Susan Berridge

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Liz Giuffre's earlier blog '[From Ramsay Street, With
Love](https://cstonline.net/from-ramsay-street-with-love)' starts with
an apology and ends with an assurance that Australians know that
long-running soap *Neighbours* is 'a bit embarrassing and a bit
backward'. As a Scottish fan of the soap, I read her blog with
fascination. Giuffre's response resonates with my own experience of
speaking with Australian friends (not just friends -- anyone I encounter
that has spent time in Australia really) about the programme -- there's
often a hint of fondness there, but this tends to be nostalgic fondness
for the soap in the 1980s, rather than an interest in it now. There's
also often a lot of eye-rolling, as if they get asked about it all the
time, reinforcing Giuffre's argument that the programme is culturally
embarrassing.

This idea of *Neighbours *as an embarrassing 'guilty pleasure' is
something that I frequently encounter. As a new-semester ice-breaker, I
often ask students what their favourite television programmes are,
starting by telling them that mine is *Neighbours*. This disclosure
commonly prompts giggling and groans. In part, I do this because it is
the truth -- I absolutely love *Neighbours* -- but also because I find
it useful to emphasise to students from the outset that I am no TV snob
and that there is more to television studies than discussing 'quality'
(often male-centred, HBO) shows.

My fandom meant that I read Giuffre's blog rather defensively. It is a
defensiveness I feel regularly when I sit down to watch *Neighbours* and
the subtitler gets the main characters' names wrong, calling Toadie
'Tony' and Amber 'Emma' (I watch a lot of TV with subtitles and no sound
these days in the futile hope that my young children won't notice and
ask to change the channel, but that's a whole other blog), or when the
continuity announcer interrupts the credits with a cheery and flippant
remark after a particularly sad episode ending.

So my first instinct was to defend the show. And I do
think *Neighbours* has done some interesting things. Giuffre herself
notes Charlene's occupation in the 80s as a tomboy mechanic. More
recently, the show has introduced core gay characters who live on the
street and function as more than just side-kicks to their heterosexual
friends, and in keeping with the soap tradition of tackling topical
social issues, there have been storylines about public breast-feeding,
sexual assault and PTSD. At the moment, there is interesting narrative
about a young dad experiencing post-natal depression. There are also
some great performances. When discussing performance, the tendency is
often to focus on actors who have moved from *Neighbours* into high
profile US television or film roles (Guy Pearce, for example, or more
recently Margot Robbie), but I'd argue that Susan and Karl Kennedy are
just as note-worthy for over two-decades' worth of seemingly effortless
on-screen intimacy as husband and wife.

However, I'm aware that this defensiveness isn't really useful or
interesting. In many ways, Giuffre's blog is spot on. One of the things
I like most about *Neighbours *(and often soaps more widely) is that it
doesn't take itself too seriously and is frequently self-aware. The
30^th^ Anniversary TV Special, for example, featured actors laughing at
some of their particularly sloppy acting moments as well as mocking
their more hardcore fans (something I'll admit that I found a bit
uncomfortable). As feminist scholars of soap opera in the 1980s
importantly argued, it is possible for viewers to be both emotionally
involved with a programme and able to critique it at the same time.
Moreover, the very fact that I am writing this blog as a Scottish
television scholar reinforces Giuffre's bemusement relating to the UK's
love of the soap.

But rather than focusing on *Neighbours *as a source of cultural
embarrassment, recently I've been thinking about its possibilities as a
source of cultural *value*, particularly in relation to TV tourism. As I
noted in a
previous [blog](https://cstonline.net/scott-and-charlene-forever),
footage of Scott and Charlene's wedding occupies a prominent space in
the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne and tourists can
go on guided tours of the set, meet members of the cast at official
"Neighbours Nights" held in local pubs and visit the real Ramsay Street
(Pin Oak Court in the suburb of Vermont). The majority of my British
friends have taken the time to engage with some aspect
of *Neighbours *culture when visiting Melbourne, regardless of whether
they actively watch the soap. Making this connection to tourism
explicit, episodes of *Neighbours *frequently end with the direct
address of cast members, inviting viewers to enter competitions to win
trips to Melbourne and meet the cast.

There is a growing body of literature on television tourism, such as
Joanne Connell's (2005) research into the impact of *Balamory *on
tourism in the Isle of Mull, Scotland and the [Screening the Nation:
Landmark Television in
Wales](http://culture.research.southwales.ac.uk/screeningthenation/) project
(Blandford, Lacey, McElroy, Williams, 2009 -- 2010) which explored,
among other things, discourses of tourism around programmes
including *Doctor Who *and *Torchwood*. I've also come across several
articles on tourism in relation to film lately, especially in a Scottish
context in which current discussions about the establishment of a local
film and television studio have led to wider debates about the cultural
and economic impact of the Scottish screen industries. While these
articles focus predominantly on tourism in relation to film, they often
also include examples from television but with little consideration of
medium specificity. This is what I'm interested in looking at further.
There is arguably something very different about visiting the site in
which a film was made to visiting the location of a long-running
television series. These series have the potential to offer a much
stronger sense of place. Indeed, speaking to the importance of place, in
a
previous [blog](https://cstonline.net/what-can-wales-learn-from-nordic-noir) on
Scandinavian crime drama, Ruth McElroy (2013) comments upon the
'palpable sense of place which suffuses the narrative and which goes
well beyond being a context for the plot's action to become more of a
character in itself'.

These research ideas are at a very early stage, but I am interested in
looking further at the impact of medium specificity on experiences of
television tourism. How does TV tourism (and I'm thinking specifically
about tourism connected to long-form narratives, such as soaps and drama
series) differ from film tourism? How does medium specificity intersect
with the viewer/tourist's engagement with a place? My own experience of
visiting film locations has mainly been about trying to recall a few key
scenes. In contrast, my experience of visiting TV locations was much
more about trying to tap into an abstract and yet more powerful feeling
and sense of place conveyed by particular shows. To return to the
discussion of *Neighbours, *when visiting Melbourne I declined the
opportunity to visit the studio sets or meet the cast as I didn't want
to be made aware of the soap's artifice. My main pleasure on visiting
Pin Oak Court, the real Ramsay Street, was precisely the ability to
suspend my disbelief and imagine that the characters were really in the
houses, the only major give-away being the lone security car in the
driveway. It was an overwhelming experience that speaks to the intensity
of viewer engagement that can be enabled by long-running narratives on
television and it is this that I want to get to grips with further in
relation to TV tourism.

 

**Susan Berridge **is Lecturer in Film and Media and a member of the
Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University of Stirling.
Her research focuses on representations of age, gender, sexuality and
sexual violence in popular culture. She has published on these themes in
journals including *Feminist Media Studies, The Journal of British
Cinema and Television *and *New Review of Film and Television
Studies. *Susan is also the co-editor of the Commentary and Criticism
section of *Feminist Media Studies.*


Liz Giuffre’s earlier blog ‘From Ramsay Street, With Love’ starts with an apology and ends with an assurance that Australians know that long-running soap
<em>
 Neighbours
</em>
is ‘a bit embarrassing and a bit backward’. As a Scottish fan of the soap, I read her blog with fascination.

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