TV's Betty Goes Global

From Telenovela to International Brand

Janet McCabe, Kim Akass, Janet McCabe, Kim Akass

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857732996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Premiering in 2006, Ugly Betty, the award-winning US hit show about unglamorous but kind-hearted Betty Suarez (America Ferrera), is the latest incarnation of a worldwide phenomenon that started life as a Colombian telenovela, Yo soy Betty, la fea, back in 1999. The tale of the ugly duckling has since taken an extraordinary global journey and become the most successful telenovela to date. This groundbreaking book asks what the Yo soy Betty, la fea/Ugly Betty phenomenon can tell us about the international circulation of locally produced TV fictions as the Latin American telenovela is sold to, and/or re-made-officially and unofficially-for different national contexts. The contributors explore what Betty has to say about the tensions between the commercial demands of multimedia conglomerates and the regulatory forces of national broadcasters as well as the international ambitions of national TV industries and their struggle in competitive markets. They also investigate what this international trade tells us about cultural storytelling and audience experience, as well as ideologies of feminine beauty and myths of female desire and aspiration.
TV's Betty Goes Global features original interviews with buyers and schedulers, writers, story editors and directors, including the creator of Yo soy Betty, la fea, Fernando Gaitan

Introduction:
‘Oh Betty, You Really Are Beautiful’

Janet McCabe

The Face that Launched a Modern Global Phenomenon

The first shot of ABC’s stylish primetime dramedy Ugly Betty (2006–10) opens on its eponymous heroine Betty Suarez (America Ferrera). Filmed in tight mid-shot, slightly from below, her image fills the screen. And what an image it is. A fresh, callow face adorned with little make-up. Dishevelled hair, unruly eyebrows, red-rimmed spectacles framing a wide-eyed look. She appears less than comfortable. As she nervously bites her lip, a flash of metal can be seen inside her mouth. The kitsch title ‘Ugly Betty’ in bold red and yellow flashes on the screen. Returning to Betty, something has caught her eye. She beams. And we have our first glimpse of her big, metallic smile, heavy, ‘train-track’ stainless-steel braces on her top and lower teeth. All the while musical motifs (from the theme by Jeff Beal) add texture to the visual. A whimsical, quirky tempo: a lyrical violin evoking a certain old-world charm slightly out of step with the staccato percussion rhythm with its distinctive Latin beat. Immediately, in less than 12 seconds in fact, the US Betty brand is established.

Brands and branding become crucial to the next sequence. There is a cut from Betty to a two shot, as the glamorous Charmaine (Abigail Foreman) joins her on the long bench. The contrast between the two women could not be starker. Everything Charmaine is Betty is not: less is more. Tall and willowy, Charmaine is the definition of contemporary sartorial elegance: black knee-high boots, classic black dress, poncho in subtle shades of oatmeal/biscuit with matching long, thin neck scarf. Her hair is pulled back into a smooth ponytail, her skin is flawless and make-up perfect. Next to her Betty looks gauche in her heavy, plaid, woollen suit and fussy blouse. Bright colours, bold prints and vintage style define Betty’s discordant sense of fashion, which in time takes on its own ‘geek chic’ charm – think Betty skipping through the Mode corridors after flirting with Henry Grubstick (Christopher Gorham) in her Marc Jacobs wedges (‘Fake Plastic Snow’, 1: 7).

Not yet, though.

Betty strikes up a conversation with the haughty Charmaine. ‘I like your poncho. My Dad got me one in Guadalajara,’ chirps Betty. Charmaine delivers a condescending grimace. ‘Milan. Dolce & Gabbana. Fall.’ It appears all too obvious who will climb the corporate steps behind them, leading to the offices of Meade Publications, and secure that entry-level position. Charmaine’s transnational lifestyle, jetting from one international style capital to another, belonging to the rarefied world of exclusive designer labels and haute couture, seemingly has the edge on Betty’s border crossings: a child of immigrants who migrated from Central Mexico to America’s East Coast, now a commuter from a local, ethnically defined, working-class Queens neighbourhood to the cosmopolitan Manhattan metropolis, claiming that Meade magazines have allowed her to imagine multiple worlds far beyond her own.

