Lip Service is groundbreaking – whatever its star saysBBC3's new drama, Lip Service, at last shows that lesbians can be just as cool, sexy, funny – and normal – as straight women
After watching the first episode of the hot new lesbian drama Lip Service last night, I think the star of the show, Ruta Gedmintas, has underestimated what a programme like this means for gay and bisexual women.
The actor, who plays bad girl Frankie, said in Saturday's Guardian that the programme is not groundbreaking.
Queer As Folk had a groundbreaking status because there hadn't been a show like that before. But we're not trying to do anything that hasn't been done before. We're just making a relationship drama," said Gedmintas.
But the fact that it's "just a relationship drama" is exactly the point – our lives being normalised and turned into one of these twenty/thirtysomething dramas is hugely significant.
Lesbians make up a significant proportion of the female population but it is still pretty rare to see ourselves as regular characters onscreen.
Tipping the Velvet was lovely as a historical fantasy, and the wonderful Sugar Rush or Corrie's coming-out storyline are important, too, but this is a whole series dedicated to the day-to-day lives of grownup lesbians in the UK. And, judging by the first episode, it's as good as the straight versions of itself, such as This Life, which is the series it's drawing comparisons with.
I know that a lot of gay women will say this is gay life with a gloss on it, that the women are too glam. But that's TV and you probably wouldn't see many Mileses or Annas down your local Wetherspoon either.
In truth, there are plenty of Lip Service-esque girls on the gay scene if you hang out in the right places. And I, for one, am pleased that this is the side of our scene that the British viewing public is now seeing.
For too long, lesbians have been perceived as unfashionable, miserable and ugly. Those types do exist, of course, just as they do in the straight world, but they should no more define us than they do straight girls.
If I were to make one criticism based on the first episode, it's that perhaps the most frequently seen type of woman on the gay scene, the sexy butch – think Rhona Cameron – is not represented at all. I know Lip Service's lady-loving writer Harriet Braun has said she wasn't trying to represent all lesbians, but modern butches like this are very popular in the lesbian world and if we don't see any in the first series it will show a lack of guts. It will also annoy lots of gay girls.
In the meantime, it's important to recognise Lip Service for the great service it's doing to British lesbians. As brilliant as Queer As Folk was, it was about gay men, who in recent history have had more representation in the media. The latest study of BBC programming showed that lesbians were given only two minutes of airtime in a random selection of 39 hours of programming.
So, well done to the BBC for giving us Lip Service, we've waited long enough. And here's to a new era of appreciating that lesbians are normal and, yes, can be very cool, sexy and funny, too.
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
BBC's Panorama claims Islamic schools teach antisemitism and homophobiaThousands of British schoolchildren are being taught Saudi national curriculum, according to programme
A textbook used in some weekend schools reportedly asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jews, according to the programme.
It claims to have found 5,000 Muslim schoolchildren being taught that some Jews are transformed into pigs and apes and that the penalty for gay sex is execution. Some textbooks are said to teach the correct way to chop off the hands and feet of thieves. A spokesman for the programme said the pupils, aged six to 18, attend a network of more than 40 weekend schools across the country which teach the Saudi national curriculum to Muslim children.
One book for children as young as six is said to ask them what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam – the correct answer is "hellfire".
Investigators claim to have also found a text for pupils aged 15 which reads: "For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence."
British Schools Muslim Rules, which will be aired tonight on BBC One at 8.30pm, says other texts for the pupils are said to claim that Zionists want to establish world domination for Jews, a spokesman said.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, told Panorama: "Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country. I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system. But I'm clear that we cannot have antisemitic material of any kind being used in English schools."
At present, part-time weekend schools are not inspected by Ofsted but Gove said the educations standards watchdog would be reporting shortly on how to ensure part-time provision is better registered and inspected in the future.
In a written response to the findings, the Saudi ambassador to the UK said the teachings were not endorsed by the Saudi embassy.
