The Israeli television series Mehubarot (Connected, 2009) follows five Israeli women
who use their performance before the camera—through both visual and spoken
texts—as a means of biographical representation which blends public and private
aspects of their daily lives. This article examines the use of spoken language as a
central tool for signaling sincerity and closeness on the series’ visual stage, focusing
on the unique setting of Israeli society and the exclusive genre of a televised diary
in its written and spoken modes.
Unlike blogs or videos uploaded to the internet, which are contemporary
precedents for this kind of intimate exposure in the public arena, the genre under
discussion relies on established conventions of television and cinema to convey
intimacy. Mehubarot is inspired by documentaries and films that use voiceover as
an established device for informing the viewers of the characters’ thoughts. In its
methods of presenting the “diaries,” the series also adopts patterns of confession
and exposure commonly used in televised platforms that follow ongoing projects
of identity construction, and frequently present them as journeys of self-discovery
and personal development. Following a discussion of the series’ unique features, the
article’s second part focuses on the journalist Dana Spector and the contradictory
readings of her private-public identity, social and family identity, and “celebrity”
identity in their transfer from the newspaper column to the television arena.
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Enter their lives and make yourselves at home.—From the promo for the television show Mehubarot, July 2001
Th e Israeli television series Mehubarot (Connected, produced by Ram Landes and directed by Doron Tsabari) aired on the Israeli channel HOT 3 in July–August 2009. Th e five women who participated in it were asked to document their lives with a video camera for at least one hour every day. Th e final cut was produced by the series creators, who selected and edited material out of dozens of hours of footage. Th e result, as described by the creators, was a 45-episode series presentation of “intimate video diaries.”1 In light of the series’ success, the network produced a followup series in 2010, this time featuring five men. (It was called Mehubarim, the masculine form of the Hebrew word Mehubarot).2
Th is article examines the participants of Mehubarot, exploring how these Israeli women use their appearance before the camera—both in visuals and spoken texts—as a means of biographical representation combining public and private aspects. I will focus on how the participants employ the spoken text (i.e., shape this text and position it in the filmed domestic space) as a form of “spoken diary writing,” and on how cinematic modes of expression aff ord a new understanding of the meaning of the spoken word in this particular genre of television.3
My purpose is to examine the use of spoken language as a central tool for signaling sincerity and intimacy on the series’ visual stage. Th roughout this article, I focus mainly on the tension between the visuals and the soundtracks, with each of them trading off in terms of providing authenticity. Two other issues—the use of cinematic conventions and the relationship between feminine domesticity and perceived authenticity—are discussed as consequences of or manipulations deriving from the main argument.
Unlike blogs or videos uploaded to the internet, which are contemporary precedents for this kind of intimate exposure in the public arena, the genre under discussion relies on established conventions of television and cinema to convey intimacy and authenticity. It should be noted that the participants were asked to film themselves for much longer than the producers-creators’ edit to the screen. Th is marks the diff erence between the personal (filmed) blog and the television show, with its docu-realistic character. Mehubarot is inspired by documentaries and films that use voiceover as an established device for informing the viewer of
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the characters’ thoughts. In this sense it is closely related to “I movies” in recent Israeli documentary cinema.4
In its methods for presenting the “diaries,” the series also adopts patterns of confession and exposure commonly used in soaps and reality shows. Th ese shows, like Mehubarot, are televised platforms that follow ongoing projects of identity construction, which are frequently presented as journeys of self-discovery and personal development.5
First, I will briefly discuss the unique characteristics of this television text and its relation to various aspects of “the real,” considering the phenomenon of citizens acting as independent creators of personal, diarylike texts published in public media arenas. I will present a short semiotic and verbal discussion of how the series participants use the combined tools of camerawork and spoken language to both explore and construct their own identities, on all levels—their private-public identity, social and family identity, and “celebrity” identity—considering the context of Israeli society and its culture. I will illustrate my arguments with examples of two central representation frameworks—monologues to the camera and semi-staged interactions—and discuss how the participants utilize various types of visually packaged spoken language to convey diff erent levels of exposure and sincerity to the viewers.
Th e second part of the paper will focus on one series participant, the journal-ist Dana Spector, in order to examine the makeup of celebrity identities and, specifically, to explore what happens when a journalist, whose chief mode of expression is the written word, switches to a diff erent mode of communication by performing before the camera. A celebrity’s identity is made up of multiple personas that are shaped and presented simultaneously through several media; they are echoed in a dialogue between the celebrity and her audience on various media platforms.6 Th e choice of a well-known journalist presents us with a radical example of an individual who is accustomed to public exposure but whose shift to a new, visual, medium involves her with new definitions of exposure already familiar to the readers of her written publications. Her new self-presentation—which juxtaposes spoken text with visual information and involves aspects of well-controlled voyeurism—as presented by the producers, is open to public scrutiny. Th is will be illustrated through quotes from the series, from Spector’s weekly column, and from comments by Spector’s readers and viewers. Th is phenomenon brings to the forefront the centrality of the audience members as active critics of Spector’s complex image, and their major function
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as contributors to her dynamic process of change in relation to concepts of the “realistic.”
Current television programs, which suggest various interpretations of the terms “reality” and “realistic,”7 have brought about what schedulers like to call “the mix”: the irreversible changes these programs have eff ected in the way we understand other, more conventional forms, such as “straight” documentary and drama; the expansion of the notion of what constitutes “a television text” (which includes simultaneous webcam streaming, text messaging, and so forth); and the discourse that surrounds reality TV and its real/celebrity players. Clearly, as Helen Piper argues, none of these would represent an aesthetic paradigm shift , but surely they amount to a cultural one. In this sense, Mehubarot’s portrayed tension between self-presentation in words and in images suggests a refreshing contribution.
