Podcast – Page 94 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Who is the Manliest Companion on Doctor Who? from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video] (2:13)

Dr. Rosanne Welch presents “How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity: A Study of the Doctors and their Male Companions“ at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library. Dr. Welch teaches in the IGE (Interdisciplinary General Education) program.

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Transcript:

I didn’t pick, because I’m not going to pick for you. You’ve got to pick for yourself. These are the messages that we’re being sent by this piece o popular culture. So, how we’re relating to those messages is the question. What I did do was look into who the show named as the most manly man and they did in The Day of the Doctor. They made a choice. They mentioned the man that all men should live up to. Anyone remember who it was? It’s at the very end of The Day of the Doctor. And it’s John Hurt talking. He’s made that choice, right, in the end. Made the cool choice not to bow everybody up. I thought that was brilliant writing. Who knew you could do that? Literally, re-wrote the last 10 years of the series with that one choice. Who did he pick as the manliest man ever to appear on Doctor Who? A Woman! A modern women is the equal to any man. That’s a modern an talking. That’s a modern man thinking about people as complete and total equals and, to me, that was so cool when I stumbled on that. Didn’t even occur to me. Now, Clara’s not necessarily my favorite character, but in this particular episode she helped a decision be made that saved the world. She’s the one who told him he didn’t have to drop the bomb. That’s a huge, manly, choice. She influenced the lives of millions by standing up and saying that. So, I think that was hilarious and wonderful which brings us back to that first quote. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” Right now! Today! Which means be a good family man. There you have it. Thank you so much for coming.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Who is the Manliest Man on Doctor Who? from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video] (1:30)

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Transcript:

That leaves me with wondering, of all The Doctors who is the manliest man? I think it’s an interesting thing to ponder. We’re critically thinking about our media and what messages is our media sending us. Who do we bond with? Who do we think’s the best? I’ll tell you. None of them. Why can’t any of them be the manliest man? They aren’t men. They’re aren’t human. They’re Timelords. None of them can be the manliest man. All right. They’re all Timelords. However, I’m very interested in the actual men who have appeared on the show. So from that group. who do we think defines masculinity in the modern world best?

Student: “Is it Rory?

Ooo, why?

Student: “Because he’s a family man”

He does it all! He’s a family man, but he’s also a warrior and a protector and he’s a good dad to both the baby and to the grownup River, who he didn’t get a chance to know. Imagine – that’s like an adoption story, where you meet your child when they’re a grownup and how do you make a relationship with someone who you didn’t share any time with. You’ve got to start from scratch and that’s exactly what he has to do with River Song. It’s a very modern story. In the days before, when you never opened adoption paperwork and you couldn’t know that. So, I think that Rory is a very modern guy. And a very manly man. He was good pirate, too. When he had to be.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as Father Figure 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video] (1:35)

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Transcript:

We learn that he has a daughter. So in the modern Who, the military person is Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, his daughter. So. she’s inherited her father’s job, if you will. She’s a science officer more than a military officer with UNIT, which is the group that takes care of all of that. So, we meet Kate and when we get to Death in Heaven the problem is all the corpses have been turned into Cybermen and their all rising out of the cemetery and, at a certain point, we lose Kate — they toss her out of an airplane, so we know she’s dead, right? Because she hit the ground, splat, she’s dead. Except among all the corpses we’ve been reminded is her father who has been turned into a Cyberman and when we go to that point in the episode we find out that she’s still walking around the cemetery. She hasn’t been harmed, because she never went splat. He caught her and brought her to the ground safely. He protected his child all the way to the end and then he went up to heaven with Danny. Danny pulled all the Cybermen out and it’s The Doctor — never salutes because he doesn’t like the military — but for this act — the act of saving his child, he’s going to salute and I think that speaks to what The Doctor thinks about what makes a man a man. And again, it’s all tied into being part of a family.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as Father Figure from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video] (1:07)

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Transcript:

We’ll go back in history to one character I don’t think we give enough attention to, and that’s Lethbridge-Stewart, who arrives in the Jon Pertwee era as a military dude, so he’s a warrior from that period and that’s largely what we see him do for a long time. Again, we’re in the 70s now, so we’re not thinking about dads as an important role for men. But, as we go through time and the show stays on the air, guess what? He grows older, you know, because time flies and actors are actual humans and he appears on The Sarah Jane Adventures here as Lethbridge-Stewart so he still exists in her time period. He’s a grandfatherly type and he’s going to help her with some adventures. Now, because he’s a real human being, he passed away. By the time we got to Capaldi’s episodes — and now here I’m in Death in Heaven — he has passed away and so this is a portrait. We have to be reminded of his existence and his character in case you’ve never seen the show before, because we’re going to move to the ending place in this episode where he does the most fatherly, heroic thing.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Danny Pink and Fatherhood Part 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:10)

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Transcript:

…and then what happens, God Forbid. You did realize there would be spoilers. Right? I assume people have seen these episodes. God Forbid, he is turned into a Cyberman, too and this so awful, so awful. But. He is a warrior and he’s able to do a thing that will save the family around him — the people of Earth, right?…by beating the Cybermen by getting all the other Cybermen to follow him up. he loses Clara, which is terrible, but, being the show, he gets that second chance to come back from the afterlife and he doesn’t take it, because there’s only one chance to come back and instead he gives it to little Afghan boy that he killed by accident, when he was at war. So, he gives up his happiness and his chance essentially at a resurrection to give it to the child whose chance he took away and he sends that child back into the world so he can start again. Again, if that isn’t the pseudo-father to that child than I don’t know who is.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Danny Pink and Fatherhood from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (0:49)

