Hagai Levi on the cover of Haaretz weekly magazine, with the accompanying headline, “Curse of Success” (Leora Hadas’ translation).

Post by Leora Hadas, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor is Leora Hadas, PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies in our department, a PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies in our department who begins teaching film and television in the Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University in China in January 2016. 

The multiple-award-winning The Affair (Showtime, 2014–), now airing in the UK, has once again placed Israeli television on the global stage, although most viewers may never know it. The series was co-created by Israeli writer-director Hagai Levi, previously responsible for Be’Tipul/In Treatment (HBO, 2008-2010). The show’s purchase and adaptation by the major cable channel has since become a model for success to which creators throughout the Israeli television industry aspire. Israeli television shows and formats are enjoying a remarkable reception not only in the United States, but across the globe. Dramas such as In Treatment and Homeland (Showtime, 2011–), as well as successful reality television formats such as Rising Star (HaKokhav HaBa), have led to the New York Times calling Israel “a kind of global entrepôt for creative TV.”

The reach of the Israeli television industry is disproportionate to its tiny size and relative youth, but according to Georgia State University’s Sharon Shahaf, originates in just these qualities. Small budgets force a focus on storytelling and characterization, and an inexperienced industry has more leeway for personal and innovative creativity. Israeli dramas seldom employ a writing team, and are often written entirely by their creators. The convergence of creator and head writer, while fraying in the U.S., adds to the status of Israeli drama as essentially personal form of storytelling. As chief executive of Keshet Broadcasting Avi Nir says, “Israeli dramas are very much driven by auteurs, by people who have their own unique story and own unique voice to tell it.” Yet Levi left the Showtime production of The Affair, citing creative differences, telling Israeli news site Ynet that the show “started out as art, and there was a specific moment when I started to recognize that it was moving away from that.”

Title card from Israeli TV series Fauda. The show’s tagline is “In this war, everything’s personal.”

Levi’s experience in the transition between Tel Aviv and Hollywood reveals the contradictory position of scripted-series creators in Israeli television. Like their U.S. counterparts, creators in Israel are cultural legitimators, whose presence validates their shows as works of art and personal vision. Many of them work in multiple media, and enjoy a broad presence in more legitimate cultural spaces such as film, novels (Ron Leshem, Ta Gordin), theatre (Reshef Levi, HaBorer) or even political criticism (Sa’id Kashua, Avoda Arvit). Others are actors who star in semi-autobiographical shows, drawing on nationally specific experience – as IDF soldiers (Lior Raz, Fauda) or as minorities within Israel’s complex social mosaic (Maor Zegori, Zegori Imperia).

At the same time, the possibility of selling a show to Hollywood slots well into the “making an exit” narrative of the Israeli IT industry. The dream scenario pitched by Alon Dolev, founder of the TV Format Fund, is that of a start-up: an idea that is successfully sold on abroad, giving its originators “a regular, sometimes lifelong income” (my translation) while the buyer undertake the task of further management. To sell a show to the U.S. specifically is to “make it” in an industry that is increasingly oriented outwards, aiming for the international market from the get-go.

The reality behind the discourse is, naturally, more complex. Shows might “make an exit,” but creator seldom will. If episodes of HBO’s In Treatment were often taken verbatim from the original Be’Tipul, further Israel-drama adaptations usually borrow little but the initial idea, which loses much of its cultural identity in the process – as when Hatufim, or “Abductees,” was Americanized as Homeland. A growing focus on the selling of formats often means a complete dissociation between creator and show, even for the most reputedly personal of dramas. Distributors such as Keshet, Dori Media and Tedy Productions, though representing Israeli performers, do not deal in behind-the-scenes talent. Normally, their modus operandi is to get complete control over distribution rights and leave production companies out of the loop, a practice that continues to generate fierce public debate.

