Resisting subalternity: Palestinian mimicry and passing in the Israeli cultural industries

Abstract

This article explores the complexity of minority creative workers in the media industry. It challenges the common notion in the literature that minority creative workers are fully submissive to the dominant power structure and examines whether such workers could still be conceived as active agents by resisting submission and marginalization even when they cannot influence their own representation in hegemonic media texts. To answer this question, it explores the performances of minority creative workers in a hegemonic cultural industry. To determine whether one can speak of subaltern agency and, if possible, examine how it manifests itself in reality, it addresses the daily performances of Palestinian creative workers during the production of the second season of the Israeli television series, Fauda. Observations conducted during production demonstrate that since in such contexts minority creative workers cannot avoid being projected in negative roles in the media text, they adopt creative subversive practices of passing and transgressive mimicry, resisting full compliance with the production, without endangering their own position. By doing so, the article contributes not only to the emerging field of creative entrepreneurship in cultural production, but also enables determination of common practices of creative subversion in the cultural industries.

‘We are merely furniture’: Palestinian actors and actresses react to rationalization and racialization processes in the Israeli TV market

“…Thus, together with anxiety and the need to work in a precarious labor market, we find minor evidence of resistance by working hard on the character as actors (Jamal and Lavie, 2020). On the one hand, this engenders self-exploitation and adherence to the rationalization/racialization processes and, on the other, it is a subtle form of subordination.…”

“…In other words, the actors and actresses reluctantly accept the fact that one of the only ways to enter the Israeli transnational TV industry is by accepting the stereotypes of either terrorists or religious radicals. The other strategy is subversion of these stereotypes (Jamal and Lavie, 2020). In what follows, we will show versatile examples of both self-racialization and subversion and how they sometimes work together.…”

Hope and Creative Work in Conflict Zones: Theoretical Insights from Israel

“…Although this pattern of subversive behavior is not always possible, it reflects the conscious effort to balance between the need to make a living, dreaming of becoming a star and not falling awry in the traps of the absorbing power of the camera. This act of balancing mirrors the resistance methods of subaltern agency known from studies of subordinate social groups (Jamal and Lavie, 2020; Johansson and Vinthagen, 2014). It is done in the present and from a set of given choices that they cannot change and requires a future-oriented hope that the end result may be different and in case it is not, they at least reiterate their power as ethical actors.…”

Netflix original series, global audiences and discourses of streaming success

“…(Kashua, 2018) Even if one is willing to presuppose that Fauda's depiction of the conflict is acceptably realistic as dramatic television, a generation of empirical audience reception analysis indicates that Raz's claims about Arab viewers are reductive. In addition, ethnographic research conducted on the set of Fauda reveals that working conditions in the Israeli television industry reproduce the hierarchical relationships characteristic of Israel society more broadly, as members of the ethnic-national minority (Israeli-Palestinians) remain structurally disadvantaged in relation to members of the Jewish-Israeli majority (Jamal and Lavie, 2020;Lavie and Jamal, 2019).…”