A textbook used in some weekend schools reportedly asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jews, according to the programme.
It claims to have found 5,000 Muslim schoolchildren being taught that some Jews are transformed into pigs and apes and that the penalty for gay sex is execution. Some textbooks are said to teach the correct way to chop off the hands and feet of thieves. A spokesman for the programme said the pupils, aged six to 18, attend a network of more than 40 weekend schools across the country which teach the Saudi national curriculum to Muslim children.
One book for children as young as six is said to ask them what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam – the correct answer is "hellfire".
Investigators claim to have also found a text for pupils aged 15 which reads: "For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence."
British Schools Muslim Rules, which will be aired tonight on BBC One at 8.30pm, says other texts for the pupils are said to claim that Zionists want to establish world domination for Jews, a spokesman said.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, told Panorama: "Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country. I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system. But I'm clear that we cannot have antisemitic material of any kind being used in English schools."
At present, part-time weekend schools are not inspected by Ofsted but Gove said the educations standards watchdog would be reporting shortly on how to ensure part-time provision is better registered and inspected in the future.
In a written response to the findings, the Saudi ambassador to the UK said the teachings were not endorsed by the Saudi embassy.
Guardian Article
BBC research into lesbian, gay and bisexual portrayal offers hopePeter Tatchell welcomes the BBC's belated initiative to examine coverage on TV radio and websites
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Comments (27) The BBC decision to commission research into its portrayal of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people is a welcome, if somewhat belated, initiative. It comes in response to two decades of sustained – and often ignored – criticism of the BBC by LGB licence payers, journalists, campaigners and media analysts.
The research will examine both the quantity and quality of LGB coverage in comedy, news, documentaries, entertainment and dramas on BBC TV, radio and websites. The decision that the study will cover 28 different audience sectors, including ethnic and religious groups, with some respondents expected to express homophobic views, has, however, raised a few eyebrows. If this research was looking at depictions of the Jewish community, I wonder whether the BBC would feel obliged to take into account the opinions of anti-semites and neo-Nazis?
Never mind. Hats off to the BBC for agreeing this research and indeed for its ground-breaking gay Muslim storyline in EastEnders, which has helped highlight some of the dilemmas faced by an often hidden section of the gay and Muslim communities.
Despite these positive moves, many LGB people still feel the BBC is guilty of an alarming degree of low-level homophobia and an often perplexing unwillingness to remedy it. In the 1990s, Radio 1 was allowed to broadcast music advocating the murder of gay people, which prompted the queer human rights group OutRage! to rename the Beeb as the "British Bigotry Corporation". Even now, although the BBC won't give air-time to "kill gays" hit tunes, it still occasionally interviews and promotes "murder music" singers like Buju Banton.
In 2006, the BBC was stung when the gay lobby group Stonewall published a damning report, Tuned Out, by Leeds University researchers. They examined 168 hours of prime-time BBC1 and BBC2 television programmes; finding that positive gay references totalled a mere six minutes, compared to 32 minutes of negative, disparaging coverage. In other words, gay people were five times more likely to be portrayed in negative terms than in positive ones. Over half of all gay references were jokes, which mostly played on stereotypes of sexually predatory or effeminate gay men. Lesbian and gay issues were rarely mentioned in BBC factual output.
At the time, Stonewall's chief executive, Ben Summerskill, noted that gay people contribute an estimated £190m a year to the BBC in TV licence fees. "Gay licence-payers receive astonishingly poor value from the BBC," he said. "It's difficult to argue that 1.5 million gay households should be expected to continue making such a substantial contribution to channels on which their real lives are hardly reflected, and which are often punctuated with derisive and demeaning depictions of them."
