Page - 133 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

priation is final. The struggle for sacred space goes on and on.15 Sacred space is an instrument of power in conflict, providing the actor who has the resources to claim that sacred space with an advantage. In this article, I take the opening ceremony for the new US embassy as a ritual, which will allow us to understand how the ceremony functions. The ceremony, or ritual action, took place in Jerusalem and was about Jerusalem. It therefore contrib- utes, I suggest, to the construction of Jerusalem, which is loaded with a subjective reality which however appears to be objective. The ritual of the ceremony was and is broadcast by media and therefore it must also be conceptualized as media ritual. As rituals, like all aspects of human life, are subject to processes of digitalization and medialization, ritual and media must be seen not as two distinct categories but as interacting and overlapping processes.16 The relationship between ritual and media is multidimensional, for media represent rituals, and rituals are subject to medialization, meaning that media are integrated into rituals, and rituals are adjusted to the logics of the media.17 Moreover, media do not just document rituals; they also modify them. On the screen the audience sees not the event itself but a representation of the event, and representations are always selective, providing a certain point of view on the event. Media events are constructions, not expressions of a reality.18 Additionally, media are not simple institutions of information transfer, but rather social actors with their own ideas, values and norms. Through their selectivity, which determines which events and actors are perceived and how, media produce conceptualizations of the world and interpretative cultural models. Media claim to present “reality”, but they are constructing selective images of reality while professing authenticity and partic- ipation in extra-medial happenings, especially in the case of live broadcasts.19 Jerusalem between Political and Religious Interests Jerusalem is constructed as a “sacred space” by actors who in performing their (reli- gious) concepts connect those concepts to the city. In the case of the opening cere- mony, actors from Israel and the United States advanced religious concepts derived from Christian and Jewish traditions. The existing conceptualizations of Jerusalem 15 Chidester/Linenthal 1995, 19. 16 Grimes 2011, 20. 17 Couldry 2004, 57; Sumiala 2014, 943. 18 Couldry 2004, 57; Grimes 2011, 5; 20. 19 Couldry 2004, 95–97; Bartsch/Brück/Fahlenbach 2008, 11–18. 132 | Hannah Griese www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 127–151