Media Culture Society-2015-Lavie-19-34 (original) (raw)
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Israeli drama: constructing the Israeli ‘quality’ television series as an art form
Media, Culture & Society, 2014
The current study focuses on the social construction of definitions of quality in the field of the television drama series in Israel. By doing that, this work challenges Pierre Bourdieu’s claim that since artifacts of ‘popular culture’ industries are not regarded as ‘autonomous’, according to the autonomy-of-art ideology, they cannot be consecrated as works of art. Bourdieu’s thesis was challenged before, but the television field has not yet been extensively studied from this point of view. My study of the broad empirical corpus, including television reviews and interviews with acclaimed Israeli television creators, reveals that artistic quality and commercial appeal show less tension than Bourdieu had suggested. Furthermore, my findings indicate that the autonomy-of-art ideology can be reconfigured to accommodate commercial (e.g. capitalist) considerations. Within this reconfiguration, the ‘quality’ television series can be redefined to include elements of ‘autonomous’ art, such as...
'Reality' Television Critique in Israel: How 'Quality' Became 'Morality'
'Reality' television is a global and highly popular television phenomenon. Despite its public and academic critique as cultural 'trash', the genre enjoys great economic legitimacy. In recent years, other 'trashy' television genres, such as soap operas, have gained aesthetic-artistic legitimacy alongside their economic legitimacy. Taking a Bourdieusian approach and using the discourse about Israeli 'reality' shows as a case study, this article addresses the question of whether a similar process is evident in television critics' attitudes towards reality television. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis of reviews of 'reality' shows between 2003 and 2014, the article shows that the main question debated in such reviews is the genre's morality rather than its aesthetic value: for Israeli critics, it is the moral attributes of these shows, not their aesthetic or artistic worth, which determine their 'quality'.
Israeli TV creators social justifications
Popular Communication, 2022
In the past three decades, side-by-side with the growing precariousness of the global television industry, a distinction between “quality” TV and “trashy,” commercial TV has been established in many Western TV production fields. As a result, television creators – writers, producers, and directors – confront multi-faceted moral, financial, and professional dilemmas as well as struggles over positions and prestige. Taking the Israeli TV field as a case study, this article aims to study the set of social justifications employed by television creators vis-à-vis the above dilemmas. Drawing on Boltanski and Thévenot’s concepts of social justification and the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, this article finds that in trying to resolve ideological contradictions between commerce and notions of artistry, Israeli television creators assume the position of professionals with social responsibility and artistic conviction.
’Quality Television’ in the Making: The Cases of Flanders and Israel.
Poetics
This article discusses the properties of ‘quality television’ as constructed within the field of television production. It does so by analyzing the discourse of television creators and critics in two countries, Israel and Flanders, taking a theoretical approach based in part on Bourdieusian theory. Most academic work about ‘quality television’ concentrates on Anglo-American television drama series. In this paper we offer a different perspective by focusing on two small but prosperous television markets outside of the Anglo-American world. Our findings suggest that the quality discourse in both countries contains autonomous-artistic alongside heteronomous-capitalist ideological elements, apparently under the influence of the Anglo-American discourse of quality. Our findings also suggest that both ideological elements contribute to the cultural legitimation of the television drama series in both countries, though the capitalist discourse plays amore evident role among creators than among critics. Finally, we also discuss the differences between the Flemish and the Israeli discourses of ‘quality television.
The constructed quality of Israeli TV on Netflix: The cases of Fauda and Shtisel
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies
This study investigates how the concept of ‘quality TV’ is evolving in the age of streaming video on demand (SVOD) platforms, using reviews of two Israeli TV series on Netflix – Fauda and Shtisel. In accordance with Pierre Bourdieu’s view of journalistic reviewers as social agents and intermediaries with the power to enshrine cultural artifacts in an artistic canon, the study is based on a qualitative analysis of reviews of these two series published on major Anglo-American journalistic platforms. The analysis shows how the reviewers take part in constructing the Netflix brand of ‘a ‘foreign-language quality TV’ series.
“Faire (de) la télévision / Making TV”, Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods, 6, 2020
Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods, 2020
[English below] Réputée en perte de vitesse avec la multiplication des écrans et des nouvelles pratiques de consommation des productions audiovisuelles, la télévision est un média qui, tout en restant dominant, est en pleine mutation. La fabrique de ses programmes, rarement analysée par les sciences sociales, fait l’objet de ce dossier. On se propose d’y étudier, à travers des perspectives à chaque fois différentes, les rouages de la production audiovisuelle pour interroger les ressorts de la division du travail, les effets des contraintes (temporelles, économiques, d’audience, etc.) sur les biens produits, les mécanismes de l’internationalisation des programmes ou encore la difficile reconnaissance du statut des auteur·e·s. Supposedly losing ground with the multiplication of screens and new consumer practices for audiovisual productions, television is undergoing major transformations. Nevertheless, it remains a dominant medium. This dossier focuses on the making of television programmes—a subject rarely studied by social science. We propose to analyse, through different perspectives, the workings of audiovisual production in order to question the dynamics of the division of labour, the effects of the multiple constraints (of time, audience, budget, etc.) on the produced content, the mechanisms of the internationalization of the television programme market, and TV writers’ difficulty in gaining recognition.
Trapped in Reality: Justification and Capitalism in the Discourse of Reality TV Creators in Israel
This article examines the self-perception of Israel TV's reality show creators as a case study of how cultural industry employees perceive and cope with their work. On the one hand, creators of reality TV in Israel operate in a competitive and precarious working environment, and on the other hand, their work is criticized as inferior and culturally corrupting. Using a combination of cultural industries approach, sociological concepts, and in-depth thematic analysis of interviews with leading creators of the genre, this study sheds light on the justifications they employ and the way they are trapped in a capitalist industry.
Can the audience want?" On the artistic status of contemporary TV-series
2016
This paper takes up a question that Theodor W. Adorno posed in 1963 relating to television. The aim is to situate the new TV series, which are part of so-called Quality TV, against the backdrop of the tradition, and to analyze the forms in which the medium is being used. An inspection of pertinent sequences leads to the conclusion that the enjoyment we experience when watching these series stems from the very type of active-passive involvement that Adorno described as being essential only for objects of high culture.