dewelch – Page 19 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch (https://rosannewelch.com) speaks on “Feminism in the Whoniverse” of Doctor Who, the BBC television program now in its 50th year. She reviews each of the Doctor’s female companions and speaks on how they are represented in the program and how they represented the women of their respective periods.

Transcript:

Sara Kingdom. So now we’re thinking, what are the jobs of the women he is going to meet? They’re not all housewives. They’re not girlfriends. They can’t all be his granddaughter. So, who are these women? In this case, Sara Kingdom is a double-agent. So, we have a spy. Remember, now we’re in the late 60’s. The Cold War is going on. We think spies are very cool. We have The Avengers on English television. So, ooo, spies. A lot of chicks are spies. Really, in the real world, not that many were, but TV and the movies are our place to fantasize what we would like to be. So, Sara is a cool character. if you notice here, this is Jean Marsh as an actress and a writer she is a very important person. She is going to invent a program called Upstairs, Downstairs. Which was the Downton Abbey of its day. It’s going to be a huge success. She’s going to star in it and write the entire set of segments. So, she’s a very important performer and writer as well as she is a pretty interesting character that we meet along the way. Now, we’ve got to get into the question, though, what makes chicks tougher is putting them into pictures with guns. I’m not a fan of that, but frankly our culture and at this point English culture to an extent, had the idea that that makes them cool. l.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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‘Bye Al – and Thanks for All the Orange Juice…

The writing world lost Al Martinez today – a beloved columnist from the LA Times who taught me about all the nooks and crannies and characters in Los Angeles when we first moved here. I had the pleasure of having breakfast with him many times at Jerry’s Diner after I began publishing reflections on my neighborhood in the Times. I had the audacity to email him about a column of his I particularly liked and then ask his opinion on one of mine that had recently been published. Al invited me to lunch to chat of TV (since he had written for a few shows) and life in general and it became an irregularly scheduled event for a few years.

He would bring me autographed copies of his latest books and ask MY opinion of HIS writing. The best thing he ever told me/taught me was that he always conducted interviews withOUT a tape recorder. He figured when he went to write the article or column, whatever he remembered was the most interesting part of the interview so that would be all that he needed… That’s the sign of a natural reporter. What I loved about his columns was that he covered real people from all over the city for all those years. AND when the LA Times first let him go after 25 years the outrage from readers was sooooo strong, they instantly rehired him for another few years.

Then I had the guts to ask him to write the Back of Book Blurb for the book Dawn and I co-edited in 2004, Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family. THAT was a compliment and a great honor. Guess now it’s time to start rereading all his work again. Believe me, it’s worth the read. And Al was sooo worth getting to know.

Al Martinez dies at 85; Times columnist chronicled Southern California life from The Los Angeles Times

Books by Al Martinez

My book, for which Al wrote the blurb:

News: WGA Presentation to students of FAMU Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts of Prague

On Wednesday January 7th I had the great pleasure of attending a special lecture given by writer-producer Jeff Melvoin to the students of Pavel Jech, Dean of the world renowned FAMU Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. What fun to spend a morning discuss the differences in how our two countries prepare writers to work in these areas!

Jeff gave a great presentation on A Day in the Life of an American Showrunner, based on lectures he gives for the Showrunner program he helped found at the Writers Guild of America, West. Then we all walked over to the 3rd Street Farmers Market for lunch and casual conversation.

I was particularly interested because my father was Czechoslovakian but since he left when I was so young, I’ve never learned much about the country or its history (in fact most of what I learned I learned from reading the memoir former Secretary of State Madeline Albright wrote – Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948). So it was interesting to meet with students who could have been me had my father’s parents never emigrated to the U.S.

The whole day was arranged by Ken Lazebnik, Director of the new MFA in TV and Screenwriting for Stephens College, with whom I am proud to be working to get this new program up and on its feet.

