Academic literature on the topic 'Crocodile Physics program'

"large audience” (Goldstein 1983: 26); and “Here was an Australian with a wry sense of humor and gruff charm [this was post-Crocodile Dundee], equally alluring to men and women” (Brown 1987: 33). In other words, Robert Scorpio is conveniently – if not tokenistically – played by an Australian. The limits of tolerance of the non-American for the world of network soap are instanced in General Hospital’s casting criteria for an (American) actor to play Robert Scorpio’s long-lost brother, Malcolm. The actor, John J. York, is quoted in the ABC house journal, Episodes, saying: “They didn’t want a strong dialect [sic] . . . . They didn’t want a Paul Hogan type, because that accent is too strong. They were saying ‘just a hint’” (Kump 1991: 29). The Australian is more “exotic” than Peter Pinne may have wished: too exotic. Just the accent, though, if muted, can have an appealing otherness. The second index of the acceptability of the non-American, again Australian, has yet to be tested on the American market place. Called Paradise Beach, it is not a ready-made Australian soap seeking overseas sales, but a co-production between the Australian-based Village Roadshow, Australia’s Channel 9, and the American New World Entertainment, which has secured pre-sales to the CBS network at 7:30 p.m. week-nights (beginning June 14, 1993) and Britain’s Sky Channel as well as in nine other territories worldwide (Gill 1993; Chester 1993; Shohet 1993). As an Australian-based soap directed primarily at a teen audience, it recalls Neighbours and Home and Away. As a youth drama serial set in a beach tourism center, it recalls Baywatch and summer holiday editions of Beverly Hills 90210. And like Melrose Place and the Australian E Street, each episode includes what one report breathily calls “an MTV moment . . . a two-minute montage of sleek shots of beautiful bodies and plenty of sun, surf and sand set to the latest pop music hit” (Shohet 1993: 5). Set in and around Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast, it recalls, for Australian viewers, the 1983 film, Coolangatta Gold, which celebrates Australian beach culture (see Crofts 1990). It is noteworthy indeed that most of the performers are recuited from a model agency, not an actor’s agency. An American actor, Matt Lattanzi, plays an American photographer, and Australian actor, Tiffany Lamb, sports an American accent. There is a concern, understandable in a program sold overseas, to make Australian colloquialisms comprehensible (Gill 1993: 2). In terms of physical geography, the locations are Australian; in terms of cultural geography, Queensland’s Gold Coast is substantially indistinguishable from much of Florida and parts of California and Hawaii. The era of the co-production re-poses the question of the degree of acceptability of non-American material in the American market-place by begging the question of the distinguishability of the two. But given the unequal cultural exchange long obtaining between Australia and the US, with shows like Mission: Impossible being filmed in Australia to take advantage of cheap labor; given the tight money of Paradise Beach’s shooting schedule of 2.5 hours of soap per week; and given New World’s Head’s, James McNamara, ignorance of Australian soaps (“Paradise Beach is the first soap to be skewed at a teen audience” (quoted by Gill 1993: 2)), one might wonder which party is defining the." In To Be Continued... Routledge, 2002. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203131855-25.