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Not on the Beach, but in the Suburbs: Revisiting the Neighbours Controversy.
Alan McKee, English Department, UQ
| [ Go to this paper in the timetable ] |
This paper contributes to discussion of Australia’s cultural heritage by analysing a great moment in Australian television with the same lack of self-consciousness with which other media are examined (television’s great programs are as worthy of study as cinema’s great films – although the definition of ‘great’ I am using here might be quite a different one). The paper revisits the controversy around Neighbours when the program became popular in Britain; the way in which it came to stand for the whole of Australia; and the kind of Australia (a suburban one) which it presented to the world. Home and Away is mentioned by contrast: a beached Australia which also became popular in Britain, but without the same controversial requirement to represent Australia.
