https://mattkprovideo.com/2019/11/03/shtisel-robbery-episode/

I have some thoughts about the episode “Akiva’s Portrait“ (season one episode 7).

( SPOILERS)

In one key scene, a Haredim man sees all the various cash in Gitti’s apartment. He comes back a few minutes later with a stocking over his head and a box cutter in his hand. He attempts armed robbery against Gitti.  All Gitti has to do is yell at the robber passionately enough to get him to run away.

It is amusing enough that all she had to do was yell at him. He was armed with a sharp object and was ( presumably) physically stronger than her. But her passionate “mama bear” energy was enough to get rid of him.

What is interesting is that this is a TV show about a group of people who themselves never watch television.  None of them have TV’s in their homes.  I’m sure they know what TV is, and may have seen some bits of TV programs in their lives. But they don’t live in front of it like most Americans do.

The average “westerner” like most of us has seen dozens, if not hundreds or maybe even thousands of crime TV shows. Whether it was scripted dramas or documentary shows, there is hardly any kind of violent crime we haven’t seen or heard described in detail on TV. We have seen countless robberies and seen how the Police catch robbers, and the things ineffective robbers have done to get caught and the things clever, effective robbers do to get away with their crimes.

Although I hope none of us would ever DO any violent crimes, we know LOTS of ways to do do it.  If one of us sees a TV show or even just reads a newspaper story about a crime, we can see right away what they did right or wrong.

When that Haredim man came back with a box cutter, I could barely tell he even had a stocking on his head. Its 100% obvious who it was, it was the same guy from the previous scene.

If this happened in an average American neighborhood, the crook would have thought of dozens of ways to rob that money.

He wouldn’t come right back, he wouldn’t wear the exact same clothes… he would have come up with a better disguise than just a stocking ( and where would a Haredim man even GET a woman’s stocking? Haredim women don’t wear those do they?) .  

He might have waited outside the apartment a while to see if the women had left, or would have thought of the dozens of other criminal techniques he had “learned” from TV. Gotten a better knife or gun…. and used much more violence and aggression, something else “learned” from western TV.