There results a paradox, in which the ultimate success is a personal Israeli story sold in Hollywood to an entirely new creative team. As Israeli television increasingly thinks in global terms, drama creators are in a curious split position between auteur and, in the uniquely Israeli term, “startupist.” They are expected to represent a locally and culturally grounded authenticity, yet end their role when the local goes global. Perhaps also as a result of its youth, Israeli television is not familiar with the figure of the showrunner: the writer-creator who also function as producer and as the main face of and power behind his or her show.

An Israeli-US co-production, Dig advertises Israeli producer Gideon Raff’s involvement. In Israel, creator names never feature in poster or trailer content.

For all their cultural presence, the discussion around format sales and resultant power struggles between producers and distributors almost entirely excludes creators. The fact is that the only means for an Israeli creator to receive either royalties on creative control over a show is to be directly hired into the adaptation’s writing team – a practice that remains very rare, going as it does against distributor interests. Essentially, while Israeli television drama is celebrated for its auteurial quality, Hagai Levi is but one among many creators who prefers to be, in the words of the Hebrew theme to Hatufim, “coming home.”

The levels of passion and scrutiny that scholarship on this area of the world attract is probably unequaled, a fact that can either foster or stifle the production of knowledge, depending on the context of the discussion and the dispositions of the interlocutors.  There are platoons of people inside and outside of the academy ready to label every article, book review and blog post as either “pro” or “anti” their side. A single word can set off a firestorm and seemingly insignificant statements can become snowballs imposing enough to crush, or at least nicely dent, reputations.  Often these responses are the result of authentic reactions to injustice, but that fact provides no reassurance that they are fair. It’s a challenging, important area to study but it’s not something I’m tempted to go on record about without some serious foresight.

But I will share a bit of my experience.  It’s impossible to say what it’s like to study media in the Palestinian territories because it is a place where who you are defines where you can be.  For example, I’m an American so I’m allowed to travel between Israel and “Area A” spaces that are controlled by the Palestinian Authority yet still under the military occupation of the Israeli government.  I’ve been working in the West Bank for awhile now so I’m comfortable using the buses and taxis there, none of which are dangerous but many of which can fluctuate in price heavily based on your perceived nationality.  My Arabic is fair, which helps, but most everyone speaks enough English, particularly my friends, many of whom work for the very media organizations that I research.  The roads are awful, the people aren’t punctual and if you can’t at least hold a cigarette and stomach a half dozen strong coffees a day, you won’t fit in.  But it’s manageable.  I spent approximately six hours a week waiting at checkpoints to go from Bethlehem or Ramallah in Israeli-controlled Jerusalem, which is enormously annoying but more than anything serves to underscore the freedom of movement that most of the people I write about don’t have.  Without special permission, the majority of them cannot enter Jerusalem, a city that serves as the center of Palestinian national aspirations.

But even though that experience is not one that can be simulated, there are moments where you get just a little, tiny taste. One morning I had a meeting scheduled for eight a.m. at Post Office Square in the town of Arram.  This is a very specific place, not terribly big, located a little bit south of Ramallah, the administrative capitol of the Palestinian territories.  I was supposed to meet with someone from the Norwegian Representative Office to the Palestinian People, the equivalent of an embassy but for a place not yet a country.  The NRO had funded a film version of an anti-domestic violence play that I’d been researching for months and after a few dozen emails I was invited for a visit. I thought I’d go in, work the early conversation around to most of my small Norwegian vocabulary, then let the inevitably tall, blonde women in charge of the NRO’s side of the project give me some facts and figures.  I’d be back in Jerusalem by dinner.

Buses from the Israeli side of the concrete barrier that fences in most of the Palestinian West Bank are virtually never checked.  All security is on the way out.  So I took the bus in, called up a friend and asked him to give me a ride to the address of the NRO.  We drove to Arram, looking for the “World Bank Building” in Post Office Square.  Soon enough, signs for the building appeared, pointing us this way and that, around corners and over hills.  We stopped to ask some people where the World Bank Building was.  There was nothing but blank stares.  But yet, the signs persisted.  Three or four arrows later, we discovered the problem.  The last sign said “World Bank” and pointed directly at a 25-foot concrete wall with barbed wire across the top and three languages worth of notice that getting too close would be very bad for my health.  After a moment we realized what had happened.  In building the separation wall Israel had placed the barrier right down the center of Post Office Square, leaving half the town on the side contiguous with Israel and the other half, well, not.  Longish story short, I was in the wrong Arram.  My tall blonde Norwegian film funder was only yards away, but it would take me hours of traffic and security checks to get there.  She waited and found my broken Norwegian vaguely charming.  I got my information but didn’t quite make it back for dinner.  It may take time, but at least I can go wherever I want.

