Survivor, First Aliyah Style
A new Israeli reality TV will ask celebrities to build an old school settlement.
ynet reports,
The filming for the Zionist reality show that will follow celebrities in a settlement is due to begin in September. “The Pioneers” will be aired by “Keshet” and produced by Kupperman Productions (“The Ambassador”), and in it the contestants will be asked to build a settlement under the same conditions the Halutzim founded the first settlements in Israel. The general idea is to get the participants familiarized with the lives and feelings of the first settlers in Israel.
The second season of The Ambassador failed to garner impressive ratings, and now there is another attempt to combine between Zionism and patriotism on the one hand, and commercial television and the reality show genre on the other.
U of Haifa prof Oz Almog rips the program a proper new anus, saying:
“When the pioneers arrived here, they left behind communities and family. They entered the unknown, which was very difficult and heroic. None of the celebrities is disconnecting from anything, but rather enters it like a Vipassana workshop. Each celebrity knows that at the conclusion of the show he or she will return to the Jacuzzi. If there is a term that summarizes the Zionist settlement movement it is the term ‘victim’. Here, the only victims are the celebrities who will be crucified by the television critics after the show airs.”
Cute, but perhaps that alienating victimization rhetoric is precisely why Zionists are now resorting to more “creative” means such as reality TV.
Whether the intend is sound or not, I think this is in very poor taste.