Th e relationships between audiences and popular factual television extrapolate from viewers’ responses a complex, media-literate, and ambiguous relationship between “real people” in the audience and “real people” on the television.8 Arguably, it is this demanding process of “people watching,” and the commensurate need to interpret, weigh up, and learn from it, that provide the principal sources of audience fascination with these programs, rather than the debased, voyeuristic, and even exciting impulses more commonly ascribed to them. From the audience point of view and the reactions Mehubarot received, it seems that the spectators judged the characters as real people, ignoring the facts that the everyday documented scenes were carefully selected and edited, and that they gained excess meanings through extradiegetic sounds and commentaries. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn suggest considering performance and authenticity (how audiences judge “truth” according to how real people act) as well as the idea of learning (including the acquisition of informal practical and social understandings) as the two main points of audiences’ interpretation of the realistic component in reality TV. Considering the viewers’ comments to Spector (which I will discuss a bit later), it seems that the experience of watching Mehubarot was more an invitation to share a daily routine with a “real person” than a forbidden, voyeuristic experience: a peep without a show.
Discussing the realm of television drama, John Corner suggests distinguish-ing between the realism(s) of form and realism(s) of theme, or verisimilitude and plausibility. Th e generic mix, characteristic of documentary dramas such as Mehubarot, does not displace this basic discursive and epistemic diff erence.9
Realism of form includes conventions of staging, directing, acting, shooting, and editing. Realism of theme connects with the normative plausibility of char-acterization, circumstance, and action as well as being shaped within particular outside pressures, which the producers are attentive to and try to adopt, toward such categories as the “socially ordinary” or the “socially problematic.” Th e shift between these two ways of conceiving realism concerns all modes of documentary creation.10 In Mehubarot the modes of self-presentation could be characterized as what Corner calls “emotional realism,” relating to common issues of daily life that invoke expressive and involved reactions from the viewers.
Platform for Exploring Identity: Modes of Self-Presentation
and the Producers’ Role
Th e following is the producers’ description of the series participants:
Hanna Ratinov, high school student from Holon, taking her first steps in the grown-up world; Alizarin Weisberg, 22-year-old design student, runs the popular website zroob.com; Dana Spector, 37-year-old journalist, married, with a two-year-old daughter, going through midlife crisis; Liat Bar-on, a 37-year-old blogger; Miri Hanoch, 42-year-old mother of three girls: two from a previous marriage and one from her current marriage to the chef Eyal Shani.11
Th e choice of participants and the way they are presented already reveal a preoccupation with two domains that are inherently at odds with one another, in that one is highly public and the second, private. Th e first domain is the world of media and the participants’ involvement in various spheres of this world. All five women are media-oriented: two write newspaper columns, two have blogs, and the fift h is a pupil on the cinema track at her high school. Th e second domain is the participants’ personal and family lives and the way they are expressed in their everyday activities. It should be noted that, in this version of the program, all the participants are women and the producers are men. Th e attention given to modes of intimacy is evident in the self-representation of the photographing women; yet in some, stereotypes of gender might be detected in the editing process. (For instance, one of the participants’ confessions about her self-image is juxtaposed with images of a “neglected child.”) Th is topic should be analyzed independently in a future study that would compare the female and male versions of the program.
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All episodes deal with the participants’ relationships with partners and children, and with questions of love and couplehood, as essential parameters in understanding the participants and constructing their identities. Th e combination of the two spheres as means of shaping identity and creating relations of sincerity and intimacy is at the heart of the series, as reflected in statements made in front of and with the mediation of the camera. Th e characters that emerge from this discourse are at once private and public. Th ey are “representative figures” but also private individuals. In this context, the producers’ decision to describe the series as “intimate video diaries” is particularly interesting, considering that the participants are female and the producers, director, and editors who mediate and expose these diaries to the viewers are male.
Th e genre of a diary or private chronicle that is deliberately intended for public scrutiny finds its contemporary expression in blogs and various other texts posted on social networks like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.12 Th e creators of these diaries or online autobiographies are fully aware of the inherent tension that exists between the private and public aspects of this activity, and this awareness is shared by their audiences. Th ese diaries therefore involve a dynamic understanding of concepts like secrecy, voyeurism, home, and family. Th ey redraw the boundaries of privacy and of the willingness to share hidden misgivings and fears. Th ese chronicles depart from the traditional form of the diary genre—which is construed as private, even if it appears to address someone else (“Dear diary”)—in that they constitute a monologue-dialogue addressed simultaneously to the self and to an external audience.13 Th e following, for example, is 16-year-old Hanna Ratinov’s edited video of her morning routine (“I got up, showered, got dressed, got my things together, and went to school”):
Mehubarot, Episode 2: “In Good Times and Bad”
Exterior shot: street in Holon, shoes hanging from an electric wire, apartment blocks.
Scene shift s to Hanna Ratinov lying in bed, peering at the camera.Voiceover: Love is just shit. Shit. Why do we have to fall in love?Caption: “Hanna Ratinov, 16, high school student”Ratinov sits facing a steady camera. Dresses in front of the open wardrobe, puts on makeup.To camera: When I have a crush on someone, or he has a crush on me, it stays
that way. He knows nothing about me. I do not tell him about my family, I do not tell him about . . . the things that interest me, just . . . I’m Hanna, that’s all you have to know.