If this sounds like a challenge for the study of media, you can perhaps begin to imagine how it impacts productions.  Keeping shooting schedules is hard enough under perfect conditions.  For producers in the West Bank things are never perfect.  For a scholar, for better and for worse, that’s part of the story.

Politically engaged, “discursively integrated” comedy has become quite the buzz topic both within the television industry as well as the academy, with all sorts of attention being paid to programs like South Park, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show etc.  The modest topicality of The Simpsons broadly framed immigration debate episode “Much Apu About Nothing” in 1996 now seems quaint in comparison to South Park’s mocking of a presidential election the very night after its completion. Nowhere is this expectation for up-to-the-minute political satire made more apparent than in last week’s The Simpsons episode “The Greatest Story Ever D’ohd.”  I’m quite sure the episode, which features an extended vocal cameo from Sascha Baron Cohen, had been in the pipeline for quite awhile.  Thus, it’s probably not fair to read the storyline, in which the family visits the Holy Land, against the contemporary backdrop of U.S.-Israel relations.  Just the same, it’s impossible not to.

The episode’s narrative is not terribly ambitious, beginning with Ned Flanders taking on the challenge of saving Homer from his various Deadly Sins and ending with some nonsense where all of the characters think they’re the messiah.  There are a variety of Jewish jokes in the shticky Mel Brooks tradition (The Wailing Waldorf Hotel etc.) as well as a chase scene that rumbles through all the Jerusalem sites you’ve maybe heard of.  The heart of the episode is Baron Cohen’s turn as an Israeli tour guide who, while spot-on and funny in its way, probably doesn’t translate too well for people who haven’t been on a Birthright Israel trip.

What’s so striking about the episode, however, is that while it aired in the midst of what many analysts are calling the biggest rift between Israel and the US in decades, there’s really nothing of political import or contemporary relevance.  There’s a sign hanging in the airport that reads “Welcome to Israel, Your American Tax Dollars at Work,” a reference to the $2.4 Billion in American aid that goes to Israel but not necessarily a critical commentary.  There’s also Baron Cohen’s passionate explanation of Israeli aggressiveness where he proclaims that if Americans traded in Canada for Syria as a next-door neighbor, they’d understand why the Jewish State might seem a little on edge.  Also nothing new.

The word Palestinian doesn’t come up even once, which perhaps isn’t surprising but is pretty good evidence of the lack of teeth in the episode’s writers’ room.  No matter what your political perspective, any satirical picture of Americans in Israel needs to at least engage with the question of conflict and the US’s place in it.  I’m not suggesting that a show on Fox is going to be doling out radical politics, but the absence of something so central makes you wonder who thought the episode was worth writing.  This is particularly apparent in a week during which Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all directly addressed the topic, with the President making direct American demands on the Israeli government arguably for the first time since George H.W. Bush’s term of office.

Really, it’s unfair to ask an animated sitcom, a hugely labor intensive mode of television, to directly engage with real time politics.  It’s just not possible.  But when South Park is pulling it off and a variety of live action shows are pushing boundaries on a daily basis, it makes you question the wisdom of a show like The Simpsons even trying.  The news cycle is simply too brisk for a show with a traditional production schedule to keep up.

Thought #1:  I don’t entirely get the joke- at least insofar as the alarm clock aspect is involved.  The joke is about a suicide bomber, right?  For better or for worse, that’s the joke.  The clock blowing up, however, is much more reminiscent of a scene from Munich in which one of the Mossad guys who might actually be Jewish (i.e. not The Hulk) plants a bomb in a PLO hotel room.

