On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
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.
Fred Rogers, our friend, and neighbor on CBS Sunday Morning
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.
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
About Rosanne Welch, PhD
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.
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Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)
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.
Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch
Rosanne Welch, PhD
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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
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![01 Introduction from How The Monkees Changed Television with Rosanne Welch, PhD [Video] (0:50)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/monkees-tv-01-intro.png)
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
We’re going to talk about what was my favorite tv show when I was about 7-years-old and who knew that I would grow up and become a professor of Television Studies and I was asked at one point here at Fullerton to do a summer program we have for students, Gear Up, which is a program for students from high schools who are going to be introduced to what college is like so that they can be more comfortable signing up. It’s low income/high-achieving kids and so for that, they asked me to do a class in Critical Studies which is how to see into television programming, what was the ideology? What was behind the ideas of the show? And in doing so I thought “Well, gee, I want to talk about something I want to talk about so I chose my favorite show which I hadn’t really looked at in years only to find it was far more innovative than I had ever given it credit for as a kid.
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
About Rosanne Welch, PhD
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)
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:
Also, of course, as I said, Captain Jack, the first time we’re going to see — not first time but the first time very obviously Russell Davies wanted young gay men to see themselves on television as normal people. So you’re going to have Captain Jack in male relationships and gay relationships and it was just so incredibly cool to see and he’s so incredibly sexy. This is a lovely episode where we find out that Captain Jack stole his name from a real soldier in World War II and when they go back in time and they visit that guy it turns out to be the night before he’s going to die and our Captain Jack knows it but the real man doesn’t know it and they have a dance before he dies. You’re like “Oh my G–, I’m going to cry” it was so so good. So well done and then later he had an affair with one of the gentlemen who worked at Torchwood named Ianto and there’s a whole thing in England. There’s a whole shrine to Ianto. Very popular character.
Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch
Rosanne Welch, PhD
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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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![How The Monkees Changed Television with Dr. Rosanne Welch (Complete Presentation and Q&A) [Video] (45:06)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/How-The-Monkees-Changed-Television-1.png)
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.
Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition
About Rosanne Welch, PhD
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)
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:
During Doctor Who, Russell also invented Torchwood which I think is a fascinating show, if you’ve never you should check it out because, again, playing with gender, on this program, Captain Jack is the head of the Torchwood unit. Hsi second in command is a female, Gwen, who was a policewoman. She joins this elite alien group. you know, of police, if you will and her husband is a stay at home kind of guy and he’s going to take care of the baby when they eventually have it. He’s got a construction job. He comes home at night and makes her dinner. She works funny hours. Russell Davies specifically said”I want to swap the gender stereotypes. I want to see how that works in the world and that is a way many marriages are working these days but it was still considered new.
Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch
Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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20 Where Did We Get Gidget Right? from How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Watch this entire presentation
Transcript:
So, I really wanted to wrap up with the idea, so where did we get the Gidget book right? Was it in the movies or in the TV show? I’m going to guess, just because I’m pushy and that’s what I pushed on you, it is, in fact, the TV show and I’m going to say that’s because TV is where meat-and-potatoes stories can be told. We have a hundred or 200 hours to tell you the story of one character. They can’t be weak and superficial or you won’t come back. We need to really get into their hearts and hear about them and that’s the beauty of television as opposed to bubblegum in films and also TV has often been — and I’m not saying Gidget is part of the golden age of television — but when we discuss the Golden Age of Television we discuss it like Dickensian novels, that every month, every week, you get another section of the story and that’s the power of television. We can expand on a character because you’ve come to love them and you’ll watch them go through two or three or seven years of their lives and that’s much more in-depth than you can get into a film which is where Gidget falls apart if you ask me.
At this year’s 10th Annual Screenwriting Research Network Conference at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand I presented…
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Watch this entire presentation: Gender Diversity in the Who-niverse: Paving the Way for a Lady Doctor with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (36:58)
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:
…and through Russell, we’re going to gain a new look both female and male characters particularly his first companion he is going to invent is Rose and Rose is very strong. We’re going to talk about how in a minute. We’re going to have Martha Jones who happens to be one of my favorite companions and I’ll explain why, because Iknow there are some people don’t like Martha and how she was treated. I think Martha was actually stronger than people are giving her credit for. Then, Donna Noble who was just a “friend” and there’s a whole discussion about the idea that women didn’t have to be a sexual or a partner companion, they could just be friends as of maybe Y’all actually have friends who are of the opposite sex. Really? That’s possible? I don’t know. Right? So that was a new thing. And of course, Captain Jack Harkness who was the first openly gay, but also omnisexual. He’s had sex with women, men, aliens, you name it he was good for it and that was an interesting thing to be said on a television program. And he’s just so gorgeous, what can you say?
Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter and Instagram
https://twitter.com/rosannewelch – http://instagram.com/drrosannewelch
Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
19 Dorothy Cooper Foote and Gidget from How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Watch this entire presentation
Transcript:
Then you flip over her to Dorothy Cooper Foote who was one of the freelance writers on the show. Gidget has a crush on an older man. That’s Daniel Travanti who will show up in Hill Street Blues as a grown man. He’s a photographer. He’s a war veteran from the Vietnam (Korean) War, although that war is unmentioned, but he’s a war veteran and he’s taking pictures of her for a magazine. She falls in love with him. She discovers he actually has a fiance. He didn’t realize she had a crush on him because he didn’t consider a younger girl as someone that he would go after and her and her Dad had this lovely moment because he says “(Your) always going to hurt a little.” and he knows because his wife has passed away and he’s a widow. So they make this connection on having experienced loss together. Which is a very mature thing for a young girl to be able to discuss and to share and again that mature attitude toward her comes from a female writer.
At this year’s 10th Annual Screenwriting Research Network Conference at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand I presented…
“How Gidget Got Into the Girl Ghetto by Accident (and How We Can Get Her Out of it): Demoting Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas from Edgy Coming of Age Novel to Babe on the Beach Genre Film via Choices made in the Adaptation Process.”
It’ a long title, as I joke up front, but covers the process of adapting the true life story of Kathy Kohner (nicknamed ‘Gidget’ by the group of male surfers who she spent the summers with in Malibu in the 1950s) into the film and television series that are better remembered than the novel. The novel had been well-received upon publication, even compared to A Catcher in the Rye, but has mistakenly been relegated to the ‘girl ghetto’ of films. Some of the adaptations turned the focus away from the coming of age story of a young woman who gained respect for her talent at a male craft – surfing – and instead turned the focus far too much on Kathy being boy crazy.
Along the way I found interesting comparisons between how female writers treated the main character while adapting the novel and how male writers treated the character.
Dr. Rosanne Welch
Dr. Rosanne Welch 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.
Watch Dr. Welch’s talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” at the 2016 TEDxCPP.
The Screenwriting Research Network is a research group consisting of scholars, reflective practitioners and practice-based researchers interested in research on screenwriting. The aim is to rethink the screenplay in relation to its histories, theories, values and creative practices.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