Video: Katerina from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

After her, we come up with Katerina, who is a really interesting woman. She’s only in a short segment with The Doctor — a short few episodes, but she risks her life — sacrifices her life — to save The Doctor, because he is more important to the world. She has made that decision. Now part of that is a little “Oooo, I don’t know” but then I went, she made the decision and that’s the important thing about being a feminist person — a humanist person. She decided that he had something to give the world that needed to be allowed to continue and she was going to sacrifice. So, it’s a very much like a nice military story where one guy has to throw himself on the grenade and that sort of thing. So Katerina is pretty cool.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Video: Vicki as Companion from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

Once she leaves, and Susan leaves, we end up with Vicki — who is quite a lovely girl, but she does a lot of screaming and she doesn’t necessarily balance that out with much else. So, we do a little dip here, where we’re not being very empowered. And she left to marry a Trojan man — because she travelled to ancient Troy…. All right, so she left to marry a guy. She didn’t go an heal the world, fix anything, she just like fell in love with a cute guy wearing a little sword and short skirt thing and that’s it. So, I’m not too excited about Vicki, but you know, we have to pay attention to her.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Video: Barbara and The Doctor from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

The Aztec episode, exactly. I love the cover with Barbara in the lovely Aztec headdress. And here, she had to learn a lesson from The Doctor about the fact that she had to allow human sacrifice to continue because that was the culture in which he had travelled and it wasn’t his business to decide that their religious practices were wrong. Because that’s not his business. It’s their business to decide how they feel about it. so, that’s a good example of what she brought to him and to the debates on the show.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Book: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Tinay Fey does not need me to write a review of her book as she is Tina Fey and I am not. And because it sat on the New York Times BestSeller List for a good long time. And because she won the Mark Twain Award for humor a few years ago. And because she spent more time writing for network television than I did. But I am compelled to write a review of Bossypants because I have never laughed so much in my life.

If you read nothing else, you have to read the chapter on her father, Don Fey, and the incident with the rug shampooer. Priceless. It’s the one time in decades that I wished I had had a dad in order to tell that kind of joke and later to relate what it was like to watch someone like Lorne Michaels meet someone like Don Fey. Priceless.

Maybe it helps that I, too, am a short-statured brunette who survived growing up in the Midwest in the reign of Reagan and I had many of the same crazy, gay-male-friends-coming-out-to-me-and-only-me during college theatre experiences as Fey has had. Maybe it helps that I, too, have often been the ‘bossiest’ or ‘pushiest’ short-statured brunette in a room full of blondes (whether they be men or women). Maybe it helps that I, too, have been a working mom in businesses where all the men have wives to handle the personal side of their lives. But I don’t think so.

What’s so great about the book — besides the fact that I laughed so hard for so long so many times that my cats came to sit with me because they thought the tears running down my face meant I was watching The Way We Were again – is that she is such a good writer that she brought me to true tears in a paragraph about working with homeless men at a YMCA in her first just-out-of-college job on Christmas Eve while Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” played on her Walkman. Heck, I just brought myself to tears summarizing her story!

Sometimes she gives you a funny metaphor followed by an asterisk and rather than having the asterisk lead to a citation (like most of my academic books do) her asterisks lead to a choice of two or three other funny lines she could have used instead, giving you the option of which laugh works best for you. Or they clarify the truth behind a sarcastic point she has made, just in case you, the reader, are not fully schooled in the realities of being a woman in improv in Chicago in the 1990s.

Clearly, I LOVED this book. I think the final cherry on top of the sundae of reading was that one of her final chapters dealt with managing a weekend that involved Oprah Winfrey guesting on 30 Rock, herself doing her Sarah Palin impression on SNL that evening, and hosting her toddler daughter’s pirate birthday party the next day. To Fey’s credit she ranked each of these events evenly, though the photo she chose to include celebrated the success of her pirate cake and not of either of the other successes of that wild and weary working mother weekend.

