The first of our yearly colloquia features Professor Tasha Oren from the University of Wisconsin.
Through its institutional structures, textual production, and points of reception, television has taken part in articulations of cultural and national identity all over the globe. How is this sense of "the local" changing as media grows increasingly mobile and new global television forms (like the reality format) dominate worldwide programming?
In Israel, a debate about television's birth quickly escalated to a national argument over occupation of Palestinian territories, relations with Arab neighbors, and its internal, conflicting visions of shared culture and identity. This talk explores how these historical imaginings and political clashes over television persist in haunting Israel through its most global of programming, a reality show based on the popular format program "The Apprentice." In revealing how the format's global conventions were translated into a politically explosive experiment in international political relations, the Israeli case illustrates why television, and its particular national history, still matters in our global media environment.
This talk is sponsored by the Film & Digital Media Department and the Center for Jewish Studies, with support from the Arts Research Institute and the David B. Gold Foundation.