construction of cultural diffusion in terms of linear, West-East oriented circulation of ideas. The sharing of cultural and literary information on Romania in English is fraught with the complexities of cultural transmission as inherently diffuse (rather than one-way) knowledge transfers