Boy oh Boy: Masculinity and Fatherhood on Ugly Betty

ABC’s hour-long dramedy Ugly Betty has garnered exceptional acclaim in its first season, as critics hail it as a healthy new portrayal of women and beauty on the small screen. Featuring the Cinderella story of a physically awkward and unattractive protagonist (America Fererra) trying to make it on her work ethic and positive attitude in the world high fashion, Ugly Betty has struck a chord with American viewers, pulling in solid ratings[1]. Even the industry is rooting for Betty, exemplified by Fererra’s wins at both the Golden Globe’s and the Screen Actor’s Guild awards, where her acceptance speeches extol the show’s new portrayal of Hispanic women on television.

But what about the men on Ugly Betty? Portrayals of men on Ugly Betty run the gamut from the recovering manwhore in Alex, the stereotypical flamboyant gay man in Marc and even Justin, and the stoic, wealthy white man in Bradford Meade. These different characterizations of men and fatherhood in particular on Ugly Betty actually interact in ways that create an interesting commentary on cultural norms.

For example, the show has attracted quite a bit of attention from the gay community and the popular media for its portrayal of Justin, the pre-pubescent boy who exhibits cultural markers of homosexuality, including being a fan of musicals and high fashion. This “queering of Justin,” as Hector Amaya writes about on FLOW, brings up several questions about representations of and assumptions about sexuality in children. However, despite the fascinating debate about whether representations of sexuality on television are built on dangerous assumptions of attraction to others or pubescent hormonal rushes (i.e. Justin isn’t gay because he’s prepubescent, or he is gay, but isn’t identified as such because he isn’t old enough to be attracted to another man), it is the interaction of these cultural markers of homosexuality with those of other portrayals of masculinity on the show that piques my interest. For example, Justin’s characteristics of homosexuality are not viewed as problematic within the diegetic world of the show until his absent father re-enters the picture. It is this intersection of the heterosexual (and Latino) masculinity of the father and queered masculinity of the son that creates an interesting tension, especially in the fact that the father was for the most part absent, but now feels like “being a good father” means keeping Justin from being gay. In this way, the show’s representation of fatherhood serves as the heteronormative desire to contain gay youth.

            Justin and his father are not the only examples of fatherhood serving as commentary on sexuality. Bradford Meade and his sons Alex (now Alexis) and Daniel portray intersections of masculinity, sexuality, and capitalism. Alex, who fakes his own death in order to come back as a woman, harbors intense hatred for his father for “never accepting who he really was,” despite Daniel’s assumption that his brother (now sister) was the “favorite son” because he was so successful at running the family business. Again, the father figure is portrayed as an attempt at containment of non-heteronormative behavior, but fatherhood is also intersecting here with capitalism. Not only is Bradford Meade disapproving of Alex’s behavior, but he also attempts to contain Daniel’s hyper-heterosexuality, as the relationship between Daniel and his father is strained because Daniel has always “chased women” and never been a “good business man.” In the case of the Meades, fatherhood seems to serve as reinforcement of a patriarchal capitalism, in that it works to contain both transgendered sexuality and heterosexuality within the walls of good business.

            The representations of fatherhood between Justin and his father and between Bradford and his sons also interact with each other through the construction of each respective relationship in regard to existing cultural norms. The representation of fatherhood between Justin and his dad work to construct their identity as working class Latino, while the relationship between Alex, Daniel, and Bradford works to construct them as wealthy whites. These representations of fatherhood all work together on the show, but also within each respective planes of cultural identity, which makes Ugly Betty quite the post-modern text. I’ll save more on that topic for next time.

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[1] Kissel, Rick. “ABC Thursday on the rise.” Variety.com. Posted Fri., Feb. 9, 2007, 11:50am PT. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117959091.htmlcategoryid=14&cs=1&query=ugly+betty+ratings 

 

Translating the Telenovela: Ugly Betty, Genre, and Scheduling

In terms of international television, American network programming has traditionally been viewed as an export, where programming flowed in a one-way direction from the United States to other countries. In recent seasons, however, American networks are seeing some interesting success in what’s being imported instead. Shows like The Office, from British version of the same name, and Ugly Betty, from the Colombian Yo Soy Betty, La Fea, have become distinct hits with American audiences. These shows aren’t reproduced exactly as they were in their countries of origin, though; they have been re-casted, rewritten, and reworked for American viewers. This process of “Americanization” provides an interesting site for analysis.