Sadly, there is little evidence that BBC coverage has improved since then. Last December, it reported on legislation before the Ugandan parliament that seeks to impose the death penalty for repeated same-sex acts. In response, the corporation's Have Your Say Africa site hosted an online debate: "Should homosexuals face execution?" The BBC later apologised for the headline. It would not, I suspect, hold online debates such as: Should black people be lynched? Moreover, the BBC's commentary announcing the debate put a very weak case against the execution of LGB Ugandans. It read like an open invitation for respondents to endorse the state-sponsored killing of LGBs.
This faux pas followed the furore over the Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles using the word "gay" as an insult and getting away with it. Indeed, the BBC governors ruled that the word "gay" was an acceptable on-air synonym for "rubbish".
At a time when the BBC national news was almost daily reporting murders of young men and racist attacks, in 2008 it failed to report the homophobic murder of 18-year-old Michael Causer in Liverpool, other than on the Merseyside section of the BBC website. In contrast, the racist murder of a black Liverpudlian, Anthony Walker, received national BBC news coverage for weeks. Why the double standards? Perhaps the BBC's LGB research project will shed some light and offer solutions.
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Comments (27) The BBC decision to commission research into its portrayal of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people is a welcome, if somewhat belated, initiative. It comes in response to two decades of sustained – and often ignored – criticism of the BBC by LGB licence payers, journalists, campaigners and media analysts.
The research will examine both the quantity and quality of LGB coverage in comedy, news, documentaries, entertainment and dramas on BBC TV, radio and websites. The decision that the study will cover 28 different audience sectors, including ethnic and religious groups, with some respondents expected to express homophobic views, has, however, raised a few eyebrows. If this research was looking at depictions of the Jewish community, I wonder whether the BBC would feel obliged to take into account the opinions of anti-semites and neo-Nazis?
Never mind. Hats off to the BBC for agreeing this research and indeed for its ground-breaking gay Muslim storyline in EastEnders, which has helped highlight some of the dilemmas faced by an often hidden section of the gay and Muslim communities.
Despite these positive moves, many LGB people still feel the BBC is guilty of an alarming degree of low-level homophobia and an often perplexing unwillingness to remedy it. In the 1990s, Radio 1 was allowed to broadcast music advocating the murder of gay people, which prompted the queer human rights group OutRage! to rename the Beeb as the "British Bigotry Corporation". Even now, although the BBC won't give air-time to "kill gays" hit tunes, it still occasionally interviews and promotes "murder music" singers like Buju Banton.
In 2006, the BBC was stung when the gay lobby group Stonewall published a damning report, Tuned Out, by Leeds University researchers. They examined 168 hours of prime-time BBC1 and BBC2 television programmes; finding that positive gay references totalled a mere six minutes, compared to 32 minutes of negative, disparaging coverage. In other words, gay people were five times more likely to be portrayed in negative terms than in positive ones. Over half of all gay references were jokes, which mostly played on stereotypes of sexually predatory or effeminate gay men. Lesbian and gay issues were rarely mentioned in BBC factual output.
At the time, Stonewall's chief executive, Ben Summerskill, noted that gay people contribute an estimated £190m a year to the BBC in TV licence fees. "Gay licence-payers receive astonishingly poor value from the BBC," he said. "It's difficult to argue that 1.5 million gay households should be expected to continue making such a substantial contribution to channels on which their real lives are hardly reflected, and which are often punctuated with derisive and demeaning depictions of them."
Sadly, there is little evidence that BBC coverage has improved since then. Last December, it reported on legislation before the Ugandan parliament that seeks to impose the death penalty for repeated same-sex acts. In response, the corporation's Have Your Say Africa site hosted an online debate: "Should homosexuals face execution?" The BBC later apologised for the headline. It would not, I suspect, hold online debates such as: Should black people be lynched? Moreover, the BBC's commentary announcing the debate put a very weak case against the execution of LGB Ugandans. It read like an open invitation for respondents to endorse the state-sponsored killing of LGBs.
This faux pas followed the furore over the Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles using the word "gay" as an insult and getting away with it. Indeed, the BBC governors ruled that the word "gay" was an acceptable on-air synonym for "rubbish".
