I’ve been watching some old made for television movies from back in the days when that didn’t sound so derogatory — early made for television movies were things like Playhouse 90 where the work of up and coming New York playwrights and other quality material was being beamed into American homes — it was only over the years when TV movies turned into ‘victimized chick of the week’ or ‘disease of the week’ type sagas.
So watching some of these early dramas has made me notice a few things… such as the quality of the writing, the way stories spoke UP to the intelligence of the viewer (in an era when fewer folks had college degrees) — and the waste of talent that takes place in Hollywood. I guess I thought it was a more modern event, this not giving actors of color a greater chance to use their gifts for our entertainment. In my childhood television viewing — From Baretta to Starsky and Hutch to The Streets of San Francisco — it did not escape me that the white guys (and they were always guys) got to be the cops and the people of color seemed always to be the crooks, pimps and prostitutes that the nice white cops were investigating.
I’m hard at work completing my upcoming book on The Monkees, The Monkees – A Made for TV Metatexual Menagerie for McFarland Publishing. The book is scheduled for release in Spring 2016.
You can join my Monkees mailing list to receive future updates and notification of the books release.
Here are the current chapter titles, although this may change in the final publication. I hope you’ll check it out when it hits the stores!
Introduction: I’m (Still) a Believer1. Sweet Young Thing: Contextualizing The Monkees with a Short History of Teenagers on Television,2. Authorship on The Monkees: Who Wrote The Monkees and what was that Something They Had to Say?3. Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow: Counter-Culture Comes to Television and Middle America via The Monkees4. The Kind of Girl I Could Love: Feminism, Gender and Sexuality in The Monkees5. Shades of Grey LAn Ethnic Studies look at Minority Representation on The Monkees6. We Were Made for Each Other: The Monkees Menagerie of Metatextuality7. We Were Made for Each Other: The Sequel: Nascent Television Aesthetic Techniques on The Monkee8. A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You Identity Construction and Confusion on The Monkees9 Theme(s) from The Monkees Narrative Structure, Literary References and Themes on The Monkees10. Salesman / What am I Doing Hangin’ Round? The Cultural Collateral of The Monkees11. Music Innovation and the seeds of MTV
Fun fact of the day: I’m reading It’s the Pictures That Got Small — the diaries of Charles Brackett who co-wrote “Sunset Boulevard” and “Titanic” in the 1950s and I found him noting,
“It’s so dangerous to give a name to a gangster (the liability of lawsuit is so great) that they use the names of employees in the Research Department over and over…”
Too funny! I’d love to do research comparing the MGM employee roles to the gangster characters in their films!
You can get the book at Amazon.com or perhaps from your local library.
Check out page 50-51 for a marvelous piece by my friend Jule Selbo about the MFA in Screenwriting she created for Cal State Fullerton! And page 56-57 for the great piece by other friend Ken Lazebnik on the new Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting! Each of the directors of these two programs care deeply about their students — and about the quality of the craft — so it’s a pleasure working with them! (And read the rest of the issue because it has a great piece on the writers behind GRIMM which really takes you inside the creative brain as it conjures up a new world of characters worth visiting each week!)
One Saturday March 23rd my co-author Dawn Comer Jefferson and I were invited to the California African American Museum (CAAM) for their annual literacy day, this year titled “Heads are Turning, Children are Learning”. We presented a workshop on African American on the Oregon Trail, based on the research we did for the story in our children’s book The Promise which involves an enslaved family taken on the Oregon Trail with the promise of freedom if they survive. Sadly, when they all arrive in Oregon, the owner frees the parents but not the children since he had never mentioned the children in their original deal.
About 20 children and parents attended the workshop and participated in an exercise where they wrote a letter back to family and friends about their experience on the Oregon Trail. It was fun to hear what parts of the presentation they remembered enough to include in their letters and to see them enjoy a chance to be creative.
Please join Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dawn Comer Jefferson for Literacy Day at the California African American Museum. We will be doing a workshop for kids as well as readings from our book, The Promise. Signed copies of The Promise will also be available for purchase.
The day includes several local authors offering writing workshops and book signings, celebrities reading books, art and crafts, book giveaways and music. And there will be a lunch truck on the premises.
Since 2004, in celebration of National Children’s Book Week, we present local Los Angelels authors and celebrity readers in CAAM’s galleries. The activities of the day also include an arts and crafts workshop, literacy workshops, face-painting, and book giveaways for families in attendance.
The Promise Co-Author, Dawn Comer Jefferson, presents at 2014 CAAM Literacy Day Event
Saturday, May 23, 2015
11am – 4 pm
Free and open to the public. Parking: $10.
The California African American Museum is easily accessible from the Metro Expo line using the Exposition Park/USC Station. (See map below)
RSVP preferred: 213.744.2024
California African American Museum
600 State Drive Exposition Park
Los Angeles, CA 90037
[MAP]
…Also then, they save the plant before the bad human, you know, of course, our boys are the heros. They save the plant and the, the smoke that the plant creates? If you ingest it make you not want to fight anymore — just lay down in the grass and be cool. I mean, if that’s not an anti-authority, let’s all go smoke pot message, I’m no sure… and yet here it is on mainstream television for pre-teens — for 12 to 13-year-olds.
View photos from this presentation
Description:
Based on a chapter in my upcoming book The Metatextual Menagerie that was The Monkees, which includes a series of interviews conducted with surviving writers and performers of the 1960s television program, The Monkees I will discuss how the writers and actors used the show as a platform for their own emerging counter culture/anti-war messages.