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Transcript:

Now we go back to Danny Pink. Danny we don’t get a chance to see do the whole Dad thing, but we see a few things. First of all, what’s his job when he’s not being a soldier? He’s a teacher. So, we define again teacher as a gendered kid of job. We generally see women int he education field. Especially when it’s in middle school, elementary school, a few more guys in high school, but largely we see that as a female job, because it’s about nurturing a younger generation of people. So, as a teacher we see him protective of the children in his care. He is their pseudo-father when they are at school with him and I think that’s really important. That’s how Danny is defined for us. We see him first as this and then we hear about the warrior — oh yeah, he was a soldier. So his first definition is this.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Saved By Fatherhood from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:35)

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Transcript:

One of my favorite episodes to do with family and fatherhood is the episode where James Corden guest starred as Craig Owens and his job was to take care of his baby and he was very bad at it. How many people have seen this episode? How cute it Stormageddon? I have a question for…of course, James Corden from “Into The Woods” right now and he’s also on his TV show, but what’s great about this episode is what saves his life? Does being a warrior save his life? Does being super-intelligent save his life? When the Cybermen show up and turn him into a Cyberman — which have never seen anyone undo. Once the Cybermen get you, you are done and the poor Doctor has to do that emotion inhibitor thing and suddenly you feel emotions and you blow up. it’s the only way to kill you once your a Cyberman. Except for him. He breaks the bond of “cyber” because he hears his baby cry and his need to save his child is stronger then the pull the Cybermen have on him in this metal casket that they’re creating around him. If that’s not a Dad, I don’t know what is. If that’s not a man who defines himself by his fatherhood, I do not know what is. So, I thinks a really interesting again, turn, in the modern Who. This is how Steven Moffat is defining masculinity as men who love their families. That’s the highest calling that a man can be brought to.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Rory Williams – Family Man Part 3 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:14)

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Transcript:

So Rory is a reflection of modern day fathers and what women are looking for ina modern man, if they’re going to spend the rest of their life. You want somebody else who’s going to help you clean the toilet. Right? When you get married, it’s not just you cooking dinner every night. It’s a shared job. It didn’t use to be. I had a friend who would go to work, her husband got home an hour before she did. He would sit on the couch and wait for her to get home and start making dinner, ’cause dinner was her job. Yeah, yeah. So things have switched around and the show is reflective of that. I think that’s really beautiful. And, of course, we know who the baby grew up to be. River Song! Who allows us a family of “Ponds”, even though they were stripped of the chance to raise her. We now have a Pond family as part of The Doctor’s story and again Rory overlooking all of that. He had to deal with his feelings of losing his chance to raise his child. That was something that harmed him, more than all the danger. How many times did Rory die. Really now. All those deaths didn’t bother him nearly as much as being denied the chance to raise his own child. So, I think that defines him much more deeply as a family man above all other things.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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Rory Williams – Family Man Part 2 from How Doctor Who Redefined Masculinity [Video Clip] (1:08)

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Transcript:

Of course, along the way, he gets to be a full family man because…he and Amy have a baby! I think it’s very important. There’s a photography of him holding his child. It’s not just her always holding the baby and taking care of it, this is a shared parenting which is part of the modern generation. You all are probably lucky. Your Dad’s were probably more involved, but if you get back to my generation’s Dad, there the folks that went to work, came home, had dinner, watched TV qnd never talked to their kids and that was what men did. Right? And over the course of a couple of generations, parenting has become a co-job and you can see a Dad just as easily taking his kid to the doctor or going to a school function and helping out. it’s become a definition of men in this new generation to be family caretakers — to be involved — to go to the soccer games even if their not coaching , right? And to go to the birthday parties at school when you have to hand out little cupcakes with candles in them. That’s become a new definition, right? You all are probably more used to that, but it’s not something that happened in the past.

A clip from this 5th talk on various aspects of Doctor Who presented by Dr. Welch. You can find Dr. Welch’s other Doctor Who talks using the links below.

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The Vagina Monologues 2016 – Rosanne performs “The Flood”

The Vagina Monologues 2016 – Rosanne performs “The Flood”

On Tuesday February 16th the Women’s Resource Center of CalPoly Pomona presented their 15th annual performance of Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues“.

My colleague Peg Lamphier and I joined a cadre of talented students in performing one monologue together. Then a student dropped out and the director asked me to cover for her so this is my rendition of a monologue entitled “The Flood”. It came from Ensler’s extensive interviews with women over the age of 65, many of whom were not able to say the word ‘vagina’ out loud.

The best thing about the evening (besides ‘acting’ on stage again!) was watching all the students create a bond over the material – and watching those who had sat shyly in the back of some of my classroom discussions suddenly shouting “Vagina!” or impersonate moaning… We had to stifle our laughter backstage during most of the show. But seeing all these female students become sisters through theatre was the best.

Link: Cal Poly Pomona Women’s Resource Center

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