Many thanks to Ken Mills and the whole Zilch team for choosing to air the new segment I’m co-hosting with Dr. Sarah Clark, “Monkees 101” on Global Monkees Day — what a way to celebrate!
Happy Global Monkees Day! Drs. Rosanne Welch and Sarah Clark debut their new series for Zilch! entitled Monkees 101. Join them for a fun, thoughtful romp through “Royal Flush,” the first episode of The Monkees to air 52 years ago today, September 12, 1966, and discover some of the deeper meanings of the TV show and music we all know and love to the cultural impact of the Monkees from 1966 all the way to the present. Aired on 9/12/18.
Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
She turns down the cute boy to do her job. Her job and her responsibility is being queen. Right? That’s what she’s become/ It’s not about can I get the cute boy? And I’m like Wow! Every girl in America would have said yes to the cute boy. So that was an interesting, to me, feminist thought that you should think about your position and what you’re there to do in the world. It’s not just to make some boy happy. Right? And then she invites him to come and it’s kind of cute because he says “No. What I have to do is here with the guys and our music. We have to spread our message through the world in music.” So even he is led by his purpose in the world not by “Who am I going to have sex with this week.” So I think that’s really kind of a big statement for a TV show that I was watching as a kid. My thesis at the end of the book is, if you were a girl watching in 1966, you learned that to get a Monkee you didn’t want to be a cheerleader. You wanted to be a woman of value.
Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.
The representation of women in film is often troublesome at best. Hollywood films are often extremely gendered and lack adequate female representation. Male characters greatly outnumber female characters in many films, and female characters in movies are frequently underdeveloped and greatly lack any real depth.
When women are present in film, they are often presented only in relation to men. So even when there are multiple female characters in a film, they mostly only discuss their boyfriend, husband, father or brother. Because of this, cartoonist Alison Bechdel wrote a set of rules in her comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” that could help determine whether a film presents fully formed female characters.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
She turns down the cute boy to do her job. Her job and her responsibility is being queen. Right? That’s what she’s become/ It’s not about can I get the cute boy? And I’m like Wow! Every girl in America would have said yes to the cute boy. So that was an interesting, to me, feminist thought that you should think about your position and what you’re there to do in the world. It’s not just to make some boy happy. Right? And then she invites him to come and it’s kind of cute because he says “No. What I have to do is here with the guys and our music. We have to spread our message through the world in music.” So even he is led by his purpose in the world not by “Who am I going to have sex with this week.” So I think that’s really kind of a big statement for a TV show that I was watching as a kid. My thesis at the end of the book is, if you were a girl watching in 1966, you learned that to get a Monkee you didn’t want to be a cheerleader. You wanted to be a woman of value.
Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.
Okay, I’ll admit it. They’re not the “Fab Four.” In fact, they are best known for being the “Prefab Four.” Still, that amusing — if somewhat misleading — moniker should in no way deter The Monkees from gaining enshrinement in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. For the 1960s pop music quartet of Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and the late Davy Jones, who created such chart-topping hits as “I’m a Believer,” “Daydream Believer” and “Last Train to Clarksville,” deserve to be on the scenic shores of Lake Erie as much as any of this year’s inductees.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Rosanne Welch, PhD, Author of Why The Monkees Matter, presents “How The Monkees Changed Television” at a Cal State Fullerton Lunch Lecture on May 8, 2018.
In this talk, she shows how The Monkees, and specifically their presence on television, set the stage for large changes to come in the late 1960s.
Transcript
In this case, we are looking at Princess Bettina of Harmonica. She’s the first character that we meet — the first female in the pilot episode — take that back — the first episode that aired. The Pilot was not the first episode that aired because they felt it was too different from what the show became. So this was about the 6th one that was filmed and it became the first one on the air. So here it’s called Royal Flush and Princess Bettina comes to the United States and it turns out her guardian is trying to kill her because at the stroke of her 18th birthday she takes over the kingdom and he doesn’t get to be in charge anymore. So, of course, Davy saves her life on the beach from drowning in a little bikini thing, but at the end of the episode he asks her to stay with him here in the United States and she says no because I have responsibilities for the welfare of my people.
Rosanne Welch, PhD is a writer, producer and university professor with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, Touched by an Angel and ABC NEWS/Nightline. Other books include Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture (McFarland, 2017) and Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection (ABC-CLIO, 2017), named to the 2018 Outstanding References Sources List, by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association. Welch has also published chapters in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television (I.B.Tauris) and The American Civil War on Film and TV: Blue and Gray in Black and White and Color (Lexington Books, 2018) and essays in Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology and Outside In Makes it So, and Outside in Boldly Goes (both edited by Robert Smith). By day she teaches courses on the history of screenwriting and on television writing for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting programs. Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP is available on YouTube.
It’s not quite the loss of a Beatle. But it’s obviously up there in pop culture significance, considering how TV and other media played up Wednesday’s news of the death of Davy Jones, star of TV touchstone The Monkees and the top-selling rock band of the same name.
Some will scoff — The Monkees were a manufactured group, their ’60s show looks silly, et al. But Davy Jones’ death seemed to strike a chord in baby boomers — and even in younger culture vultures, who still hear Monkees tunes like “Daydream Believer” on oldies radio, on movie soundtracks, or as background sound in public places.
Maybe it’s because The Monkees stand for a particular pop culture moment, at a confluence of events, trends and fault lines. The show’s 1966-68 TV run essentially defines the morph of what we’ll call the Mad Men ’60s — on-the-surface simple, sunny, neat — into the Vietnam-era, with all of its messy, moody, culture-shift conflicts.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
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