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(the other survivor on that day was another Australian soap, Home and Away). Before treating the institutonal and textual factors which contributed to Neighbours’s success in the UK specifically, I propose ten textual reasons for its success in a range of territories. Several of these factors are noted in British press commentary, which accounted retrospectively for the massive success of Neighbours. Neighbours persisted in its success, similarly to Crocodile Dundee in 1986 in the USA, where it obliged two major film critics, Vincent Canby and Andrew Sarris, to reconsider it after they had farmed out reviews to second stringers on the film’s first appearance (Crofts 1992: 223). 1 The everyday The programme urges identification with profoundly everyday experiences: personal problems, desires, worries, fears, minor misunderstandings, romance, low-key domestic arguments. In negative accounts, the “everyday” becomes “trivial” and “banal” “dog-attackscat” stories, or, in the words of one French journal, “these clumsily intrusive neighbours whose greatest existential anguish consists in having to choose between two colours of wallpaper” (Brugière 1989: 51). Neighbours’s ordinariness and predictability largely shun the melodramatic, the concatenation of incidents, the excessive. In the words of producer, Mark Callan: We try to keep everything as simple as possible and direct it at the ordinary things that occur in every household and within every neighbourhood. We are often tempted to use a sensational story, but we pull back and say: “That’s not likely to happen.” We do best when we portray the mundane in an entertaining way. (quoted by Galvin 1988) Testimony to the success of this strategy is found in the observations of Lucy Janes, a 15-year-old Scot whose age is typical of the program’s principal demographic target. She talks about the plot – predictable, filled with clichés and relatively simple (particularly compared to Dynasty and Dallas where each character has been married to each of the others at least twice). You can play an amusing little game because of the predictability. Try to guess what he/she is going to say next. It’s easier than you think and gives the viewer a feeling of participation and achievement. (Janes 1988) Identification is encouraged by the everyday tempo and rhythm, the invariable use of eye-level camera and a thoroughly utilitarian visual style which draws no attention to itself (even Home and Away appears a little mannered in comparison). (As at July 1992, when research for this section of the chapter was completed, there were signs of Neighbours’s adopting a flashier and more sexually explicit style.)
DOI link for (the other survivor on that day was another Australian soap, Home and Away). Before treating the institutonal and textual factors which contributed to Neighbours’s success in the UK specifically, I propose ten textual reasons for its success in a range of territories. Several of these factors are noted in British press commentary, which accounted retrospectively for the massive success of Neighbours. Neighbours persisted in its success, similarly to Crocodile Dundee in 1986 in the USA, where it obliged two major film critics, Vincent Canby and Andrew Sarris, to reconsider it after they had farmed out reviews to second stringers on the film’s first appearance (Crofts 1992: 223). 1 The everyday The programme urges identification with profoundly everyday experiences: personal problems, desires, worries, fears, minor misunderstandings, romance, low-key domestic arguments. In negative accounts, the “everyday” becomes “trivial” and “banal” “dog-attackscat” stories, or, in the words of one French journal, “these clumsily intrusive neighbours whose greatest existential anguish consists in having to choose between two colours of wallpaper” (Brugière 1989: 51). Neighbours’s ordinariness and predictability largely shun the melodramatic, the concatenation of incidents, the excessive. In the words of producer, Mark Callan: We try to keep everything as simple as possible and direct it at the ordinary things that occur in every household and within every neighbourhood. We are often tempted to use a sensational story, but we pull back and say: “That’s not likely to happen.” We do best when we portray the mundane in an entertaining way. (quoted by Galvin 1988) Testimony to the success of this strategy is found in the observations of Lucy Janes, a 15-year-old Scot whose age is typical of the program’s principal demographic target. She talks about the plot – predictable, filled with clichés and relatively simple (particularly compared to Dynasty and Dallas where each character has been married to each of the others at least twice). You can play an amusing little game because of the predictability. Try to guess what he/she is going to say next. It’s easier than you think and gives the viewer a feeling of participation and achievement. (Janes 1988) Identification is encouraged by the everyday tempo and rhythm, the invariable use of eye-level camera and a thoroughly utilitarian visual style which draws no attention to itself (even Home and Away appears a little mannered in comparison). (As at July 1992, when research for this section of the chapter was completed, there were signs of Neighbours’s adopting a flashier and more sexually explicit style.)
(the other survivor on that day was another Australian soap, Home and Away). Before treating the institutonal and textual factors which contributed to Neighbours’s success in the UK specifically, I propose ten textual reasons for its success in a range of territories. Several of these factors are noted in British press commentary, which accounted retrospectively for the massive success of Neighbours. Neighbours persisted in its success, similarly to Crocodile Dundee in 1986 in the USA, where it obliged two major film critics, Vincent Canby and Andrew Sarris, to reconsider it after they had farmed out reviews to second stringers on the film’s first appearance (Crofts 1992: 223). 1 The everyday The programme urges identification with profoundly everyday experiences: personal problems, desires, worries, fears, minor misunderstandings, romance, low-key domestic arguments. In negative accounts, the “everyday” becomes “trivial” and “banal” “dog-attackscat” stories, or, in the words of one French journal, “these clumsily intrusive neighbours whose greatest existential anguish consists in having to choose between two colours of wallpaper” (Brugière 1989: 51). Neighbours’s ordinariness and predictability largely shun the melodramatic, the concatenation of incidents, the excessive. In the words of producer, Mark Callan: We try to keep everything as simple as possible and direct it at the ordinary things that occur in every household and within every neighbourhood. We are often tempted to use a sensational story, but we pull back and say: “That’s not likely to happen.” We do best when we portray the mundane in an entertaining way. (quoted by Galvin 1988) Testimony to the success of this strategy is found in the observations of Lucy Janes, a 15-year-old Scot whose age is typical of the program’s principal demographic target. She talks about the plot – predictable, filled with clichés and relatively simple (particularly compared to Dynasty and Dallas where each character has been married to each of the others at least twice). You can play an amusing little game because of the predictability. Try to guess what he/she is going to say next. It’s easier than you think and gives the viewer a feeling of participation and achievement. (Janes 1988) Identification is encouraged by the everyday tempo and rhythm, the invariable use of eye-level camera and a thoroughly utilitarian visual style which draws no attention to itself (even Home and Away appears a little mannered in comparison). (As at July 1992, when research for this section of the chapter was completed, there were signs of Neighbours’s adopting a flashier and more sexually explicit style.)
ABSTRACT
GLOBAL NEIGHBOURS?