Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Conflitto reality-TV

Curiosita' OT: Esiste una trasmissione simile, in Italia?
(Prima della decisione di buttare via la mia antenna TV, la guardavo
regolarmente)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2257474,00.html
Televised Arab-Israeli wife swap ends in culture clash and tears
By Ian MacKinnon, of The Times, in Jerusalem
They exchanged the meat-eater with the vegetarian, the religious with
the secular. Yet only when the Israeli producers of  Wife Swap pushed
the boundaries and exchanged an Arab for a Jew did the wheels come off.
Amal Ahmed Abdullah, a 28-year-old Muslim from an Arab village near
Jerusalem, tearfully packed her bags and quit the reality television
show early. She bade her Jewish "husband" a terse farewell, unable
to bear the increasingly rancorous rows.
By contrast Ayelet Movsowitz, 39, felt at home and went out of her way
to fit in with her Muslim "spouse", a world away from her farming
community home in northern Israel near the Sea of Galilee.
Kuperman, an Israeli production company, bought rights to the hit
Channel 4 series Wife Swap. But after a successful first run that
swapped Jewish families it decided go one step farther and take the
show to the frontier of the country's eternal conflict.
Arab Israelis, who make up 20 per cent of the population, and Jewish
Israelis lead largely separate lives, and they rarely interact
socially. The cultural gulf is enormous, with Arab Israelis
discriminated against, identified with Palestinians from the West Bank
and Gaza.
The question Wife Swap posed was simple: can Arabs and Israelis get
along on a personal level, even if they seem destined to quarrel when
politics enters the equation? The answer was mixed.
Mrs Movsowitz, a part-time secretary and mother of three, found herself
immediately welcomed into the extended Ahmed Abdullah family, which is
liberal and easy-going by Arab standards.
Like her "husband", the gentle 36-year-old construction worker
Karim Ahmed Abdullah, she made the effort to adapt, although she balked
initially when she discovered that her surprise destination was the
Arab town Ein Nakuba. She hoped aloud that it was not hostile.
But the pair developed a bond and, as the Wife Swap format demands, Mrs
Movsowitz lived by the family's traditions for the first four days
and imposed her own rules for the second four. She even tried out her
stumbling Arabic for the Ahmed Abdullah children and imposed some
order, insisting that the children return home early after school to do
their homework rather than hanging around the family restaurant, where
their mother works 12-hour days.
Even when Mrs Movsowitz belatedly recalled just before Friday sunset
and the start of the Jewish Sabbath that she had no wine to celebrate
the religious ritual, Mr Ahmed Abdullah was unflappable. He rushed to a
Jewish family nearby and the curious Muslim family subsequently looked
on as she lit Sabbath candles.
That image of harmony was in stark contrast to that of Mrs Ahmed
Abdullah and her "spouse", Sean, 41, who started off on the wrong
foot by revealing that he was not comfortable with her being alone with
his three children.
Despite her own long working hours, unusual for Arab wives, who almost
always stay at home, Mrs Ahmed Abdullah was horrified by Mr
Movsowitz's workaholic tendencies. His long days as a sales and
marketing manager left little time for the children, a pattern that Mrs
Ahmed Abdullah demanded he break, but to no avail.
Sparks flew and tears flowed as one spat ran into another. The pair
quarrelled incessantly, apparently unable to see each other as anything
but a stereotype. She wanted to watch the news on al-Jazeera, but he
decreed CNN. In the kitchen she forgot Jewish dietary laws and mixed
dairy with meat, to his consternation.
For one of the children's birthdays she had the cake decorated with
Arabic script. She also played Arabic music. "What's this music?"
asked an exasperated Sean, standing in a room full of Jewish children
and their parents. "You'll just chase everyone away."
The quarrel grew more heated. Mrs Ahmed Abdullah could not stand the
tension and packed her bags, leaving with a tearful good-bye for the
children.
Roy Oz, the executive editor of the show, said that the friction was
not caused by their religious differences.
"Their differences were not cultural but personal," he said. "The
cultural and religious differences only served as the point of conflict
for these two. The reason they couldn't get on was simply because
they're such different people."

Curiosita' OT: Esiste una trasmissione simile, in Italia?
(Prima della decisione di buttare via la mia antenna TV, la guardavo e
mi piaceva :-/  )
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