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Comment > Community Spirit? by Jamie

The biggest challenge to British soaps in recent years has come from Australian soaps such as Neighbours and Home and Away; how much do these programmes conform to the British models of “soap communities”?

At one time Neighbours rivalled EastEnders for the BBC’s most-watched programme, at its peak drawing in over 16 million viewers. Since then, EastEnders has grown steadily more popular while Neighbours’ viewing figures have declined. Similarly, at one point Home and Away was perceived as a threat to Coronation Street but since then audiences have dwindled to the point of ITV selling the antipodean soap to rival 5ive.

At the core of every soap, community is very important. Without it the characters would have no ways of interconnecting, no reason to share storylines and rivalries. What differs between the soaps of different nationalities is the way in which they create a community for their characters; what allows them to include some and exclude others? What classifies them together, how do they connect, how do they communicate and why is there conflict? These questions create the tension and narrative entertainment in any soap, but they also apply to the key concepts of culture and community.

Verina Glaessner in her article Gendered Fictions, claims that: “Within the genre it is possible to suggest a broad typology. British soap operas…are broadly within the tradition of social realism, featuring everyday characters, plots, and language, often located within working-class communities.” (Goodwin and Whannel, 1990, 116)

That said, it could well be argued that the “Britishness” of a soap does not come into play. The country of origin does not affect, in the two examples below, how the communities are grouped. In EastEnders the communities are very much created by family ties – there are the Fowlers, the Mitchells and the Butchers for example. The tension tends to occur between the families as opposed to within them; the regular characters in the soap form many different communities, and it is the inter-community tension and connection that provides the entertainment. Coronation Street differs by utilising a larger concept of community – that of geographical location. Very few people, when asked, could name any of the Street’s families, and I believe that this is due to their family ties being less important. However, just because there is only the one main community in the Street, tensions within it are not ruled out. The difference between EastEnders and Coronation Street is that the former utilises intra-communal conflict whereas the latter uses inter-communal tension; the community is divided over certain rows, regardless of family or previous allegiances.

This pattern can be seen to continue “down under.” Whilst Neighbours does include family units in the list of characters, Home and Away originally worked under the pretence of featuring families that fostered children. Already in the latter example, then, we see a distortion of the previous concept of a family community, and have to look wider (as with Coronation Street) to find a community to use as a basis. So similarities can be drawn between Coronation Street and Home and Away, but what of Neighbours? Whilst there are clear families within the soap (the Ramsays, the Robinsons etc.) there is little in the way of tension between them, save the odd comedy storyline over land rights or barbecues. So perhaps Neighbours is an enigma, a soap with clear family boundaries and divisions yet which treats the community as a whole (in this case the inhabitants of Ramsay Street) as most important. Out of the two soaps with theme tunes (Home and Away being the other), this notion of a wider community spirit is prevalent too.

Neighbours, everybody needs good Neighbours
Just a friendly wave each morning
Helps to make a better day
Neighbours need to get to know each other
Next door is only a footstep away.

Neighbours, everybody needs good Neighbours
With a little understanding
You can find the perfect blend...
Neighbours should be there for one other
That’s when good Neighbours become good friends.
(Lyrics by Jackie Trent, 1985)

Compared to the love song of Home and Away, the notions of community outlined in the “mission statement” of the theme song enforce in the audience what it is they should expect. Speculating on the show’s success, executive producer of Neighbours Peter Pinne had this to say: “it provides a vision of something that is lacking in the personal lives of many people in Britain today, particularly a sense of personal commitment and caring in the community.” (Allen 1995)

By contrast, EastEnders expects the same personal commitment, but to the family above any wider notion of community. As recognised by Christine Geraghty in her article British soaps in the 1980s, “The loss of the community as a practical force and a sustaining ideal brought characters back into family relationships at key moments in the narrative… characters aspired to a notion of family unity and harmony even if it was rarely achieved.” (Strinati and Wagg, 1992, 138-9)

So while the wider community forms the norm for Australian-based soaps in EastEnders, at least, any occurrence that can put the squabbles between smaller communities aside is a rare event. Such is the scarce nature of these moments that storylines such as Dot’s wedding to Jim where the whole street joined in, despite ongoing narratives of tension between families, are momentous occasions. In Neighbours, we should look to moments of street divide as momentous. An example could be Dr. Karl’s affair with receptionist Sarah in 1997. Half of the street took the side of the doctor, declaring Sarah to be an evil temptress whilst the other half (a split even applied to the family’s children) rallied around Karl’s wife Susan and declared him to be in the wrong. In this event, the community was split and the divide then proceeded to cause further lesser tensions within the neighbourhood. Another more recent example could be the storyline in which Marc Lambert, engaged to oldest Scully girl Steph, embarked on an affair with her younger sister Felicity. This had the added effect of placing their parents in a dilemma as to which “side” to support, and once again the community was disrupted.

The main question in soap communities is the same as would affect any other community: who is included or excluded? It could be argued that the “British” (i.e. more fragmented community) model of soaps is more realistic, with its inclusion of subversive groups such as black, gay or disabled people in storylines. But at the same time the way in which these groups are further subverted by those soaps (friends-of-friends, brought in specifically for a discrimination-based storyline and then discarded) could be more harmful to the minorities’ cause than the “Australian” (i.e. one community pulling together) method of simply eliminating religion, race or sexuality from the equation. It seems that the producers of EastEnders and Brookside only include these minorities to then exclude them instantaneously, whereas Neighbours and Home and Away exclude them from the start, but allude to their existence only through stereotype and blandifiaction. (Strinati and Wagg, 1992)

By expressing a preference for a certain soap, we are also saying a lot about our own personal values. By their nature soaps are about a sense of belonging, perhaps this is why there has never been a successful British middle-class soap? Perhaps people who consider themselves middle class would not want to be seen to watch something so clearly labelled as a “soap”. What is clear is that the viewer needs to identify with the key characters in a soap to enjoy it. Just as a soap about the middle classes would not succeed to a predominantly working-class mass audience, current soaps containing only working class characters receive derision and ridicule from the middle and upper classes.

To conclude, it is a very blinkered way to look at soaps to class them using national models of “soap communities.” It would be more productive to class them as inclusive or exclusive models of soap communities; do they rely on one large community such as Home and Away, Neighbours and Coronation Street or do they instead examine fragmented, (possibly more post-modern?) communities in the way of EastEnders and Brookside? While it could be argued that the fragmented view of soap communities leans more towards British models of soaps, to class them solely as this is wrong and very narrow-minded.

Bibliography:

British Soaps in the 1980s by Christine Geraghty, in Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain (D. Strinati and S. Wagg, Eds.) Routledge, London, 1992

Global Neighbours? by Stephen Crofts in To be Continued… Soap Operas Around the World (R. C. Allen, Ed) Routledge, London, 1995

Gendered Fictions by Verina Glaessner in Understanding Television (A. Goodwin and G. Whannel, Eds.) Routledge, London, 1990

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