Comedy is said to be a tragedy
from
a
distance. A man slipping on a banana hurts, and the viewers, from a distance of time, laugh. However, re-watching Seinfeld, the successful comedy series from the 1990s, made me wonder if comedy in the past tense is simply a tragedy.
In Israel in the late 1990s, "Seinfeld" laughed. The topics the program dealt with - addiction to pettiness, extreme egoism and extreme identity discourse - seemed like the farthest thing, subversive and contrary to the national mourning of Rabin's assassination, a respite from the tears of the soundtrack to the "Calm Weekend in Galgalatz" that seemed to last forever. But from a distance of time, the whim and whimsy of the protagonists of the series seem to be not particularly graceful symptoms of the disease of the future in which we live today, the present.
In New York and Los Angeles before 9/11, the fringe was king. At the center of the series is the preoccupation with "nothing," the neglect of any ideology, the mockery of communal values and the trampling of the dignity of the other in exchange for the excessive and excessive pursuit of the individual and the private. From the distance of time, the series can be seen as a prophecy and a parable about the loss of the personal conscience, in which the protagonists of the series sink into a cynical and false surrender to the network of political correctness. Everything is true from the language out, but behind the scenes they mock the same values themselves, under the guise of comedy. All this while the world is sinking deep into the uncertainty in a world of global terrorism, economic crisis and climate crisis. In retrospect, it's no wonder the series ends when its four protagonists are taken to jail for all their sins. At the time it seemed funny and absurd, from a distance it seemed like too light a punishment.
Most of all her recorded laughs, "Seinfeld" was a key change agent for making the discourse of identities so central. It occupies a large place in it and is a source of many jokes and grins. This is the cynical worldview, in which the characters in "Seinfeld" looked at everything from the sidelines as spectators in the "all or nothing" competition of lowering hands between different identities, which we have left to the legacy of grinning.
Putting the discourse of identities as a polar discourse of us or you, imagined as it may be, has created a situation where there will always be the useful privilege of claiming that his grandfather was also in transit, so he has equal rights in suffering and no one to complain about, and if he succeeded - everyone can, and his right Do not tolerate Orientals, just because of their origin. The Soma privilege takes for granted all the privileges he inherited from his last name, origin, birth in the right space of the map, being a member of a connected and connected culture, a member of the Silver Spoon Guild or very close to it.
But on the other hand, that extreme discourse of self-identity in the appearance of everything also created the automatic victim, who sees only his real or imagined misery, realistic or exaggerated, as approaching and blaming the whole world and his hegemony for his pains, failures and nail fungus.
Examples of this could be seen in recent years in those (on all sides, by the way) who came to the throne and Ashkara sat on it, and still allowed themselves to complain and complain about the "oppression of the government", as if they were not part of it.
From the series "Seinfeld",
The organizer of the battle of identities
is the sensational media, and its consumers are us. If you have found yourself in recent weeks boiling and angry in the face of racist and other hateful musings on all sides - smile, we ate it, and in a big way. We, too, have become pawns in the squid rating game. As a immerser and remote control in her hand, broad sections of the media inflate and inflame this fire under the guise of reporting objectivity. But in practice these are "clickbaits", mouse-pulling scoops and big breathless headlines, incessant ringing in Pavlov's dog bell, that is, the crowd. Thus again the world is divided into "we or they," and the air is filled with the frustration of keyboards and the rage of mice. Ratings are rising, traffic is breaking records, advertising revenue is growing and shareholders are happy.
So yes, the media may be guilty of operating the doll, but what is the role of those who push their hands into the puppets of the puppet voluntarily?
Seinfeld's legacy is like a Polaroid image from a world where the whims of the individual come at the expense of everything else, and in extremes, making the discourse of identities predict everything. Thus it is forgotten that in its original sense the discourse of identities dealt with the presence of the voice of oppressed and weakened minority identities, in order to speak and raise the injustices caused. To be a tool for dismantling "hegemonic identities" that is presented as a single and correct identity, which suppresses, ridicules or diminishes any other identity. At its best, the discourse of identities does not seek to clash for the sake of striking, but to point to the self-blindness of the hegemonic identity, thus dismantling it and instead forming a more complete new identity, consisting of its many ends.
The "The Sting" website
- one of the most important independent media websites - has announced the termination of its activities and its transformation from a live and updated website to an archive. "The Sting" was founded in 2003 by academics and social activists Yossi Dahan and Itzik Sporta, and if you have not heard of this site to date, just ask yourself why.
In the world before social media, the sting was established as a blog and a platform for exchanging views on Mizrahi identity and a new Israeli identity. This was where you were exposed to facts that were not told to you, and to thoughts that the mute hand of the mainstream media censored for you. As with any good school for life, it had many enlightening writers, and even if I did not agree with everyone, I always learned from reading it.
Anyone who is involved in the world of social change knows that it is rare for such organizations to retire. So I was surprised by the sting's announcement, and talked to Yonit Naaman, who together with Tami Riklis has edited the site for the past decade.
"The sting stops working not because it is no longer needed but because we had difficulty raising budgets for it," Naaman explains. Since the sting was established, the media map has changed completely. Social networks make it easy to express an opinion and have a discussion. We set up a site in Arabic, which was and still is the only independent site that also has a built-in platform for Arabic discourse.
"From the beginning, Sting had an Eastern identity and identification with a progressive left-wing discourse, and this combination made it difficult for us to mobilize resources. Only leftists, because the Eastern discourse and the Eastern struggle on its diverse face are core issues at the sting.
”Who talked about issues like social justice, public housing or distributive justice before the 2011 protest? These are concepts that Dahan, Sporta and the Eastern Rainbow have instilled in consciousness, the struggle for social justice could not have grown and existed without the preliminary work and deep plowing of the sting.
"The public in Israel has a short memory, and a well-publicized and just struggle like the struggle over the Hassi River does not just happen today. There has always been an oriental struggle for justice and an intense intellectual preoccupation with questions of identity, ethnicity and status. "The preoccupation with tradition, poetry and oriental culture. I understand, it was the heart of the sting, the place where the personal meets the political. Even if it does not renew, we will be comforted that the sting and the archive of opinions he has created over the years will remain available online."