At a time when the BBC national news was almost daily reporting murders of young men and racist attacks, in 2008 it failed to report the homophobic murder of 18-year-old Michael Causer in Liverpool, other than on the Merseyside section of the BBC website. In contrast, the racist murder of a black Liverpudlian, Anthony Walker, received national BBC news coverage for weeks. Why the double standards? Perhaps the BBC's LGB research project will shed some light and offer solutions.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Ugly Betty
One of the most liberating aspects of Media Studies, particularly at A Level, is the freedom it can afford you to study a whole range of texts – including those of your choosing that may strike a particular chord, whether positive or negative.
If you are following any A Level course, you certainly need to be able to demonstrate an ability to refer to your own viewings and interpretations of a range of broadcast media – as well as those you may have studied in the classroom. AQA’s MED 1: Reading the Media, for example, demands an ability to provide a textual analysis of an unseen media text – so using clips from TV programmes, as well as other moving image/print texts, is always sound exam practice. MED 2: Textual Topics in Contemporary Media, has the option of responding to questions specifically on Film and Broadcast Fiction and it is here that you can bring your own examples to the exam table – allowing you to stand out from the crowd and provide a response that differs from the others in your centre (don’t forget that your examiners mark your work in centre batches, so it can become very tedious if students are evidently relying solely on taught texts).
At A2, the need to be working towards a position of ‘critical autonomy’ becomes even more crucial if you are to be able to hit the higher grade boundaries. MED 4: Texts and Contexts in the Media, with its focus on a more in-depth study of the Key Concepts, provides further opportunities to ‘colour’ your exam responses with current, relevant texts of your choice. At MED 5, the Independent Study is the ideal platform for you to explore and develop further your own personal interest, whether it be in print, moving image or new media technologies. So, the ethos of this Awarding Body is clear – they want you to be able to translate and utilise your existing engagement with the media, in all its guises, in order to become an independent, dynamic and informed ‘reader’ of media texts. And this is, of course, equally true of the OCR and WJEC specifications.
The AQA specification is, as you aware, founded on the Key Media Concepts of Audience, Genre, Institutions, Language, Representations and Values and Ideology – and your understanding of these concepts will become more sophisticated throughout the duration of the course. In this piece I attempt to suggest just some of the ways in which the TV text, Ugly Betty, can be a useful example of contemporary moving-image media for your examination purposes.
Institutional issues
A significant hit for ABC in the States (and the recipient, at the time of writing, of several awards, including Best Comedy Series Award at the Golden Globes, Best Actress prize for its star, America Ferrera and a Directors Guild of America Award for Richard Shepard who directed the pilot), Ugly Betty first launched on C4 in the UK in January 2007, with 4.5 million viewers. The show was immediately acknowledged as a prime-time Friday night slot saviour for the channel which was still struggling to regain the halcyon audience shares provided by Friends. A year on and a second series later, the viewing figures are averaging around the 2 million mark, still good going for C4’s overall share of the market, particularly in the current climate of audience fragmentation and alternative modes of viewing instigated by advances in technology. (See viewing figures on www.barb.co.uk in order to analyse how the show’s ratings compare to other offerings on C4, as well as their terrestrial competitors.)
Ideological debates
The show’s initial broadcast received a mixed reception from the critics and continues to do so – always a good sign of a potentially useful text for your academic purposes! On the one hand, disappointed feminist interpreters, bemoaning the fact that the media (and American television, in particular?) continue to support the allegedly conservative, and perhaps sexist, values of the fashion industry which represent stereotypical ideas about female ‘beauty’ and ‘behaviour’. On the other hand, more positive critical responses to the series have applauded the inclusion of specific storylines as a refreshingly subversive attack (using humour as the seemingly innocuous vehicle) on right-wing American policies on, for example, immigration or gay rights.
