The Others In The Israeli Cinema - Essay Example

The “Others” In The Israeli Cinema In its early years, the Israeli cinema has been primarily used as a tool to advance the Zionist agenda. This factor would dominate much of the Israeli cinema since its birth. The films are focused on the masculine, where the man dominates the cinematic space while the women has been relegated to the “others” category and sharing its place are Arabs and the Diaspora Jews and are determined relative to the male and his position in the film. (Abramson 2000, p. 69) For this paper, I will explore specifically how the women and the Arabs are depicted in Israeli films. These depictions would be classified into the traditional and the contemporary genres. Such classification would, in effect, demonstrate the developments and those factors responsible for their emergence in the Israeli cinema. Traditional Portrayal As previously stated, women and Arabs are generally marginalized in the old and traditional Israeli films. Since 1948, the Israeli cinema has been for the most part nationalistic and characterized by ethnic rhetoric depicting the Jewish superiority over the Arab nationalists. The cinema found itself in the employ of the Zionist movement in achieving its aim to put the Jewish community and the Zionist ideals as the priorities for every Jew. Here, it became difficult for any effort to position women at the center socially and professionally and in the case of the Arabs, to treat them besides inferiors or tools in serving the Israeli agenda in themes of war and conflict. An excellent example that demonstrated the previous argument was the film, Sabra (1933). This film narrated how the Israelis are superior to their Arab counterpart through the use of comparative portrayals of women in their respective societies. Here, the Israeli pioneer women were shown to have preferred and sacrificed their beauty and comfortable lives in Europe to establish a Jewish state while an Arab woman, in Jezebel-like clothes rejected any suggestion of her abandoning her hedonistic life and wasted her time drinking and listening to music in the pioneer’s tent. The Arab woman’s portrayal would also underscore the Israeli cinema’s general perspective of women as reflected by the negative metaphors – as a barren creature or licentious figure who belonged to the desert. Later on, the female “other” would emerge as a pure mother, taking the roles of kindergarten teachers, child caregivers and so forth, who symbolized fertility. The film, They Were Ten (1961), for instance, expressed this excellently. The film told the tale of Manya who lived with nine other men in an overcrowded condition. She was not able to fulfill her duties as a wife to her husband because of the lack of privacy. At one point, she rejected a proposal from one of the men who said he desired her. She became finally pregnant after a single lovemaking scene between her and her husband. In between these narratives, Manya was portrayed as a model of self-abnegation as she tried to be a substitute mother, taking care of all of the pioneer’s needs. She died shortly, after she gave birth, having performed her female-mother role. Part of the reason why gender is marginalized in the past films made in Israel is due to the Zionist culture’s suppression of the sexual body and the preference for the body of the worker attached to the hoe or the plow. According to Esther Fuchs, sexuality and eroticism are subordinated to the national project. (p. 305) Such emphasis prevented the exploration of individualism that is fundamental in shattering the female stereotype as the object that is needed only to reinforce men and the Zionist agenda. The Arabs, on the other hand, first served as the enemy for the eventual Israeli triumph and later on would recede in the landscape to support the Zionist enterprise and to allow the theme of recent immigrants discovering their Hebrew identities. Arab women are not given dialogues in most early Israeli films and that the few sequences that depicted them were mostly to portray characters of exotic Orientals. The Arabs were required in the films because they functioned as background elements against which the Israeli identity and culture built upon. The others – the women and the Arabs - were considered to be repulsive elements that the masculine hero in films must ceased to be identified with or must do away with in order to be united with the more attractive Zionist identity. Contemporary Films During the 1960s a new era started to emerge in the Israeli cinema. An examination of the films produced during this time an onwards would lead one to conclude that there attempts are obvious to expose what the earlier films have repressed and to explore a new situation beyond the focus on the male-Zionist convergence. Specifically, themes revolved around those that neither deligitimized other groups nor disregard multiple