Video: Barbara Wright from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

Now the other, early, first partner with the Doctor is Barbara. This is a backstage scene and she is also here with the actress playing Susan. Barbara was a history teacher. Isn’t that perfect? It’s a show about… (inaudible) They’re the coolest people I know.Heavens to Betsys. Just like Clara. So, we’re seeing exactly, there’s a circle we’re going to watch happen here which is very interesting. So, Barbara — and that was the idea, that you’d need a history teacher to interpret the things that The Doctor was seeing, for the audience, but that also meant that a mature woman was traveling with him. She is a little bit of a mother figure for Susan. So she can have conversations about things with her and likewise, Barbara has the intellect to challenge The Doctor. “You can’t behave like that! I won’t allow it. I have some power here. I know where this culture is going in history and you cannot doa thing that will mess them up.” So, she’s a very interesting balance for the Doctor. In the very beginning, we have some very — I would say — feminist females hanging out with The Doctor.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Video: Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers at the 2014 Cal Poly Pomona Provost’s Symposium on Faculty Scholarship (http://www.cpp.edu/~research/)

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Description:

Based on a chapter in my upcoming book The Metatextual Menagerie that was The Monkees, which includes aseries of interviews conducted with surviving writers and performers of the 1960s television program, The Monkees I willdiscuss how the writers and actors used the show as a platform for their own emerging counter culture/anti-war messages.

Worth studying for its craft and place in television history (the show won an Emmy as Best Comedy Of 1967) the program’strue importance may come from its impact on the politics and culture of the era. Considered innocuous by the network, thepress and the parents of the era, the storylines and jokes created by the writers and the actor’s ad-libs brought theemerging counter-culture to the attention of young teens whose parents might not have appreciated the message. Culturalicons such as Timothy Leary recognized the subversive nature of the program, seen through the writing and in choicesmade about costuming, hair length, musical guests (Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Charlie Smalls) and songs performed by theband brought issues of Vietnam, voting and civil rights to the ‘young generation’ for whom the show clearly had ‘somethin’to say.

Dr. Rosanne Web Site and Bloghttps://rosannewelch.com

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About the Symposium:

The 2014 Provost’s Symposium is a forum to learn about each other’s scholarly work, make new friends, renew old acquaintances, and enhance our appreciation of the rich and diverse array of professional endeavors pursued by the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona.

Video More than screaming from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

A clip from this longer presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Watch this entire presentation – Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Transcript:

Now, the complaint about some of the early female characters is that they were hired — the artreses would say — hired for their ability to (Screams) scream. (Laughter) Because their job was going to stand there and go (Screams) “It’s a big scary monsters!” Right? That’s not very empowering. Not a very empowering stance to take. However, while they were busy screaming, they were also often challenging The Doctor as to what her was going and how he should behave when he crosses into new cultures. Which, of course, is something we chat about in lots of history courses and in the IGE stuff that I do, it’s all about cultures coming together. And that’s what The Doctor is doing. So usan is a really interesting character. I liked her. I was interested by her. I like what she did. She left the show to go rebuild Earth. She traveled to the Earth many times. Seen it nearly destroyed. In this last episode she was in, Dalek Invasion, she saw, of course, the Grand Daleks ruin the world and so she chose — which is a staple of feminism — choosing the thing you will do with your life. She chooses to leave her grandfather behind — go travel without me — I’ve been there, done that — I don’t need to see any more dinosaurs. I want to stay here on this place that has been ruined and I want to use my female power to heal. That’s what I want to do with the rest of my time. And I think that makes her a really very powerful character, despite the fact that in many early episodes she scream a lot.

Feminism in the Whoniverse was presented at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library where Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

This is the 4th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who that Dr. Welch has presented. You can find these talks using the links below.

Subscribe to Dr. Welch’s YouTube Channel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Author: dewelch

Video: Companion Sara Kingdom from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

‘Bye Al – and Thanks for All the Orange Juice…

News: WGA Presentation to students of FAMU Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts of Prague

Video: Katerina from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Video: Vicki as Companion from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Video: Barbara and The Doctor from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Book: Bossypants by Tina Fey

Video: Barbara Wright from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Video: Why Monkees Matter: How The Writing Staff of The Monkees Brought the 1960s Counter Culture to Mainstream Pre-Teen Viewers

Video More than screaming from Doctor Who: Feminism in the Whoniverse with Dr. Rosanne Welch