“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…
Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references. Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016
Transcript:
In the Star Trek episode you are seeing this woman with this very interesting outfit. There was a censor on the set when they filmed it to make sure that it didn’t move so that you would never saw the bottom of her breast. It was illegal to show the bottom of a female’s breast on television. So the side was OK. You get a little side picture there. and you may or may not know agin from Star Trek that this is the first interracial kiss ever on television and the censors did not want to allow it. the only way to do it was they did not want to be kissing. They were forced to do it by some Greek gods who were having fun with the humans.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
A couple of photographs from my “Why The Monkees Matter” book signing in St. Louis today. It has been a busy week as I was at the Citizen Jane Film Festival in Columbia, MO where my Stephen College MFA in Screenwriting students were presenting a panel of papers on historic women screenwriters. it was well received and one of the most well-attended of all the panels. I look forward to doing this in future years, too.
After that, and a series of meetings with Stephens College folk, it was time to head off to St. Louis for a 1 pm signing of “Why the Monkees Matter” at a local Barnes and Noble. I worked hard to set up this signing when I heard that the Monkees would be performing in St. Louis tonight.
After meeting some great people at the signing it was time for some dinner with a collection of fans from the Zilch Podcast, where I’ve been interviewed about the book, and then off to the concert.
After this whirlwind, I’ll be heading back to work in California on Sunday.
Thanks for all who turned out and bough the book at Barnes and Noble and elsewhere. It is great to be able to share my feelings on The Monkees and find the others are just as interested — if not more so — than I am.
The Kind of Girl I Could Love: Feminism in The Monkees
In 58 episodes none of the fictional Monkees ever ended up in bed with a girl, they never mistreated a girl and almost never chased the skirt of a bimbo. Only once did a lead character make a sexually provocative joke.
They decided Mike would represent ‘us’, the leader, the one with his feet on the ground; Micky was meant to be the crazy off-the-wall type; Davy was a heartthrob, and then they came to the decision whether Peter would play a genius or a total idiot. “It was like voting on deciding the Pope. Sadly Peter was so smart and so perceptive and so insightful and yet we decided to make his character a total idiot for the sake of the comedy.”
Thanks to the magic of Skype I was able to appear as a guest lecturer for the St. Scholastica Academy Honors Sociology class. Their engaging teacher has been using The Monkees to illustrate concepts in Sociology all year long and so I tailored this talk to the aspects of the book that discuss how feminism, civil rights and ethnic studies are represented in episodes of the show.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona. In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University. She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.
Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”
It’s no surprise that Meyerson and Silverman became good friends during their two seasons on the show, to the point where they partnered up for some later work on other series (Captain Nice, Accidental Family) because Silverman was the other writer who happily identified with the counter-culture world of the time. “I remember going back East and telling my old college roommates that I had started smoking grass. They were shocked.
![Treva Silverman and the Writer’s Room from An Interview with Dr. Rosanne Welch, Author of “Why The Monkees Matter” on the Zilch Podcast [Audio]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Zilch48-940x198.jpg)
![Star Trek, Sex, and Race from 1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (0:50)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/monkees-censorship-09-star-trek.jpeg)
![Why The Monkees Matter Presentation for St. Scholastica Academy Honors Sociology class [Video] (40:43)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/rmw-scholastica.jpeg)