. . . Ratinov lies on bed, face and body turned toward the camera, which is fixed on a tripod. Voiceover: Who broke my heart? Truth is, I haven’t let anyone break my heart.To camera: I had this thing with someone I had a pretty big crush on, but that
was more like . . . fooling around. Hugging, kissing, necking, and stuff . Not much talking. And it’s not like he didn’t want to . . . I didn’t let him. One Friday I just saw him with another girl. And that’s the way it has always been. Why should they wait for me?
Stripped of its visual packaging and contemporary slang, Ratinov’s narra-tive in this excerpt is close, in spirit and character, to the text of a traditional diary, which viewers may know from reading classical literary texts or else from contemporary texts couched in the language of today’s youth. Th e diary, then, is perceived as a traditional genre that constantly evolves in terms of its language and medium of exposure, and therefore remains relevant to audiences despite the changing times. When considering Ratinov’s age, her experience as a daughter of an immigrant family integrating in Israeli society, and her self-awareness, one can find an interesting comparison of her introduction and the following excerpt from the diary of Anne Frank, which might be perceived, from the perspective of the 2000’s, as an early version of an “I movie” script:
Saturday, June 20, 1942
And now I come to the root of the matter, the reason for my starting a diary: it is that I have no such real friend. Let me put it more clearly, since no one will believe that a girl of thirteen feels herself quite alone in the world, nor is it so. [. . .] No—I don’t seem to lack anything. But it’s the same with all my friends, just fun and joking, nothing more. I can never bring myself to talk of anything outside the common round. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, that is the root of the trouble. Perhaps I lack confidence, but anyway, there it is, a stubborn fact and I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Hence, this diary.14
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Th e visual packaging of the series “diaries” operates on two levels, underscoring the dual nature of the participants’ narratives—that is, their simultaneous exposure and concealment. On the one hand, Ratinov speaks in contemporary, slangy language—“her” language—thereby branding herself as a child of this age, which is characterized, inter alia, by uninhibited personal exposure, achieved through a conscious selectiveness in setting boundaries on public disclosure. Ratinov’s video, with its rapid and choppy camerawork, evokes other contemporary genres that share its “revealing” and “self-referencing” nature—such as the Facebook profiles and videos young people upload to the internet to document their daily lives. Th e public exposure of “things I do when I’m alone,” with close-ups of various body parts, is also evocative of pornographic films and other genres of calculated voyeurism, and of various artistic representations of disrobing that test the boundaries in front of, and by means of, the camera.
At the same time, the prominent presence of the camera in the scene underscores its artificial nature and theatrical aspects. Against this artificial visual backdrop, which deliberately signals its sources and pays tribute to other photographic genres, the spoken word emerges as having the opposite eff ect—that is, as com-municating sincerity and authenticity. Th is becomes even clearer when Ratinov moves from this choppy, cliplike sequence to a very diff erent kind of scene: a confessionlike monologue delivered to a steady camera. In this scene, the sincerity of the discourse is highlighted through the established device of “confession in front of the camera,” a technique familiar to Israeli viewers as the very essence of a true confession, as it is used in documentaries and testimonies that convey clear, historical lessons and emotionally demanding viewing, as in films produced by Yad Vashem or Beit Hatfutsot that document testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Another device that communicates authenticity is the director’s decision to end the scene with footage of apartment blocks, a clichéd image referencing Ratinov’s socioeconomic class.
In conclusion, by examining the means by which the character is constructed and the sincerity of her statements is signaled, we find a visual framework deliberately woven of tributes and quotes. Th ough the viewers expect a peep show into hidden secrets, Ratinov’s commentary only reinforces and supports her statement: “And anyway, nobody knows anything about me.” Th is is the hidden detail she chooses to disclose in her direct monologue to the camera; by doing so, she casts doubt on the stylized visual framing of her life, which is another option the camera aff ords
her. Her conscious choice underscores the fact that creating a televised biography is a series of visual and verbal decisions of positioning, directing, editing, and polishing. It also emphasizes the fact that, in today’s world, all media users and consumers can edit and present their life stories on public stages.
“Ordinary” People and Personal Creation in the New Media
Th e decision to design and market Mehubarot as an intimate and individual creation by “ordinary” women “like you and me” brings to mind some key phenomena that are widely discussed in contemporary media studies. Th e era in which we live is characterized by increasing access to possibilities of self-expression and self-documentation in public arenas, and by the growing expertise on the part of the public in utilizing these possibilities. Th e platforms on which this expression takes place also provide diverse possibilities for reaction, feedback, and debate by the audience.15 Th is type of self-expression allows individuals to highlight their uniqueness while remaining aware that the same tool—the camera—is available to other individuals for their own self-expression. At the same time, it is also an act of defiance toward the authorities, which use the same tools for purposes of monitoring, policing, and supervising the populace. Private self-documentation, then, is a way to create an individual, self-reflective narrative using contemporary tools, while simultaneously conveying a sort of civilian warning.16
By choosing to leave the production of the series’ raw materials in the hands of the participants themselves (again, the significant editing process was external), thus giving them the status of active creators and central subjects at the same time, the series creators took a major contemporary phenomenon—characterized by visual autobiographical documentation in real time—and transformed it into a central genre of popular entertainment. Th is is a modern development of a phenomenon that, until not long ago, was linear in nature: personal documentation was presented to the public only aft er being processed and edited.17
Th e series’ outlook reflects the perception of the present period as the age of the “demotic turn.”18 Mehubarot thus defiantly off ers an alternative to shows like Big Brother, in which the camera serves only as a tool of voyeurism and supervision, despite the shows’ claims to neutrality. In Mehubarot, the characters-photographers choose what to film and also the manner in which they utilize film and narration to represent their personal space. Th e unit of expression under discussion is a complex understanding of the possibilities aff orded by spoken language, where
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the degree of the speakers’ self-awareness is closely linked to their understanding and interpretation of the visual language and of the advantages of the new medium being used. When the speakers are celebrities, or individuals who see the internet as a platform for self-promotion, the degree of awareness is naturally high, and it constitutes a central feature of identity construction—which the producers frequently use to convey provocative messages to the viewers.
