"Warring Land" promo, February 7, 2024/12 Sagittarius
Reality surpasses all imagination.
This, in a nutshell, is the permanent problem of "Great Country" in the current Netanyahu era.
Since this is the Ham's main criticism of Molly Segev and the talented screenwriters of Eretz, it seems to me that this is a good time for some historical background to this claim.
The person who coined the phrase at the end of the 19th century was the writer Mark Twain. Unlike many quotes that are usually attributed to Twain For no reason, this sentence actually appeared in the book he wrote (in the travel story "Following the Equator"), when he told about his visit to the city of Wagga Wagga in Australia, a completely real place located halfway between Melbourne and Sydney. The city became famous when the local butcher posed as a lost relative of a rich British baron , and tried to win the inheritance money. The case stirred up Victorian England, and finally reached the court in London, where it was described by Twain who was present at the trial as "the most complex, fascinating and wonderful true novel that ever played out on the world stage".
The story is indeed amazing but we will not go into its details , which are comprehensively found on Wikipedia. It is interesting to understand how this story made Mark Twain, one of the greatest writers in human history, feel humbled by a true story that he could never have written himself. What made this story so wonderful, according to Twain, was "The bold risks that truth can freely take in the construction of a story, compared to the small and conservative risks allowed for fiction."
In other words: if a writer or screenwriter, however talented, had to write this story, he would have to give up a number of the most picturesque characters and events, since the public would not accept that such things, and such people, could exist in reality.
"However, the main characters existed, and the events did happen," he wrote.
Meanwhile, back to the year 2024 in the Herzliya studios, reality not only surpasses all imagination, but is also more infuriating than any fiction, more painful than any script and funnier than any punch.
A clear example is that of Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who said in reality that "if they force us to go to the army, we will all travel abroad, we will buy tickets".
There is no Israeli comedian who can write a punch line better than this.
Not David Lifshitz, not Adi Mesika, not Matan Part and actually not Louis CK or Taylor Tomlinson either.
From a comic point of view, this is a perfect line that brings in both the ultra-orthodox evasion, also the tyranny of the good and above all the lack of awareness of the community that thinks that somewhere in the world it will receive the same treatment (and allowances) as in the Holy Land and the Shunar.
No joke can match the original.
"Wonderful Land", yesterday/screenshot, Keshet 12
And yet they tried, almost automatically.
Roi Bar Natan was terrific as Meir Parosh who tries to understand if Yiddish is considered a programming language.
Yaniv Biton as "the first to Zion" did not miss a single nuance, in an imitation that clearly did not come to mock Rabbi Yosef for anything except the disconnection of his words from Israeli reality, and from reality in general.
Well, maybe some harmless teasing about him not being able to read English was inevitable, since he is, after all, the spiritual leader of a movement that opposes core studies.
to Jit.
And yet, as mentioned, there is no script and no joke that can match Rabbi Yosef's original speech.
Their version at the end of "We are staying in Israel" raised a smile in light of the performance of the two comedians, but failed to reproduce the variety of feelings evoked by Yosef's real words.
In the worlds of Eretz's rather recycled imitations (I will stop myself this time from saying my opinion on Netanyahu's horrible imitation), this was a good segment - and precisely because of this it made it clear how much "Ertez" needs a shake-up of the format.
It stood out especially in comparison to another piece that also dealt with flights - the great parody of Tamir Bar, Dor Moskal and Omar Ribak for an El Al commercial.
It should be remembered that for a commercial channel like Keshet, it is much easier to laugh at public leaders such as the Prime Minister or the Chief Rabbi than at an advertiser of the size of El Al.
And there's nothing to laugh about commercials (this is the place to recommend Or Botbol's commercial review channel on YouTube, which happened to be dealing with the same El Al commercial this week), but most of the time it would seem hypocritical on the part of a program where each of its talents also stars in a commercial video.
Some of them even appear as characters born in the show, like the turtles who advertise a health insurance fund or Zahrovich's Reuven who advertises a bank.
It's lucky that none of Kochavi Eretz participated in El Al's commercial, as it was a well-honed and excellent satire, reminding us of the price (in dollars) we pay for the cynical "patriotism" of our private-national airline.
A little awareness wouldn't hurt.
"Wonderful Land", yesterday/screenshot, Keshet 12
The rest of the show was unbalanced at best.
The panel for Women's Day included all the female talents of the show, which mainly presented the gender inequality in the show, both in the cast and behind the scenes.
And in general, in the credits at the end of the program you can count next to the editor Moli Segev another ten writers, including one woman, this may not be the most suitable place for sketches about female representation.
And on the other hand, what a great welcome to the imitation of Limor Son Har-Malech - who should make Gitti Fischer a much more prominent panelist at Kitzis' table.
If a whole skit on Women's Day that only included killing women (even if justified) wasn't enough, there came the strange skit in which Oral Sabri stepped into the shoes of "Mrs. Shawarma".
It's strange that Zabri, a brilliant young comedian, was chosen for this boomer moment where the great "Wonderland" laughs at a viral star, simply because they don't understand what makes her viral.
In any case, the lack of awareness of the stage of a skit mocking a woman, performed by a man, just after a skit about the lack of representation of women in the Knesset, was at the level of the chief rabbi threatening to buy plane tickets and fly away.
More in Walla!
Between kicking satire and entertainment, "Amazing Country" will always choose the second option
To the full article
Boomerang moment.
"Wonderful Land", yesterday/screenshot, Keshet 12
in the small
The funniest part - that is: bitter and sad laughter and full of embarrassment - on channel 12 yesterday came yesterday precisely after Kitzis said goodbye to the viewers, and precisely on the sidelines of a heavy-handed and mostly sad interview.
Rabbi Tamir Garnot came to the studio of Avri Gilad and Yair Sharki to address the same speech of the chief rabbi that caused a stir and became an expected joke in "Wonderful Land".
Garnot, who beheaded his 24-year-old son Amitai at the beginning of the war, made headlines this week when he responded in a video to Rabbi Yosef, saying to him: "I ask in the name of my wife's tears - was Amitai wrong? Is he now lying under the soil on Mount Herzl? Is he and all his friends Those who lie there with him should have stayed in the Yeshiva and left the army and the dedication of the soul only to the secular?"
It is difficult to remain indifferent to these words of a yeshiva leader who lost his son, a yeshiva student himself, in defense of the State of Israel.
The one who probably remained indifferent is the one to whom these words were addressed, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.
In an interview with Sharki and Gilad, it was revealed that there was an initiative to bring together a number of bereaved mothers, including the wife of Rabbi Garnot, with Rabbi Yosef, but the latter answered in the negative.
"That's unbelievable in itself," commented Avri Gilad, "I don't want to talk sarcasm, I don't have the strength for it, but rejecting the request of bereaved mothers to meet with the chief rabbi? That's wow."
This is where the defense attorney Yair Sharki came in, who wanted to try to teach a right about the chief rabbi and asked: "Maybe it fell on a technicality? Maybe the request didn't arrive?".
After two seconds of silence in the studio, Avri Gilad burst out laughing, and so did the bereaved father.
It was the laughter of conscious, intelligent and sober people.
"I think you'll have to try better than that," Avery Gilad added with a smile.
Sometimes, as mentioned, reality surpasses all imagination.
More on the same topic:
Wonderful Country
Yitzhak Yosef
Yair Sharky
Avri Gilad