Ugly Betty is an especially interesting case, because ABC and executive producers Salma Hayek and Silvio Horta did not just have to “Americanize” the show, they had to do it without alienating the Hispanic viewers, a large contingent of whom were already familiar with the original Betty La Fea and the telenovela genre. Hayek and Horta’s team clearly utilized a multitude of both blatant and inconspicuous techniques to achieve this cross-over success, but the most basic change – the time and length of the program – is perhaps the largest contributing factor to the embrace it’s received from American viewers.

Like most telenovelas, the original Yo Soy Betty, La Fea, aired weekdays in 30-minute episodes in a finite strip. Early signs hinted towards ABC following this telenovela format with Ugly Betty and airing it as a daily strip during the summer. However, when ABC actually commissioned the show, it was slotted as an hour-long weekly to air in the fall, in primetime. [1] Making Ugly Betty an hour-long dramedy with a budget of $2 to $3 million per episode[2] was the first and perhaps largest step in translating Ugly Betty for American audiences. The dramedy format and the budget takes the show and puts it in a language viewers are used to seeing on television: cinematic production values, elaborate sets, multiple filming locations, and elevated or accelerated dramatic narrative, a style particularly evident in shows like Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal. In fact, shows like Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal, whose over-the-top mix of serial drama and comedy created an endearing quirkiness with viewers, are in part what helped Ugly Betty translate so easily – the hour-long dramedy formula is what allowed Ugly Betty to retain much of the exaggerated drama of the telenovela while adapting to American television.

In addition to adapting Ugly Betty as a dramedy, changing it to a weekly and placing it on Thursday nights near other hour-long dramedies (although Grey’s Anatomy is now much more of a true drama than the dramedy it was in its first two seasons) also helped translate Ugly Betty for American audiences. As a lead-in for Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty had the opportunity to garner the attention of the primarily female audience that already tunes in to watch Grey’s. The two shows back-to-back have helped make Thursday nights a “chick-flick” destination and served as the ratings powerhouse for ABC. If Ugly Betty had remained a daily strip, it would be airing every weekday, most likely next to and up against a different show every night. It would have had to stand on its own without the anchoring of an already immensely popular show and bring viewers back to the same show every day, which might have proved much more difficult. The hour-long, weekly dramedy format made Ugly Betty a much easier show for viewers to warm up to, as they didn’t have to tune in every day to see what was going on.

It’s difficult to postulate whether or not Ugly Betty would have had as much success as a half-hour sitcom or even half-hour American telenovela. News Corp. Ltd’s MyNetworkTV has aired English-language telenovelas Desire and Fashion House, which stay very much in line with the traditional telenovela genre, but has not seen much success with either show.[3]^,[4] The success of translating Betty into a dramedy certainly does not say that telenovelas will never be successful on American television. Instead, it may just be the beginning of bridging the divide between Hispanic-market television and mass-market American television. As Buena Vista International Television Senior Vice President Fernando Barbosa recently said ,

“One of the big stories this year, obviously, was finally getting a successful script from Latin America exported to the U.S. — which was ‘Betty la fea’ (ABC’s “Ugly Betty”). Even so, they took a telenovela script and adapted to a U.S. genre as opposed to keeping the telenovela format. Having said that, ‘Ugly Betty’ was a great triumph for Latin America. It will take a little time for U.S. producers to capture the essence of the genre, but it will happen, little by little.”[5]

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[1] Benson, Jim. “ABC rethinks Ugly Betty.” Broadcasting & Cable. April 23, 2006.

[2] De la Fuente, Anna Maria. “Novela idea.” Variety. August 17, 2006.

[3] “Betty is the belle of
US television ball,” Reuters. November 10, 2006.
[4] Obviously MyNetworkTV is a “mini-network” and cannot directly compare with network giant ABC, but both of those shows have been well publicized as American adaptations of the telenovela.

[5] Tracy, Kathy. “
Latin America won’t stand pat on recent success.” Variety. January 12, 2007.