Monologue to the Camera and the Cyber-Televised Identity of a
Celebrity in the Making
Mehubarot, Episode 3: “Sushi for 36 Shekels”
Weisberg gets up, dresses in front of the wardrobe, takes out a series of pink and patterned clothes, dresses in front of the camera. Close-up on the pink stripes in her hair, her blue eyes. Bats her eyelashes theatrically, displays them to the camera.
“What to wear, what to wear, same old clothes another day!” (giggles)“Th is is pink. Should I wear this dress?”
Voiceover: I’m sure that the first thing you think about me when you see me like this, with all my . . . childish clothes is not, hmm . . . she’s intelligent.
. . . Caption: “Alizarin Weisberg, single, an internet icon” Cut to online video clip showing Weisberg singing and dancing. Cut to Weisberg sitting by computer, looking at her blog on the screen.
“Zroob.com contains my blog, my experiences, my life, actually, my truth, which I spill out in writing, and it’s one of the most wonderful things I do. But beyond that, I’m a designer, illustrator, game designer. We produce a bunch of cool videos . . . (in the background: video clips, screenshots, examples of Weisberg’s work).
Th e section is characterized by choppy editing, and the speaker—her voice in the background and onscreen—and the persona she has created for herself and her everyday life are all designed, interpreted, and presented as one seamless whole. Here spoken language is used to construct and interpret a product (the speaker herself ) as meta-language (Weisberg describes how she constructs her persona using the verbal-visual language of her website) and as language split into narration (voiceover), on-camera speech, and off -camera speech. Concepts
like external (or extradiegetic) and internal (diegetic) language lose their meaning, as does the ability to assess the sincerity or credibility of utterances. Spoken language, like visual language, is stretched to the limit and becomes meta-symbolic—an attempt to examine communicative utterances or modes of self-representation. Zroob (Weisberg speaks of herself as “Zroob,” identifying with her invented persona) is indeed the most inscrutable of the series characters. Only occasionally does she make an explicit eff ort to peel off her mask and explain why she chooses to impersonate this particular extroverted character in each of the domains of life she presents to her audience. Th e next example brings to the discussion another method of constructing an “I movie” persona. In this scene, Israeli society is a major actor, and the camera movements expose a choice of quiet, banal conventions of representing “others” in documentaries. Th e realistic sphere is created by the very presence of the camera, the narrator’s directness and move to a confessional mode, and the usage of two languages: Russian and Hebrew.
Interaction and Meta-Language: The Presence of the Camera
and the Depiction of Israeli Society
Mehubarot, Episode 3: “Sushi for 36 Shekels”
Setting: Interior of beauty parlor. Hanna leans against the wall, listening to her mother talking to her two customers in Russian. Th ey are complaining about the recession. Th e camera pans from Marianna, who is working on customer A, to customer B, who is waiting across the room.
Hanna (off camera): You keep talking about the recession.Customer B (shown in exaggerated close-up): Because the recession . . .
You don’t understand yet. You’ll understand when you grow up. You eat, you have a place to sleep, you have clothes, you have food. You don’t understand.
Hanna (off camera): I have enough problems on my head without your recession.
Customer A (having her eyebrows plucked by Marianna): Believe me, you kids, what do you know about the recession?
Hanna (off camera): We have other problems.Customer A: What problems? Some problems you’ve got. (Camera shows
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Hanna’s face as she reacts to the customer’s remark.) Give me your problems any day, I’ll say thank you very much.
[ . . . ]Hanna: We have school pressures, social problems, problems with boys, love,
clothes, style, how to look, what to say.Cut to Hanna lying on the bed in her room, and speaking to the camera.
Th is scene introduces to our discussion a new definition of closeness and means of signaling sincerity. Th e scene, with the soft comical touches Ratinov chooses to incorporate in it, serves to define the level of connectedness in a given social unit (the family; the mother and her circle of customers), and to redefine the private sphere (young girl versus older women; daughter versus mother) in a self-exploration that is both private and public.19 By moving the camera from her own face to the faces of the women, Ratinov, as a photographer-documenter, signals varying degrees of closeness and distance between her and them. Th e eff ect is heightened by the disparity between her Hebrew (natural and native) and theirs (accented and ungrammatical). Spoken language is thus enlisted as a further device to mark the generation gap, whereas the visual language places Hanna among the women, as distant from them but also as interested and involved in their conversation as a bit reluctant member of her immigrant community. By cutting directly to a confession in front of the camera, Ratinov distinguishes the routine teenager-interacts-with-grownups scene from her sincere, diarylike disclosure.
Celebrity and the Shift from Medium to Medium
As mentioned earlier, some of the series participants are known public figures. Hence like any tragic hero,20 they are presented simultaneously as members of a select elite (by today’s standards) and as ordinary people.21
Creators who appear in the media are constructed and presented as culture heroes and celebrities by way of several mutually interacting channels of exposure that involve diff erent levels of contact and continuity.22 Four of the series participants are familiar and active media personalities who appear on multiple platforms as panel members, presenters, writers, interviewees, and respondents on various shows. Dana Spector was even parodied on the satirical show Shavua Sof. Th e personas of the series participants, private and public, are discovered through their appearances in various media, a phenomenon typical of reality shows.23
Th e following is an interesting example of self-reflection on how this multichannel persona is constructed. It is an excerpt from Spector’s newspaper column, in which she responds to a scandalous incident on the Big Brother show, at the request of the show’s researchers. Th e scandal involved Big Brother participant Lihi Griner, who cheated on her fiancé on the show. Th e fiancé later participated in Mehubarim.
