ABSTRACT
The notions of meta-fiction, self-reflexivity and intertextuality have been exhaustively studied and used in the disciplines of literature, theatre and film studies. Although self-reflexivity is an old practice in cinema and the other arts, its contemporary importance lies primarily in the significant role it plays in what came to be known as the modernist critique of representation. The mimetic referentiality of nineteenth-century aesthetics was substituted by self-reflexive art modes marked off by drawing attention to themselves as 'man-made' constructions. The whole validity of 'representational seeing' has been continually raised and attacked by modernism, suggesting an unavoidable disparity between reality and artistic illusion. The American commercial networks (ABC) television network organized ‘Town Meeting’ as the centerpiece of a week-long series of live Nightline /italic broadcasts from Jerusalem. The panelists gave their verbal reactions to some televised reports on the Intifada and other contextual issues prepared by ABC correspondents in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
