Challenging everything we think about sexuality: "Hanshi" ends a season with a ringing slap | Israel today

"Hanshi" is a deceptive series.

If you've heard of it, you've probably been told that it's a provocative drama, centered around an ultra-orthodox young woman from Brooklyn who abandons her fiance and flees to Israel to sleep with as many Israelis as possible - preferably combat soldiers of Eastern origin.

This is her stated fantasy.

But this is not the essence of the series.

From episode to episode, the character of Hanshi (Aliza Hanovich) moves from extreme to extreme.

On the one hand - a closed, conservative and paved world, with a defined role for women: to mate and marry, serve the husband, conceive and keep the house.

On the other hand - the wild jungle outside the community, with the breached boundaries and multiple consequences.

From "Hanshi", photo: Vared Adir and HOT

But as it progresses, "Hanshi" makes it clear to the viewers that this is not just a delusional series about a rebellious question through sexual experiences, but a deep drama that takes stock of everything we think we know about sexuality, and opens a Pandora's box of past hurts and the post-trauma they produce .

I mean, it's actually a series about rapists and rapists, and the gray area between consent and coercion.

"Hanshi", photo: HOT

This understanding penetrates the viewers only in episode 7, watching which causes a feeling of discomfort.

In one moment, from a hallucination about a horny girl who can't see with her eyes, "Hanshi" turns into a series about actions and consequences.

In the inaugural episode, Hanshi admits that her first time was actually rape - only that she didn't define it that way until then.

From here, the character's actions suddenly take on a new meaning, and the same blatant abnormality, which was the character's charm, blows up in her face.

Because Hanshi, it turns out - and this is a bit of a spoiler - lost her virginity when she was raped by an Israeli she knew in New York.

According to her, he ignored her cries of "no", and turned her, as she defined it, into "damaged goods".

That twisted experience made her a predator of Israeli men, and that includes forcing herself on them in some cases.

The main character's perception of sexuality shakes her throughout the season between rapist and rapist and back again - until she sobers up, confronts her rapist and experiences inner liberation in the final episode.

From "Hanshi", photo: Vared Adir and HOT

"Hanshi", written by Hanovitch and directed by Miki Trieste and Aaron Geva, is a brave and unusual series on conservative Israeli television.

She slaughters sacred cows, and her words remind of the British masterpiece series "Destroy You" by Michaela Cole.

Sexual violence is everywhere and in every sector.

And so, the fact that Hanishi achieves her inner enlightenment process precisely through a rebellion against the conservative and religious education of religious Zionism - this is actually the great brilliance.

"Hanshi" - season finale episode, HOT VOD

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