“Sisters in Arms,” column by Dana Spector in “Seven Days” supplement of Yediot Aharonot, February 2, 2011
Both of us [Spector and Griner] ditched our partners in front of the public [in Spector’s column and on Big Brother ], so why put on airs? [Both] of us cheated. She by taking off her engagement ring and then dragging [her lover] into a down blanket with the ugliest geometric pattern in history, while her fiancé sat watching at home. And I, by leaving a home and a husband I had loved, while mixing them into my personal column—no need to mention the mitigating circumstances. In any case, we are both despicable reality [show] rejects. Both of us asked for it by putting ourselves on display.
Th e spoken language used by Spector in Mehubarot is a perfect blend, combining the style of her written column with the confessional-monologue style typical of the series. An example is the following excerpt from Episode 9:
Mehubarot, Episode 9, “Dana Writes a Column”
Spector sits writing at her computer:Every Sunday I come into this room and shut the door again, making the
wrong choice. On the other side of the door is my little girl, my husband, my life. Yet here I am, sitting here, feeling horribly guilty, of course. And the column I decided to write this week is . . . about my feelings of guilt as a mother. Let’s say I write it, and I manage to reach the precise point and solve it, and it’s clean. Th e guilt factory is providing me with my next column, even as we speak. Because there you have it—my child is in the other room, and I’m not with her. (Cut to the next room, where the child lies asleep.)
Th is monologue, ostensibly characterized by a high degree of intimate soul-baring and sharing, is actually a self-aware, processed, and censored narrative,
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and the camerawork, too, is controlled, calculated, and structured.24 Spector’s self-reflective statements are couched in the same style she uses in her columns, thus giving a “close-up” on the speaker both as a private individual and as a visual representation—a personification, even—of the column’s narrator. Th e viewers’ existing expectations regarding the column and its language are now given a face and a physical environment, which form a predictable setting for what is already known—a sort of “sculpted” visual backdrop for an already familiar intimate world. In this case, the televised outcome had the opposite eff ect from what Spector intended. Th e carefully constructed narrative clashed with the visual image, and the column readers, now transformed into viewer-listeners, expressed harsh criticism in their comments, both about the situation and Spector’s behavior as a neglectful mother and about the distancing eff ect created by her polished narrative.
Another possible and intriguing reason for viewers’ outrage is the celebrities’ appropriation of a platform used by private individuals (i.e., homemade films uploaded to the internet) and the celebrities’ invasion of this informal space used by “ordinary” people to share their feelings. When a celebrity exploits this space, he or she risks being perceived as emotionally insincere and manipulative. Readers of a newspaper column are generally willing to suspend their distrust and accept the columnists’ “fabricated” descriptions of his or life, but they will not be as forgiving when the platform is one they identify as “their own.”25 Reality shows are regarded as mirrors for self-examination through which viewers compare episodes in their own lives to similar situations in the lives of strangers.26 Th e following excerpt, from another of Spector’s columns, presents a situation that many readers can identify with, even if they believe it could never happen to them.
“Baby Love,” column by Dana Spector in “Seven Days” supplement of Yediot Aharonot, November 29, 2011
Th is is my daughter. She is one year old and incredibly sweet under her [birthday] wreath. I am dying to hug her, dying to taste all this melting soft ness of hers, to gobble up the white marzipan of her cheeks and bury my nose in the quivering hillocks of her chin. It doesn’t always come to me, this urge, but suddenly I am brimming over with emotion. “Katzy!” I cry, wending my way between the cameras and our guests. “My little sweetie!”
. . . “Mayachuk,” I coo at her, no longer sure how much of this comes from my desire to touch her and how much from my desire to prove to everyone that
I’m a normal mother. “My sweetie, why are you crying?” She flees, quickly as she can, stomping her plump little feet with surprising force, until she reaches the shelter of the doorway.
Th is column evoked sympathetic responses from the readers. In this case, the complex nature of the situation described, coupled with the deliberately stylized and distancing prose—“the white marzipan of her cheeks”; “the quivering hillocks of her chin”—produced a sense of blunt self-reflection and a sincere sharing of pain. However, when similar situations were shown in the series—which, on the face of it, merely allows a further dimension of exposure—Spector received harsh responses. Before analyzing this, let us examine what Spector says about the role of “talkbacks” (reader comments) and “talkbackers” (the people who write them) in her life, which reveals a discrepancy between what she expected the series to be (namely, another avenue for bonding with her audience) and the viewers’ actual responses.
Mehubarot, Episode 9, “Dana Writes a Column”
I don’t know if anyone will read this. I have a flock of parrots perched on my shoulder, screaming in my ear. Every writer has his own parrot. My parrot consists of 300 angry talkbackers who sit like a flock of parrots on my shoulder, screaming: “Th at’s not interesting enough! You’ve lost it!” And the key phrase that every writer loves to hear: “You’ve lost your touch.”
