Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:06:17.924Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Decodings by Arab/Palestinian Israelis-in-the-Making

from Part II - Audience Reception of Israeli and Palestinian Sesame Street

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2021

Yael Warshel
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter looks at the interpretations of the series by the Arab/Palestinian Israeli state minority audience in Uhm Al-Fahm. Half decoded “Jews”; one-third decoded Palestinians. All concluded there were “Arab” characters in Sesame Street, meaning Arab/Palestinian Israelis. Drawing on assumptions about language, physical features, or attire of characters, they typically converted Jewish Israeli characters into “Arabs,” moving them from the national to the civic axis, still Israeli but specifically Arab/Palestinian Israelis like themselves. Palestinian characters moved from the civic to the national on the continuum, and were interpreted as just “Arabs.” A majority held negative to very negative attitudes about Jewish Israelis, and very positive to very negative attitudes about Palestinians, their other shared other. In some cases they negatively stereotyped the former as “police” and the latter as “dirty, primitive or poor.” Optimistically for peace-building, most nonetheless adopted positive attitudes toward all the characters they had “correctly” decoded as pro-social and nice, and were able to generalize those mediated experiences to the other characters on screen and to the real world. This suggests there is some room for Sesame Street to influence the Arab/Palestinian Israeli audience’s inter-grouping attitudes towards these shared others.

Type
Chapter
Information
Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Children, Peace Communication and Socialization
, pp. 199 - 208
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×