Thought #2:  In the inevitable Internet squabbling that’s resulted, a prevalent “It’s racist!” argument is that, while Family Guy’s incessant Jew Jokes are about religion, this is about race (the implication being religion is fair game, race is not).  However, neither of these positions is particularly coherent.  Family Guy mocks Judaism, Jewishness and everything in between.  The Goldman’s aren’t so comically insufferable due to their insistence on observing the Shabbos- it’s the shrill voices, effeminate men, hypochondria and so on- ethnic and racial traits.  On the other side of the coin, the “Palestinian” in the clock is clearly acting out an extremely warped view of Islam that, while perhaps sadly intertwined with Palestinian national resistance, is nonetheless a ‘religious’ act.  If it is, for one reason or another, ok to mock religion, this may well be in bounds.

Thought #3:  Then why, exactly, is the alarm clock “Palestinian” and not “Muslim” or, even less offensive, “Jihadi?” A tough question. “Muslim Alahm Clahck” BOOM! would be incredibly offensive but in a way that wouldn’t particularly standout from the rest of the series.

Thought #4:  As always, the real thing here is the burden of representation.  Jon Stewart, Shmuely Boteach and Neil Diamond are out there to balance out the Goldmans whereas I would have to guess that less than half of America, and far less than half of Americans in the Family Guy demographic, can name a single living Palestinian.  And certainly not anyone outside of realm of politics.  So when “Palestinian” pops up in American popular culture, it’s in this context pretty much 100% of the time.  That’s undeniably problematic.

Thought #5:  It’s probably worth noting that just as the joke is offensive to Palestinians who face the burdens of oppression throughout the world and particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, it’s also a joke that makes light of the way in which lots of innocent people have been murdered and maimed. I have no interest in policing such humor, but it’s worth considering how the safety of an American living room recontextualizes the horrors of others.

Last week Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas announced his intention not to run for reelection (big) if and when a vote is held.  This isn’t the forum to discuss the political significance of this move, but I thought I’d throw out some quick observations on the international media side of the story.  Here’s a quick list of how a variety of news sites were treating the story roughly a day after the announcement:

Maan News (West Bank)- Multiple stories that took up about half of the front page on the site.

Al Jazeera (Qatar)- Second story on front page with large picture.

Haaretz (Israel)- Fourth story on the front page.

Jerusalem Post (Israel)- Fourth story on the front page, already reporting the inevitable “Abbas may change mind” which perhaps makes it a slightly newer story.

LeMonde (France)- Not mentioned on front page but noted as part of a Goldstone Report story and editorial on the international page.

Jyllands-Posten (Denmark) Last two articles on international page, ready to disappear at  any moment.

New York Times– A fairly substantial front page story with a picture of Abbas.

Wall Street Journal– Top story in “World” Section.

Washington Post- Featured prominently under “More Headlines.”

London Times–  Second story in “World” section, saying Abbas will “abandon post in fresh peace blow.”

Guardian (UK)- Small story featured half way down the World Page.

I don’t know much about Asian sources but I couldn’t find a single mention in English at least.

What might we learn from this?  Well, for one, it probably helps confirm the notion that stories relating to Israel are of greater interest to the American press than continental Europe.  The New York Times was the only source to give the story the kind of attention it received locally, with the most obvious difference being the use of a photograph on the front page.  The ‘liberal media’ accusers probably have something to say about that but really it seems more like evidence that people simply care about this issue within the Times‘ target demographic.  Being based in a city with a million Jews and a strong Arab community certainly helps.  There was a relative lack of obvious (meaning REALLY obvious) politicization of the story with the exception of The London Times, which seemed to be reporting the story as an aggressive, anti-peace move on Abbas’ part and LeMonde, which didn’t want to take a break from the Goldstone report in order to look at the messy side of internal Palestinian politics.  Both approaches are kind of disappointing and easily in line with the London Times’ staunch conservativism and Le Monde‘s tradition of harsh criticism of Israel.