Episode 9 of Mehubarot—which shows Spector shutting herself in her room for two days to write her column, isolating herself from her husband and daughter—ends with a scene in which Maya falls ill and is rushed by her parents to the hospital. At this point Spector sacrifices her column to perform her role as loving mother, but most of the episode focuses on her writing and self-isolation. Th e majority of viewers’ comments reveal that Spector—having lost her shield of anonymity, and having been given a body and a face that are no longer imagined or open to interpretation—suff ered a severe blow to her image, resulting from her misjudgment of the relationship among the medium, the degrees of exposure it enables, and viewers’ interpretations of this exposure. Most of the comments reflect a complete identification of the columnist with the “real” woman shown
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on the screen. Th ey rarely recognize the written word as mediating or adapting the materials of life but regard it as directly reflecting the story as it is revealed by the visual medium. Th e following viewer comments27 express judgments about Spector’s sincerity and the viewers’ sympathy, anger, or repulsion toward her, discussed from various angles and with varying degrees of sophistication:
Viewers’ comments on Episode 9, July 2009 (examples chosen from first 335 comments)
1. I’m completely on your side, Spector, [by] Eran from Tel Aviv Th e episode managed to fill me with sympathy for you and for the conflicts
you face. Th e desire to receive love from the readers versus giving love to Maya. You made the right choice. But you have not lost the love of your readers.
2. Oy, oy, Dana . . . It’s not good, what you’re doing. Can’t you write when Maya is in school?
I don’t get it. Maya spends hours in preschool. Instead of doing a three-day and three-night writing marathon, during which you don’t see your daughter, can’t you write every day while she is away? [. . .] Apart from that, [aft er] watching the episodes here on the internet, one general thing I can tell you is that I feel the main thing missing in your mothering is sacrifice. Th ere’s nothing you can do about it. Despite all the feminism and Sex and the City etc., one of the central characteristics of motherhood is the sacrifices mothers make for their children.
3. Just put aside some money for your children’s psychiatrist. 4. You have an incredible husband. 5. Selling her life for prime-time [exposure], how sad. What next? . . . 6. [In response to previous comment] I’m with you, lady, I agree with every
word . . . 7. Call child services. 8. Th e column came out badly because you are so obsessive to write at the
expense of your kid!
Spector’s reaction to the talkbacks reflects the discrepancy between her own perception of her character—whether as a writer, as a character onscreen, or as her real self—and the way her viewers see it:
Interview with Dana on Mako website, July 1, 2010
It reached a level where people judged me for the fact that Maya, my daughter, was sitting beside me while I spoke to the camera, [not to her]. I was in such a bad state that I went and checked the film, to measure how long this horrific incident of child-neglect lasted. One minute and 40 seconds, in which her mother spoke to the camera and she was eating lollipops.
. . . Th at’s the way [the viewers] took it—the negative talkbacks, at least. “Now we see her real face!” What does that mean, “see her real face”? I am the one who filmed my real face. You really think I didn’t notice filming a whole section in which I talked about not having fed my child? I did notice. If you had paid attention, maybe you would have realized what I was saying—that I was tormenting myself over the mistakes I make as a mother. At least give me credit for that. I [exposed] my flaws, but also my anguish over them. Th at part didn’t exist for them. “What, doesn’t she realize how she looks when she wakes up in the morning?” I do know. I saw it before you.
Th e use Spector makes of the possibilities aff orded by written, spoken, and visual language creates a clash between the various aspects of her character, thereby stripping it of the armor of “fictiveness.” Without this armor she is perceived as violating social taboos, both in her treatment of her daughter and in her behavior as a “home wrecker.” It is interesting to note that Spector has continued to grapple with these issues in her column, which is still coming out (as of March 2015). Th e reactions of her readers and of others around her have become a central component in the column’s presentation of topics. Th e discourse therein ranges among apology, defiance, and emphasis on her identities as a woman, a mother, a newlywed, and especially as a media figure constantly interacting with her audience.
Discussion
Th e choice of the title Mehubarot (“connected”—meaning connected to technology and media) indicates a perception of the filmed and broadcast autobiography—or telebiography28—as a contemporary means of exploring identity using available technologies. Th ese technologies force us to reexamine the components of visual and verbal language, and their possible uses and interpretations, as means of constructing an identity that communicates “real” sincerity and closeness. Th e title
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can be seen as implying criticism of the contemporary individual’s dependence on the media, or of the widespread phenomenon of focusing on the means (one’s media skills) while neglecting the goal (the creation of a text with meaningful content). Th e title Mehubarot, then, evokes both a set of real-world activities and a state of being. Moreover, it references the anxiety generated by this growing dependence on media in constructing identity and memory—anxiety that has a superficial aspect (fear of technology) but also a deeper, essential one.
For the series’ participants, the constantly present camera serves almost as an extension of their bodies, a kind of extra limb that documents and interprets their movements in their everyday environment. Th is idea builds on the notions of researchers of media and society,29 who see the presence of the media in our everyday environment as a central component of our existence and as an extension of our bodies. In the series, the very visibility of the camera as an extension of the participants’ bodies, its very presence in the frame as an element that is both “connected” to the participants and separate from them, takes on importance: the entire domestic frame is perceived as a living prosthesis.
Because of its character, the series was presented as reflecting a “natural reality,” free of tampering by directors or editors. Th erefore its claims of directness and its invitation to intimacy are generally accepted by viewers as convincing. Th e director’s active role of guiding, selecting, and editing makes it easier to perceive Mehubarot as a reality-constructing show. Th e selection of women with similar profiles—middle to high socioeconomic status, educated, Ashkenazi, and media-savvy—means that Mehubarot serves the hegemony and blurs social realities.30 Th is is especially striking in light of the series’ reliance on self-documentation that is proudly touted as “original.” As we have seen, personal tendencies and external guidance lead the participants to focus on a handful of central issues—love life, professional success—which they use to reinforce accepted norms rather than challenge them.
Th e series utilizes a mixed technology that combines processed discourse and spontaneous, unprocessed confession, coupled with norms regarding the degree of authenticity associated with photographed images, which redefine the hierarchy of reliability and transparency and, accordingly, the ability to generate a sense of trust and closeness.
