Abstract
With the release of the limited serial Unorthodox in March 2020, Netflix landed a big hit. It was only the second time that a high-end drama series about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish experience had featured on Netflix’s platform and the second time Netflix commissioned a series with German production companies. Unorthodox is about transnationality in two respects. One is that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish protagonists, the Satmar Hasids, are themselves a transnational community. The other is that the production was completed transnationally, using a cast of Jewish Israeli, American and European actors. In this chapter, the environment informing the production of Unorthodox is examined and the origins of the ultra-Orthodox subject in US television (having strong ties to Israeli television production) are traced. Unorthodox sparked a lively debate, especially among Jewish representatives in the US and in Germany, including accusations of anti-Semitism. The chapter discusses the background of this debate for its further exemplification of the transnational elements of this drama production.
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Dödtmann, E. (2023). Freedom of Defection: The Representation of Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Netflix’s Unorthodox. In: Dunleavy, T., Weissmann, E. (eds) TV Drama in the Multiplatform Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35585-1_11
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