Language and contrasts
The text offers rich opportunities for analysis in terms of mise-en-scène and uses of contrasting settings to highlight the thematic content. The scenes at Betty’s home in Queens evoke and sustain the established and recognisable values of a traditional Hispanic family unit – complete with warm oranges, browns and greens, we are immersed in an atmosphere of cosy, ambient lighting, comfortable clutter and a focus on the kitchen as the heart of the home, with the crucial representation of Betty’s father adorning an apron, cooking fajitas for his daughters and grandson, providing perhaps a more ‘feminised’ version of patriarchal dominance. The contrast to the Mode office setting is striking and, of course, intentional – here the furniture and décor is as starkly clinical as any minimalist showcase interior, with trendy (read – uncomfortable) ‘soft’ furnishings and mirrored surfaces reflecting the ‘beautiful’ chosen ones of the fashion industry. Any food that is eaten is usually a lettuce leaf or two, a timely re-presentation of current debates around size zero and the (usually) female recourse to dieting and/or bingeing (note Amanda, the bitchy receptionist, losing ‘control’ by stuffing sweets and gaining weight – horrors – when faced with a dilemma about the identity of her biological parents). Of course, the show is founded on contrast.
Betty, played by the not-at-all ‘ugly’ America Ferrera, is set up to provide comic ‘difference’ to those around her at Mode – including her clothing, make-up, body language and modes of speech. Her ethical behaviour, in contrast to, for example, the self-absorbed, power-seeking indulgences of Wilhemina, is a key component of the weekly narrative – and we are invited, naturally, to root for Betty every time.
All the exterior scenes are filmed in green screen, allowing the Production Design team to perfect the almost fairytale-like backdrops of New York and Queens – the CGI fakery lending a further layer of nuance to the overall theme of deceptive appearances. The camerawork and use of sound is also worthy of analysis and, again, it is in the symbolic contrast of the ‘sophisticated’ world of Mode versus the Ferrera homestead that the camera and soundtrack reiterates what we should know – that slick camera angles and stylish transitions cannot compete with the retro furnishings and reassuring Latino rhythms of ‘real’ people.
Genre
Although some critics have analysed Ugly Betty as a prime example of a new development within television genre – the ‘television novel’, 20+ part series that extend a single plot arc across half-a-year (think Lost, The Sopranos, 24, Desperate Housewives), the commonplace scheduling label is that of a mainstream workplace sitcom, inevitably relying on the specific generic conventions (sometimes constraints?) of this established format. The ‘situation’ itself acts as the conduit for the humour (i.e. Betty as the incongruous personal assistant of Daniel Meade); stock characters (and don’t we just love that ever so clear-cut depiction of heroes and villains?) and limited settings.
The economic context of the exportability of American and British sitcoms is crucial here – and worthy of your exploration. The idea for the series arose from a hugely successful 1999 Columbian ‘tele-novela’ (the television novel genre described above, popular with viewers in Latin and South America, versions of which are also viewed by Betty’s family in a neatly ‘postmodern’ nod to the original, with cameo appearances as a maid by the show’s creator, Salma Hayek) Yo Soy Betty, La Fea (‘I am Betty, the Ugly One’). Criticised by some as nowhere near as subversive as the original, which is said to be a much stronger parody of racial and social issues in Latin America, Ugly Betty has nevertheless managed to provoke critical debate in terms of some of contemporary America’s values and ideologies around ‘sensitive’ issues such as gay children (the depiction of Justin, as a younger and equally camp version of the character, Marc St James); the inept bureaucracy and perceived injustice of new immigration laws as represented by Ignacio and the farcical scenes in Series 1 with his ‘immigration officer’, who turns out to be an impersonator; not to mention transsexuality and attitudes towards ‘difference’ generally, as depicted in the storyline of Daniel’s brother/sister, Alex/Alexis (resulting in the show winning a real-life gong at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards!).