When one examines the relationship between the spoken language and the filmed images, the tension between the authenticity of the voices heard and that of the images seen was evident. In some cases the spoken text seemed
superior (in terms of its perceived authenticity) to the filmed images, which were consciously constructed as a weave of tributes and quotations (e.g., in Ratinov’s section described above). In the scene filmed in the beauty salon, on the other hand, the amateurish photography seemed more eff ective when combined with the Russian-Hebrew text. When it came to Zroob—a persona constructed through a website—we saw a blurring of the boundaries between word and image as tools for signaling honesty. Finally, in the example of Dana Spector, the speaker’s appearance onscreen seemed to undermine and invalidate her too-polished text, both written and spoken, aft er she traded her written platform as a columnist for the visual medium of television. Her lack of success in demonstrating an authenticity perceived as honest and moral could be attributed to a misunderstanding of the visual media and the viewer’s interpretation. Regarding the viewers’ reactions, it may be that audiences are not yet in a position to accept the ontological claims of reality TV without reference to its generic status but instead watch popular factual television with a critical eye, judging the degree of factuality in each reality format based on their experience of other types of factual programming.31 Th e responses toward the visual presentation, when contrasted with the too-polished written-spoken monologue, brought an elusive dimension to the docu-dramatic conventions, to which the viewers have reacted judgmentally and emotionally.
Th e sense of closeness off ered by these discourse patterns moves along the continuum between “invitation to closeness” and “cold intimacy.”32 Th e photo-graphic medium, despite its importance in the case under discussion as a major source of information and as an innovative, independent rhetorical argument, actually takes second place to the spoken word in terms of communicating authenticity and generating intimacy.33 Th ough one might have expected the images to be revealing, exposing the hidden domestic space, the photography remains conventional and even chaste.
Finally, given that the participants are women, further study might focus on their definition of identity and the way they construct this identity in interaction with themselves, their surroundings, and the “talkbackers”—all through the mediation of the camera. Th e feminine body moving around the domestic space, even when exposed to the camera, and even when the figures are known to the public through their writing, is not presented as an object of voyeurism but as a supporting means of making one present, or even an illustration of secondary importance, for the participants’ spoken words.34 Th is is another way in which the
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series signals the return of the voice (and the word) as a basis for communication and as a key for creating a credible sense of closeness.
A B O U T T H E A U T H O R
Dr. Ayelet Kohn is a senior lecturer in the Department of Photographic Communica-
tion at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel. Her main research interest is
multimodality and its uses in social contexts. She has published in Social Semiotics,
Visual Communication, Multicultural Education, Emergencies: Journal for the Study of
Media and Composite Cultures, and Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, among
other publications. Her recent work explores the relationships between communities
and a chosen medium, determining which serves those communities best as a
channel of expression using unique multimodal systems. [email protected]
Notes
1. Idan, “Mehubarot: A Realistic Reality Show,” (2009), www.mouse.co.il/CM.television_articles_item,790,209,38395,.aspx, retrieved July 22, 2009.
2. Th e blurring of boundaries among “writer,” “performer,” and “fictional character” became even more pronounced when, in 2010, while Mehubarim was being made, two series participants, Ran Sarig and Dana Spector, fell in love and left their respective spouses to live together. Sarig reported on this in the series itself, while Spector wrote about it in her column in the “Seven Days” supplement to the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot. Both series were produced and aired for two more seasons.
3. My main source of information about the production considerations of the series creators is a lecture titled “Between Mehubarot and Reality,” presented by Doron Tsabari at a one-day seminar at the David Yellin Academic College of Education, Jerusalem, March 15, 2010.
4. On a broader discussion of “I movies” in Israeli cinema, see Shmulik Duvdevani, Guf rishon, matzlema [Hebrew] (First Person, Camera) (Tel Aviv: Keter Publishing House, 2010).
5. On forms of identity construction and personal development in reality shows, see Minna Aslama and Mervi Pantti, “Talking Alone: Reality TV, Emotions and Authenticity,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2008): 167–184; Deborah Cameron, Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture (London:
Sage, 2000); Michal Hamo, “Full dosim male mishpachot: Mangenonim leyitzug zehut yisraelit betochnit hametziut Sof Haderech” [Hebrew] (“Textual Mechanisms for the Rich Representation of Israeli Identity on the Reality Show Sof Haderech”), Media Frames 3 (2009): 27–54; Su Holmes, “‘All you’ve got to worry about is the task, having a cup of tea, and doing a bit of sunbathing’: Approaching Celebrity in Big Brother,” in Understanding Reality Television, ed. Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn (London: Routledge, 2004), 111–135; Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn “Introduction: Understanding Reality Television.” in Understanding Reality Television, 1–32.
6. See Graeme Turner, “Th e Mass Production of Celebrity ‘Celetoids,’ Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn,’” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 ( June 2006): 153–165.
7. Helen Piper discusses the diff erences between “reality” and “realistic” in regard to reality shows. See Helen Piper, “Review: Understanding Reality Television: Reality TV—Audiences and Popular Factual Television; Reality TV—Realism and Revelation,” Screen 4.1 (2006): 133–138.
8. For a broader discussion of viewers’ conception of the “real” on television, see Anita Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (New York: Routledge, 2005).
9. See John Corner, “Presumption as Th eory: ‘Realism’ in Television Studies,” Screen 33.1 (1992): 97–102.
10. On means for conveying the “real” in documentaries, see Bill Nichols, “Documentary Reenactment and the Fantasmatic Subject,” Critical Inquiry 35.1 (Autumn 2008): 72–89.
