Television Drama in Israel: Identities in Post-TV Culture - Paperback

by Itay Harlap (Author)

Israeli television, currently celebrating fifty years of broadcasting, has become one of the most important content sources on the international TV drama market, when serials such as Homeland, Hostages, Fauda, Zaguory Empire and In Treatment were bought by international networks, HBO included. Offering both a textual reading and discourse analysis of contemporary Israeli television dramas, Itay Harlap adopts a case study approach in order to address production, reception and technological developments in its accounts. His premise is that the meeting point between social trends within Israeli society (primarily the rise of opposition groups to the hegemony of the Zionist-Jewish-masculine-Ashkenazi ideologies) and major changes in the medium in Israel (which are comparable to international changes that have been titled "post-TV"), led to the creation of television dramas characterized by controversial themes and complex narratives, which present identities in ways never seen before on television or in other Israeli mediums.

Author Biography

Itay Harlap teaches television studies and film theory at Sapir Academic College, Israel, and at the The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University, Israel. His articles have appeared in Jewish Film & New Media, Misgarot Media [in Hebrew], Mikan [in Hebrew], Critical Studies in Television, and GLQ, A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Harlap is among the founders and organizers of the "Fiktzia" annual conference on Israeli television studies.