8
Popular Culture Review
Peter’s songs and voices often lent a folksy Western flavor to the background
music, allowing the audience to make a subconscious connection between
Monkee madness and the great lawman-outlaw or Cowboy-Indian chases in
popular Western films.
Given this variety, one might assume that the Monkees, whose popularity
was growing exponentially at the same time as the country was changing, would
at least acknowledge the power and energy of the hydra-headed political
movement towards civil rights and cultural diversity. There were several events,
fictional and real, which suggested that, in fact, they did. For one, Micky
appeared in season two with a totally “keen” hair cut that suggested he no longer
wished to conform with the “moptop” vision set forth by the show’s creators. In
fact, it was an Afro. Obviously, he had originally submitted to having his hair
actually curled, and obviously he had stopped doing so. But at a time when
“Black Power” had only recently become a slogan, and men and women of color
were beginning to turn away from the curling iron and from straightening
chemicals in favor of a natural look, it was a noticeable statement. There was
also the matter of Micky having changed his childhood stage name—a very
WASP-y “Mickey Braddock”—back to his real name, Dolenz.
The Monkees’ shows and music also made political statements. The
producers first prevented the boys from making overtly political statements in
public: Sandoval mentions that Peter, in particular, was fervently anti-capitalist
and anti-war, and Peter has a recurring role in Micky’s book as the Monkee who
railed against “meat eating, fat-cat, rain-forest-killing, bourgeoisie fascist pigs”
(Dolenz 181)—and the “suits,” alarmed at the prospect of alienating the parents
of their ten- to fifteen-year-old target audience (Dolenz 84), granted few early
interviews. However, the Monkees’ shows did covertly address social issues of
the day. In an early television program about the corporate devaluation of
craftsmanship and a craftsman’s personal touch, season one’s “Machine vs.
Monkee,” the boys thwart a corporate entity which wants to replace an oldschool, expert toy craftsman with a more efficient, but obviously soulless,
machine. In season two’s “Monkee Mayor,” the boys step in to stop a heartless
tycoon from paving paradise, or the city, at least, and putting up parking lots.
Clearly, there was no lack of social conscience on the part of the show’s writers.
In addition, despite the producers’ reluctance to adopt political stances
which may have alienated their viewers’ parents, the Monkees’ songwriters
were happy to include political commentary in their songs; oddly enough, the
producers, having remained unconcerned about the music, allowed these tunes
to be included on the show (Sandoval). “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” for example,
begins with a member of the middle-class, bedroom-community of Pleasant
Valley looking around and observing his neighbors on a typical Saturday
morning, but then sharing an epiphany where he begins to question his
consumerist values. Each snapshot gives us a sense of a person involved in some
banal activity, a person who has bought into the American dream and never
questioned whether he’s fulfilled. We meet “a local rock group,” apparently not