These political contexts firmly place the text within contemporary American culture – arguably, the generic formula of sitcom allowing a far more radical ‘take’ on these issues than drama or documentary, for example, would allow. Some may argue that a particularly regressive regime at any specific time (in this instance, the notably right-wing policies of Bush’s particular branch of Republicanism) leads to a more subversively creative climate within broadcast media (and the arts generally), as a means of representing disquiet and opposition amongst segments of the viewing population. The very ‘kitsch’ nature of the production of Ugly Betty affords, perhaps, ‘safe’ oppositional readings of the issues raised – it is surely no coincidence that the series has been so popular with marginalised groups, as well as the more ‘mainstream’ viewer (and has also been successfully exported to Mexico, Spain, Germany, Russia, India and Israel, which must say something about ‘universal’ themes of the underdog winning through). Whether or not we find the baseline of the narrative ultimately regressive (i.e. these are the kinds of issues in terms of objectification of women that feminists were arguing about back in the 1970s), the series has nevertheless allowed a space for debate and reflection about some of the key issues of our times.
As these prompts suggest Ugly Betty can provide you with savvy media know-how during the course of your study – the text is deserving of close textual analysis (MED 1); you could follow up any number of the suggested contextual issues (for example, casting, the inevitable merchandising industry created around the series, including faux-pearl necklaces and knitted ponchos) for a MED 5 research assignment or focus on developments around genre (MED 2 or MED 4), even studying some of the often-neglected theories on humour such as the ‘superiority theory’ or the ‘incongruity theory’. Look them up – and avoid the trap of dismissing texts that seem lightweight or just too corny to be worth analysis. They’re often the ones that speak the loudest about our zeitgeist, allowing us to laugh at the increasingly bizarre preoccupations of our time.
Sally Brady is Project Leader for Gifted and Talented at Villiers Park Educational Trust and an examiner for AQA Media Studies.
from MediaMagazine 22, December 2008.
One of the most liberating aspects of Media Studies, particularly at A Level, is the freedom it can afford you to study a whole range of texts – including those of your choosing that may strike a particular chord, whether positive or negative.
If you are following any A Level course, you certainly need to be able to demonstrate an ability to refer to your own viewings and interpretations of a range of broadcast media – as well as those you may have studied in the classroom. AQA’s MED 1: Reading the Media, for example, demands an ability to provide a textual analysis of an unseen media text – so using clips from TV programmes, as well as other moving image/print texts, is always sound exam practice. MED 2: Textual Topics in Contemporary Media, has the option of responding to questions specifically on Film and Broadcast Fiction and it is here that you can bring your own examples to the exam table – allowing you to stand out from the crowd and provide a response that differs from the others in your centre (don’t forget that your examiners mark your work in centre batches, so it can become very tedious if students are evidently relying solely on taught texts).
At A2, the need to be working towards a position of ‘critical autonomy’ becomes even more crucial if you are to be able to hit the higher grade boundaries. MED 4: Texts and Contexts in the Media, with its focus on a more in-depth study of the Key Concepts, provides further opportunities to ‘colour’ your exam responses with current, relevant texts of your choice. At MED 5, the Independent Study is the ideal platform for you to explore and develop further your own personal interest, whether it be in print, moving image or new media technologies. So, the ethos of this Awarding Body is clear – they want you to be able to translate and utilise your existing engagement with the media, in all its guises, in order to become an independent, dynamic and informed ‘reader’ of media texts. And this is, of course, equally true of the OCR and WJEC specifications.
The AQA specification is, as you aware, founded on the Key Media Concepts of Audience, Genre, Institutions, Language, Representations and Values and Ideology – and your understanding of these concepts will become more sophisticated throughout the duration of the course. In this piece I attempt to suggest just some of the ways in which the TV text, Ugly Betty, can be a useful example of contemporary moving-image media for your examination purposes.