11. Shani is a television persona in his own right. He serves as a judge on culinary reality shows and hosts cooking programs. Th e description appeared in the producers’ publicity kit prior to the show’s screening.
12. On blogs as diaries, see Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J.Schiano, and Michelle Gumbrecht, “Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary?” Proceedings of CSCW ’04, November 6–10, 2004, Chicago, Illinois, 222–231.
13. On audiences’ interactivity and media narratives, see Rob Cover, “Audience Inter/Active: Interactive Media, Narrative Control and Re-Conceiving Audience History,” New Media and Society 8.1(2006): 139–157.
14. Anne Frank, Th e Diary of a Young Girl, trans. B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1952). Online version: http://blog.shahariaazam.com/assets/download/Anne-Frank-Th e-Diary-Of-A-Young-Girl.pdf.
15. On audiences reactions, see Spiro Kiousis, “Interactivity: A Concept Explication,” New Media and Society 4.3 (2002): 355–383; Lincoln Dahlberg, “Th e Internet and
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Democratic Discourse: Exploring the Prospects of Online Deliberative Forums Extending the Public Sphere,” Information, Communication & Society 4.4 (2001): 615–633.
16. For a broader discussion on the “civil contract,” see Ariela Azulai, Ha’choze ha’ezrachi shel hatzilum [Hebrew] (Th e Civil Contract of Photography) (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2006).
17. An example is a 2008 study by Regev Nathansohn, who interviewed the members of the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence. Th e organization members became known aft er they mounted an exhibition of personal photographs revealing disturbing events they had witnessed in the course of their army service. Th e exhibition (curated by Miki Kartzman) was held in 2004 at the Geographical Photography Academy in Tel Aviv and also posted online. Nathansohn interviewed the participants about their personal photo albums to elicit the stories associated with the images.
18. Turner has coined the term “the demotic turn.” See Graeme Turner, Th e Demotic Turn (London: Sage, 2010).
19. See, for example, the discussion of private versus public space in Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); on child-parent relations mediated by traditional and new media, see Yvette Solomon, Jo Warin, Charlie Lewis, and Wendy Langford, “Intimate Talk between Parents and Th eir Teenage Children: Democratic Openness or Covert Control?” Sociology 36.4 (2002): 965–983.
21. Eva Illouz discusses the complex strategies of creating media-mediated closeness. See Eva Illouz, “Romantic Networks,” trans. Y. Sadeh, in Intimiyut kara [Hebrew] (Cold Intimacy: Th e Making of Modern Capitalism), chapter 3 (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2008), 107–149.
22. On the creation and presentation of celebrities via mutually interacting channels of exposure, see Omri Hertzog, “Literature and Celebrity,” in Camoniy vepopulary: Mifgashim Sifr utiyim (Canonical and Popular: Literary Dialogues), ed. Yael Shapira, Omri Herzog, and Tamar Hess (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2007), 212–130.
23. See Hamo, “Full dosim,” 27–54. 24. On monologues as dialogues, see Amy J. Dore, “Monologue as Reenvoicement of
Dialogue,” in Narratives fr om the Crib, ed. Katherine Nelson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 98–119.
25. See Paddy Scannell, “For a Phenomenology of Radio and Television,” Journal of Communication 45.3 (2005): 4–16; “Authenticity and Experience,” Discourse Studies 3
(2001): 405–411. 26. On reality shows and their viewers, see Cynthia M. Frisby, quoted in news release,
“Reality Television Has Positive Impact on Viewers” (Columbia University of Missouri), May 8, 2003, www.newswise.com/articles/reality-tv-has-positive-impact-on-viewers, accessed June 9, 2015.
27. On the phenomenon of talkbacks and talkbackers, see Ayelet Kohn and Motti Neiger, “To Talk and to Talkback: Nituach haretorika shel siach hateguva baItonut hamekuvenet” (“To Talk and to Talkback: Analyzing the Rhetoric of Talkbacks in Online Journalism”), in Itonut dot com, ed. Dab Caspi and Tehila Schwartz Altshuler ( Jerusalem: Israeli Democratic Institute, 2007), 321–350.
28. See Ayelet Kohn, “Narrative tele-biography shel za’adat mecha’ah: Me‘Ze Kara BeMitzpe Ramon’ ve’ad ‘Ha’emet ha’eroma’” [Hebrew] (“Th e Tele-Biographical Narrative of a Protest March: From ‘It Happened in Mitzpe Ramon’ to ‘Th e Naked Truth’”), in Tikshoret kesiach: Iyunim besafa ubemedia (Discourse and Discourses: Media, Message, Meaning), in honor of Shoshana Blum Kulka, ed. Michal Hamo, Menachem Blondheim, and Tamar Liebes ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 2012), 247–270.
29. On the media’s place in daily life, see Paddy Scannell, “Dailiness” in Radio, Television and Modern Life (London: Blackwell, 1996); Roger Silverstone, Why Study the Media? (London: Sage, 1999).
30. On reality shows and their relationship with dominant hegemonies, see Diana Hayes, “TV ‘Reality’ Distracts Us from Real Struggles,” National Catholic Reporter, June 20, 2003, www.natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2003b/062003/062003y.htm, accessed June 10, 2015.
31. See Piper, “Review: Understanding Reality Television,” 173. 32. See Illouz, “Romantic Networks.” 33. See Anthony J. Blair, “Th e Rhetoric of Visual Arguments,” in Defining Visual Rhetoric,
ed. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers (Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 41–62.
34. See Anne Witz, “Whose Body Matters? Feminist Sociology and the Corporal Turn in Sociology and Feminism,” Body and Society 6 ( June 2000): 1–24.