Worth studying for its craft and place in television history (the show won an Emmy as Best Comedy Of 1967) the program’s true importance may come from its impact on the politics and culture of the era. Considered innocuous by the network, thepress and the parents of the era, the storylines and jokes created by the writers and the actor’s ad-libs brought the emerging counter-culture to the attention of young teens whose parents might not have appreciated the message. Cultural icons such as Timothy Leary recognized the subversive nature of the program, seen through the writing and in choices made about costuming, hair length, musical guests (Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Charlie Smalls) and songs performed by the band brought issues of Vietnam, voting and civil rights to the ‘young generation’ for whom the show clearly had ‘somethin’to say.
The 2014 Provost’s Symposium is a forum to learn about each other’s scholarly work, make new friends, renew old acquaintances, and enhance our appreciation of the rich and diverse array of professional endeavors pursued by the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona.
Fanfiction Workshop with Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Melissa D. Aaron at Cal Poly Pomona
Known for their popular “Doctor Who” and “Harry Potter” lectures held at the CalPoly Pomona library, Dr. Rosanne Welch (https://rosannewelch.com) and Dr. Melissa Aaron hosted a workshop on writing Fan Fiction in the Special Collections room of the campus library to celebrate April’s National Library Week and the “Unlimited Possibilities @ your library.”
The two professors and professed followers of fan fiction spoke about the history, style and variety of this popular form of writing and then lead the audience with prompts for a few drabbles (flash fan fic of 100 words written in 5 minutes). Thanks to all who participated and to Special Collections Librarian Natalie Lopez for inviting us!
Further reading and resources
Saundra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, Star Trek: The New Voyages
Canon: The source material and that which is agreed to be fact within it.
Fanon: Popular fandom ideas, usually arising from a seminal fanwork: e.g. nicknames, character traits or relationships (see Shipping.) May become canon.
Crossover: Works in which the characters or settings from two or more works are combined.
AU: Alternate universe. Works based on a what-if scenario, or in which a critical change has been made.
Gen fic: “Generic” fanfiction; stories with no romance.
Shipping: Short for “relationshipping.” Romance fics featuring characters that might or might not be romantically involved in the source material.
Canon ship: Characters are romantically involved in the source material.
Fanon ship: Characters are not demonstrably romantically involved in the source material, but wildly popular among fans or a group of fans.
Slash: Same-sex romantic relationships, generally not canon, or not provably so. IMPORTANT: slash is not the same thing as porn. A slash fic might feature a same sex relationship with little or no physicality. Porn is simply porn, and may include nearly any characters or group of characters of any gender.
Crack ship: Relationship portrayed is unlikely, bizarre, or ridiculous, e.g., the Whomping Willow and the Giant Squid.
Mary Sue: An original character, frequently a self-insert. The single most defining characteristic of a Mary Sue is to warp the canon universe and its characters to center around the new character. The character may be ridiculously skilled beyond age or experience, or all the characters may be in love with him or her. He or she often has a tragic past. Eyes that change color according to his or her moods are a warning sign.
Fanfiction.net: Also known as the Pit Of Voles, this is probably the largest single repository of fanfiction on the web, and also probably its least discriminating.
TV Tropes: A wiki collecting fandom tropes from a variety of media. Valuable, but also a dangerous time sink.
Here is a lovely little bit of dialog. “They want to put the blame on teenagers. Take the war, for example. Whose fault is it? Not ours. We’re not fighting. It must be those crazy kids. They’re the ones doing all the fighting.” I mean, this is not just vaudeville happening. This is serious political commentary in the course of a teenage comedy show. You didn’t get that on Full House when that was the big program in American television. Now, my favorite funny part is in the very last episode of the show, so they got away with a lot. It starred this alien plant. If you look at it a little more closely, it resembles a plant that one wasn’t supposed to know much about. In fact, only in certain state now are we supposed to know about it. This plant has come and its power is being taken over by a bad human who’s using it to rule the world. Right? I think that’s funny. In the midst of this particular episode, they even have this anti-war song that they chant during a montage in the show and if you just take a peek at that for a minute, it’s kind of beautiful. I particularly like the last line, “Two little kinds playing a game. They gave a war and nobody came, ” which is the — it starts with a game and no one shows up, so the 2 kings are all alone. So, here we have this marvelous anti-war song in the midst of this.
View photos from this presentation
Description:
Based on a chapter in my upcoming book The Metatextual Menagerie that was The Monkees, which includes a series of interviews conducted with surviving writers and performers of the 1960s television program, The Monkees I will discuss how the writers and actors used the show as a platform for their own emerging counter culture/anti-war messages.
Worth studying for its craft and place in television history (the show won an Emmy as Best Comedy Of 1967) the program’s true importance may come from its impact on the politics and culture of the era. Considered innocuous by the network, thepress and the parents of the era, the storylines and jokes created by the writers and the actor’s ad-libs brought the emerging counter-culture to the attention of young teens whose parents might not have appreciated the message. Cultural icons such as Timothy Leary recognized the subversive nature of the program, seen through the writing and in choices made about costuming, hair length, musical guests (Frank Zappa, Tim Buckley, Charlie Smalls) and songs performed by the band brought issues of Vietnam, voting and civil rights to the ‘young generation’ for whom the show clearly had ‘somethin’to say.
The 2014 Provost’s Symposium is a forum to learn about each other’s scholarly work, make new friends, renew old acquaintances, and enhance our appreciation of the rich and diverse array of professional endeavors pursued by the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona.