Institutional issues
A significant hit for ABC in the States (and the recipient, at the time of writing, of several awards, including Best Comedy Series Award at the Golden Globes, Best Actress prize for its star, America Ferrera and a Directors Guild of America Award for Richard Shepard who directed the pilot), Ugly Betty first launched on C4 in the UK in January 2007, with 4.5 million viewers. The show was immediately acknowledged as a prime-time Friday night slot saviour for the channel which was still struggling to regain the halcyon audience shares provided by Friends. A year on and a second series later, the viewing figures are averaging around the 2 million mark, still good going for C4’s overall share of the market, particularly in the current climate of audience fragmentation and alternative modes of viewing instigated by advances in technology. (See viewing figures on www.barb.co.uk in order to analyse how the show’s ratings compare to other offerings on C4, as well as their terrestrial competitors.)
Ideological debates
The show’s initial broadcast received a mixed reception from the critics and continues to do so – always a good sign of a potentially useful text for your academic purposes! On the one hand, disappointed feminist interpreters, bemoaning the fact that the media (and American television, in particular?) continue to support the allegedly conservative, and perhaps sexist, values of the fashion industry which represent stereotypical ideas about female ‘beauty’ and ‘behaviour’. On the other hand, more positive critical responses to the series have applauded the inclusion of specific storylines as a refreshingly subversive attack (using humour as the seemingly innocuous vehicle) on right-wing American policies on, for example, immigration or gay rights.
Language and contrasts
The text offers rich opportunities for analysis in terms of mise-en-scène and uses of contrasting settings to highlight the thematic content. The scenes at Betty’s home in Queens evoke and sustain the established and recognisable values of a traditional Hispanic family unit – complete with warm oranges, browns and greens, we are immersed in an atmosphere of cosy, ambient lighting, comfortable clutter and a focus on the kitchen as the heart of the home, with the crucial representation of Betty’s father adorning an apron, cooking fajitas for his daughters and grandson, providing perhaps a more ‘feminised’ version of patriarchal dominance. The contrast to the Mode office setting is striking and, of course, intentional – here the furniture and décor is as starkly clinical as any minimalist showcase interior, with trendy (read – uncomfortable) ‘soft’ furnishings and mirrored surfaces reflecting the ‘beautiful’ chosen ones of the fashion industry. Any food that is eaten is usually a lettuce leaf or two, a timely re-presentation of current debates around size zero and the (usually) female recourse to dieting and/or bingeing (note Amanda, the bitchy receptionist, losing ‘control’ by stuffing sweets and gaining weight – horrors – when faced with a dilemma about the identity of her biological parents). Of course, the show is founded on contrast.
Betty, played by the not-at-all ‘ugly’ America Ferrera, is set up to provide comic ‘difference’ to those around her at Mode – including her clothing, make-up, body language and modes of speech. Her ethical behaviour, in contrast to, for example, the self-absorbed, power-seeking indulgences of Wilhemina, is a key component of the weekly narrative – and we are invited, naturally, to root for Betty every time.
All the exterior scenes are filmed in green screen, allowing the Production Design team to perfect the almost fairytale-like backdrops of New York and Queens – the CGI fakery lending a further layer of nuance to the overall theme of deceptive appearances. The camerawork and use of sound is also worthy of analysis and, again, it is in the symbolic contrast of the ‘sophisticated’ world of Mode versus the Ferrera homestead that the camera and soundtrack reiterates what we should know – that slick camera angles and stylish transitions cannot compete with the retro furnishings and reassuring Latino rhythms of ‘real’ people.
Genre
Although some critics have analysed Ugly Betty as a prime example of a new development within television genre – the ‘television novel’, 20+ part series that extend a single plot arc across half-a-year (think Lost, The Sopranos, 24, Desperate Housewives), the commonplace scheduling label is that of a mainstream workplace sitcom, inevitably relying on the specific generic conventions (sometimes constraints?) of this established format. The ‘situation’ itself acts as the conduit for the humour (i.e. Betty as the incongruous personal assistant of Daniel Meade); stock characters (and don’t we just love that ever so clear-cut depiction of heroes and villains?) and limited settings.