identities of which the Hebrew-Israeli nation itself is composed. (Abramson, p. 70) This theme that is critical of the repression of Zionist culture could still be found in recent Israeli film releases. For instance, we have the case of the movie, Lemon Tree, which was released in 2008. The film narrated the struggle of a young widow, Salma Zidane, to stop the Israeli Defense Minister, who was her neighbor, from cutting the lemon tree in her family farm. The widow developed some indirect relationship and female bond with the Defense Minister’s wife, Mira Navon. The minister’s wife sympathized with widow in her loneliness and in the absurdity of the lemon tree incident. This aspect in the film reflected how women are depicted in the Israeli society, perhaps a hint of how they were treated in the social scheme of things in the in the past – as tools for the Zionist cause. The only difference here is that the female became empowered to air her views and make decisions that demonstrate such empowerment and strength in character. The contemporary Israeli cinema is no longer tied to the Zionist propaganda of the past. Along with feminism, individualism, materialism, and criticisms on the Israeli policies towards Palestine and the Arab World have found its way on Jewish films. Two significant materials to have emerged recently exploring these themes are My Terrorist and Promises. My Terrorist is Yulie Cohen Gerstel’s criticism of the Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, terrorism and the Arab world. The critique was told by way of the autobiographical account of the director’s terrorist experience in London in the late 70s and her struggle to free the perpetrator of the terrorist act later on. This highly vocal documentary is significant for two reasons: first, it was made by a woman; second, as a Jew, taking the Palestinian cause and even sympathizing with the terrorists seem to be highly subversive of the Zionist agenda. However, the film was freely exhibited and this demonstrated the liberal and permissive atmosphere in Jewish filmmaking which allows artists to pursue whatever issues and themes they want, including an emphasis on the female in films or criticisms about how they are treated by the Jewish society. This is shown in film Ha-Sodot (The Secrets) (2007) wherein a group of women struggled against the extremely repressive society ruled by conservative rabbis. Promises, on the other hand, explored the theme of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by emphasizing that the problem fundamentally stems from the ignorance of Israelis and Palestinian of each other. With this in mind, the creators of the documentary managed to bring some Jewish and Palestinian children together in order for them to talk and play and discover some things out of each other. The film posited some thought-provoking insights in regard to how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be viewed and addressed and that these insights diverge significantly from the policies adopted by the authorities of both sides. Conclusion The Israeli cinema has depicted the Jewish self-identity in the past 70 years of its history. Thus, it reflected the dynamics of a society as it views issues such as gender relations and the Arab as a people. The films produced throughout these years have evolved from crude films with almost primitive style, then propagandistic and melodramatic emphasis, to the more recently developed and sophisticated cinematic style characterized by depth in characterization and complexity of plots. Particularly, this latter development demonstrated how women and Arabs are depicted. In the past, when emphasis in films was on community, women and Arabs were considered as tools to help prioritized issues unfold. Hence, their roles are marginalized. Contemporary film treatment on the subject, however, has moved towards an understanding of the individual as opposed to the previous preoccupation of reinforcing the masculine character and the Israeli national agenda. With the recognition of individuality and freedom, Israeli filmmakers are now able to create and produce the materials they want – free to narrate, praise or reject social elements that characterize the modern Jewish society. As a consequence, there is now a diversity in thematic focus particularly those about the empowerment of women and the objective, if not positive, portrayals of the Palestinians. Works Cited Abramson, Glenda. Modern Jewish mythologies. Hebrew Union College Press, 2000. Fuchs, Esther. Israeli women's studies: a reader . Rutgers University Press, 2005. Films Sabra (1933, Dir. Alexander Ford) They Were Ten (1961, Dir. Baruch Dienar) Promises (2001, Dir. Carlos Bolado, Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg) My Terrorist (2003, Dir. Yulie Cohen Gerstel) Lemon Tree (2008, Dir. Eran Riklis) Ha-Sodot (The Secrets) (2009, Dir. Avi Nesher) Read More