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
Meeting all those folks was really interesting and I realized I had much more material than just for that article. So then I started looking around and I realized there were critical studies books explaining Gilligans Island and The Brady Bunch and Hogan’s Heros and there wasn’t a book about The Monkees, which shocked me and I also knew at that time that their 50th anniversary was coming up so that’s a great time to get some free publicity so I put the book together and was able to put it out that same year so that was really a lot of fun. So we’ll talk about how The Monkees Changed Television. First of all, you’ll notice in this picture — the show on 2 Emmys in its first year. So this isn’t some piece of fluff that’s just for little children. They won for Best New Comedy Series which ranks them right up there with Seinfeld and The Big Bang Theory and all the major shows.
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.
For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!
Transcript:
He gave us Bill Potts who is Pearl Mackie over there in the corner who was the last companion we’ve seen with The Doctor. Also, and out lesbian at that time when she was introduced as that character. So these are big steps in a show that was meant, originally, for children. These are big cultural influential steps. So, I tend to like — I tend to like Steven Moffat. Also in the layout before the announcement of a female Doctor Who, he gave us a female Master. And this was a huge surprise to people. So they were laying in the groundworks so you wouldn’t be so shocked when The Doctor turned into a woman this year. In this case, Missy is what they called her. These are all the men in the past who had played the regenerations of The Master and they’re all from previous — most from old Who and then right up front we get a couple of the newer Who guys. So he planted that in the storyline and so we would have that character to deal with and Iove Missy. I think she’s like — she’s like Mary Poppins and bad steroids, but she’s quite a fun character.
Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.
When the power of television met the power of love, magic happened. We were so happy to find that through animation Daniel Tiger lives again so new generations of children can learn the lessons of Fred Rogers. This documentary needs to be seen by anyone working in television.
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
As a kid, all I wanted was to meet Micky Dolenz — who’s the guy on the far right in case you don’t know that because you’re too young to know who I’m talking about right now, but that was really funnny to me and the kids reacted well to the show and that taught me that it did have something to say to a newer generation so I thoguht, “Hmm”and then ended up writing an article — I’m on the editorial board of Written BY magazine which is the magazine of the Writers Guild of America and I wrote an article about the show, because we write about writers so I thought to myself, “Hmmm, how many of the writers are still alive?” and there were about 7 of the orignal 15 and they were welcome to chat about their time on the show. So, I met with them at their various homes in Beverly Hills, because they made a lot of money in television way back in the day and found that many of them grew up — “grew up” — they were young when they wrote on this show. They were all newcomers and many of them went on to win Emmy Awards including Treva Silverman who was the first female to be on a comedy show without a male partner. So she was solo writing on the show and we’re talking about 1966 so that was a big deal not to have a “boy” help you.
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.
For her 5th Doctor Who lecture to the CPP community, Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses how society – and the show’s writing staff – prepared the audience for a major change in this 50-year franchise – the creation of the first Lady Doctor!
Transcript:
So Russell Davies brought this new thing into the program — this new ability to represent. Now we have Steven Moffat who took over after Russell Davies and sometimes there’s controversy over Steven — was he as good, people don’t like him or they do like him. I think he did a lot of good things for the show particularly in paying with what kinds of women who traveled with The Doctor and how they were represented. Right? He gave us Amy Pond who’s married to a male nurse. We have a man in a generally, stereotypically female job and they are this perfect, lovely little couple. So I think that’s cool. He gave us Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the daughter of a character that I’ll talk about in a little bit and she’s a Brigadier in the Army. He gave us Mels who is a Time Lord herself. We’ll talk about here in a minute. he gave us the first lesbian couple and it’s a lesbian alien-human couple. Right? You can’t get much more representative than that. Right? Madame Vastra and Jennie.
Rosanne Welch PhD teaches the History of Screenwriting and One-Hour Drama for the Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting.
Writing/producing credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. In 2016 she published the book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia; and placed “Transmitting Culture Transnationally Via the Characterization of Parents in Police Procedurals” in the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Essays appear in Torchwood Declassified: Investigating Mainstream Cult Television and Doctor Who and Race: An Anthology. Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By magazine, the magazine of the Writers Guild.