The economic context of the exportability of American and British sitcoms is crucial here – and worthy of your exploration. The idea for the series arose from a hugely successful 1999 Columbian ‘tele-novela’ (the television novel genre described above, popular with viewers in Latin and South America, versions of which are also viewed by Betty’s family in a neatly ‘postmodern’ nod to the original, with cameo appearances as a maid by the show’s creator, Salma Hayek) Yo Soy Betty, La Fea (‘I am Betty, the Ugly One’). Criticised by some as nowhere near as subversive as the original, which is said to be a much stronger parody of racial and social issues in Latin America, Ugly Betty has nevertheless managed to provoke critical debate in terms of some of contemporary America’s values and ideologies around ‘sensitive’ issues such as gay children (the depiction of Justin, as a younger and equally camp version of the character, Marc St James); the inept bureaucracy and perceived injustice of new immigration laws as represented by Ignacio and the farcical scenes in Series 1 with his ‘immigration officer’, who turns out to be an impersonator; not to mention transsexuality and attitudes towards ‘difference’ generally, as depicted in the storyline of Daniel’s brother/sister, Alex/Alexis (resulting in the show winning a real-life gong at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards!).
These political contexts firmly place the text within contemporary American culture – arguably, the generic formula of sitcom allowing a far more radical ‘take’ on these issues than drama or documentary, for example, would allow. Some may argue that a particularly regressive regime at any specific time (in this instance, the notably right-wing policies of Bush’s particular branch of Republicanism) leads to a more subversively creative climate within broadcast media (and the arts generally), as a means of representing disquiet and opposition amongst segments of the viewing population. The very ‘kitsch’ nature of the production of Ugly Betty affords, perhaps, ‘safe’ oppositional readings of the issues raised – it is surely no coincidence that the series has been so popular with marginalised groups, as well as the more ‘mainstream’ viewer (and has also been successfully exported to Mexico, Spain, Germany, Russia, India and Israel, which must say something about ‘universal’ themes of the underdog winning through). Whether or not we find the baseline of the narrative ultimately regressive (i.e. these are the kinds of issues in terms of objectification of women that feminists were arguing about back in the 1970s), the series has nevertheless allowed a space for debate and reflection about some of the key issues of our times.
As these prompts suggest Ugly Betty can provide you with savvy media know-how during the course of your study – the text is deserving of close textual analysis (MED 1); you could follow up any number of the suggested contextual issues (for example, casting, the inevitable merchandising industry created around the series, including faux-pearl necklaces and knitted ponchos) for a MED 5 research assignment or focus on developments around genre (MED 2 or MED 4), even studying some of the often-neglected theories on humour such as the ‘superiority theory’ or the ‘incongruity theory’. Look them up – and avoid the trap of dismissing texts that seem lightweight or just too corny to be worth analysis. They’re often the ones that speak the loudest about our zeitgeist, allowing us to laugh at the increasingly bizarre preoccupations of our time.
Sally Brady is Project Leader for Gifted and Talented at Villiers Park Educational Trust and an examiner for AQA Media Studies.
from MediaMagazine 22, December 2008.
UGC
Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information''
The first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people' was in 1991 when footage of two white police officers beating a African-American man was tasered him and beat him with clubs after a high speed chase.
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and flickr
Gatekeepers decide what is and isn't news.
The primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC is that they might lose their jobs however big organisations and institutions are buying sites to reduce their competetion for example Microsoft investing in Facebook.
The first examples of news being generated by ‘ordinary people' was in 1991 when footage of two white police officers beating a African-American man was tasered him and beat him with clubs after a high speed chase.
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and flickr
Gatekeepers decide what is and isn't news.
The primary concerns held by journalists over the rise of UGC is that they might lose their jobs however big organisations and institutions are buying sites to reduce their competetion for example Microsoft investing in Facebook.
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