“You Go First, You Kaza!”: Using Casting and Intertextuality to Rewrite Myth in the Miniseries <i>Eagles</i>

Abstract This article demonstrates how layers of meanings accumulated in an actor's persona can influence the readings of other, newer performances by the same actor, thus creating new and sometimes subversive meanings in those performances and enabling a radical rereading of past texts, and even related historical events and myth, in light of the new ones. Specifically, the article explores the meanings associated with the public image of Yehoram Gaon, a well-known Israeli actor and singer, and analyzes his performance and role in the award-winning 2010 Israeli television miniseries Eagles (Hebrew, Nevelot; slang, “bastards”). In an interpretive intertextual reading, it reveals how one of Gaon's famous embodiments, the fictional character of Kazablan, is reincarnated in the text. Kazablan has become a symbol of ethnic discrimination in Jewish-Israeli society because of his Mizrahi descent (Mizrahim are Jews originating in Asian and African countries). Moreover, Gaon is also well-known for his cinematic career where he portrayed iconic war heroes, including in one of Israel's most successful feature films, Operation Thunderbolt (1977), which helped shape a national myth. Casting him as a sort of runaway killer in a series that challenges national myth is therefore a charged stand. The article suggests that this hinted presence of characters from previous roles, carried into the miniseries text through casting and embodiment, allows for a new reading of main Israeli canonical texts, and for a new perspective on myth and historical events.