Shtisel

I just finished watching Season 1 of Shtisel—the hit Israeli series. The show revolves around the lives of a large Orthodox Jewish family. The Haredi Jews are an ultra-Orthodox sect that shuns most forms of modernity. Television and the internet are ‘prohibited’ for them. They spend most of their time immersed in the Torah. Until recently, the Haredi Jews were exempt from military service—a decision that was quite contentious in Israeli domestic politics. (They have a high birth rate, and their proportion of the population is projected to rise from the current 13% to 30% in the next 30 years.) The most fascinating aspect of the show was the dress codes of the men – black suits, a white inner garment, hats, flowing beards and sidelocks.

While watching it, I couldn’t help but think about the trash that airs on our own television channels. The Ekta Kapoors and the Asianets likely lack the incentive to explore creative, high-quality content when there is a captive audience ready to lap up 1,000-episode-long shows. Are the ‘masses’ genuinely averse to quality content, or is quality always a demand exclusive to the ‘elites’?