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.