16 December 2007

Not much is new, the usualy schoolwork and jobhunting taking up the majority of my time. Having downloaded most of the classic Christmas songs and watched almost all the standard TV specials online, I'd say I'm fairly virtually satiated with the "holiday season." As I’m about to hit the road again with Birthright Israel (now in capital letters!) for ten days, here’s a bunch of words quasi-logically put together to tide over the rare reader of this blog:

I had a second interview for job where I’d be working for The Man. For fear of jinxing the potential, I won’t reveal the name. All I’ll say is if I get this job, it’d mean dressing up for work and getting paid well to schmooze. Can you understand why I don’t want to jinx this?
The interview was brief, intense but somewhat fun. In front of a five-person interviewing board, I was asked all sorts of questions about myself in Hebrew and why I’d be the right candidate for the position. 30-40 minutes later, with a reserve of adrenaline still stored up inside, I made my way to school.

The shtetl of Anglo blogs has been busy commenting on one of the most recent commercials of YES, Israeli satellite cable company.



Laughing? So was I. Did you ever see the one from 2005?


Not laughing as much now, right?
How about the latest for having the freedom to watch all the latest movies each weekend?




Where to begin….YES, a cable company which operates only in Israel is advertising in English, using a marketing strategy which satirizes popular aesthetics, only to succumb to (inevitable?) racism. For being a TV junkie, I’ve done a good job not signing up to a cable company just yet. Eventhough YES carries more recent American shows and the new Al Jazeera English channel, can I still sign up for a company who thinks this is acceptable?

(Feel free to weigh in on this debate and donate 200 NIS/month to the “Subscribe Jay to Cable” campaign)

I was in Israel when the 2005 commercial came out, and I remember debates raging in the Hebrew newspapers about it. Native-born Israelis thought it was funny, Anglos thought it was incredibly offensive. A commercial for a movie channel mocking Vietnam War POW’s? How about a commercial for life insurance using Israeli POW’s still unaccounted for in Gaza and Lebanon, my normal reply to those who find this funny.
The commercial with the ultra-Orthodox is particularly complicated, as it's full of American Jewish connections: Dancing in the streets of New York City to the track ubiquitously played at every Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Who is this ad marketed to, Israelis or American Jews? It’s definitely easier making fun of a group of people who seem so far away (ultra-Orthodox, America in general, etc.), but at the hands of a bunch of Jews? We do so well making fun of ourselves, creating masterpieces of satire that are part of Israel’s cultural cannon (the comedy troupe Hagashash Hahivver, for example), that perhaps we’re now bored of looking at each other.

The latest one hasn’t caused as much of a furor, perhaps because it’s brand new and also perhaps to this country’s fungible attitude towards those of color. Even in America, where the debate rages on about the acceptability of the usage of the “N-word,” I don’t expect there are commercials airing anywhere which use the actual word to help sell a product.