Transnational shifts and cross-border exchanges, international trading patterns, global brands and consumer habits, migratory movements and tourism define this ever-so-brief encounter between these two women in motion. Involving image and ‘imagined worlds’ (2005: 33), media and migration, it recalls Arjun Appadurai and his work on understanding globalization. ‘The new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models’ (32). Image – of lifestyle, culture and politics, self-representation and identities – so finely drawn in and across these female bodies produces a sense of how the story of Betty has circulated internationally through different mediascapes (the production and distribution of images) and ideoscapes (political and ideological messages) and often translated in surprising (not wholly anticipated) and inventive ways. Appearances are always deceptive. Nothing is ever quite as it seems in the fabulous and funny world of Ugly Betty where those at the margins migrate to the centre and the downtrodden eclipse the social insiders.

Later Betty will wear the ‘Guadalajara’ poncho on her first day at the office as an assistant to newly appointed editor-in-chief Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius). Of course, this poncho trend will never make the cover of Mode, but it brands Betty nonetheless. It was a gift from her beloved father, Ignacio Suarez (Tony Plana), a man identified profoundly with family, strengthening the ‘Mexican family’ and keeping alive Mexican traditions and identity. Purchased on a trip to Guadalajara, the capital of Mexican culture (home to Mariachi music, as well as host to international film and book festivals), the garment has since crossed national borders as part of migratory movements and diasporic communities journeying (temporarily) back and forth. Before it turns up on Betty at the Mode offices as a statement of arrival – of where she has come from and where she aspires to go – similar to Charmaine in her Dolce & Gabbana poncho. As Silvio Horta, creator of the US Ugly Betty declares, ‘[Betty] comes in with a look that is the opposite of what is expected of her, and she triumphs’ (Donahue 2008: 28).

That striking visual of Betty in her ‘Guadalajara’ poncho defined the ‘look’ of the first series, its sartorial kitschness venturing beyond conventional norms to speak instead of a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ (Beck 2007: 72). German sociologist Ulrich Beck describes ‘cosmopolitanism’ as ‘a non-linear, dialectical process in which the universal and the particular, the similar and the dissimilar, the global and the local are to be conceived, not as cultural polarities, but as interconnected and reciprocally interpenetrating principles’ (72–3). It is this intermingling of cultures and identities, entangled media networks, global markets, local broadcasting practice and regulation, travelling narratives and trans-media storytelling, reception and preferences of taste, that lie at the core of this anthology, TV’s Betty Goes Global.

Central to this edited collection is the desire to chart how the tale of the Ugly Duckling growing into a swan migrated from one broadcasting context to another and back again. It is a story of acquisition and movement serving a multi-channel, multi-platform media environment stimulated by ‘new distribution technologies … and new computer software’ (Moran with Malbon 2006: 10). One finds that the traffic is no longer a ‘one-way flow’ (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974), beyond any claims of trade dominated by Western-produced programming (Schiller 1969; 1991; Herman and McChesney 1997). Instead, the story is enmeshed in what John Tomlinson calls a ‘complex connectivity’ (2004: 26) involving television cultures and industries, as well as multiple discourses of identities – socio-cultural, economic and consumer, ethnic and racial, global and local (even regional), gendered and the feminine. Placing the Betty trade into some kind of historic and institutional context is the aim of the next chapter by Michele Hilmes. Following this, authors adopt a variety of different theoretical and conceptual approaches to understanding the appeal of the original story and why it took off and was adapted in so many different territories – ‘broadcast in 13 languages and 74 countries’ (Kraul 2006), with 19 official versions, to say nothing of the re-productions and unofficial copycats. In analysing the flow of the tale about an un-comely heroine with glasses, braces and bangs, what emerges in and through its acquisition and movement is a complex, multi-directional, entangled narrative about television industries, cultures, production and storytelling. What gets mapped within the pages that follow is how various media spaces or strata of television production, exchange and reception dialogue continually with multiple cultures and identities, entwine deeply to make the story of Betty a truly modern TV phenomenon.

Exploiting Betty: Telenovelas, Geolinguistic
Regions and Yo soy Betty, la fea

Betty’s initial humiliation at Meade, having the door quite literally slammed in her face, cuts to another suffering Latina. The scene is from Vidas de Fuego (Lives of Fire), a clichéd, Spanish-language telenovela that is watched in the Suarez household. Esmeralda, a maid played in the ‘Pilot’ by an uncredited Salma Hayek, is brandishing a gun. Her hand quivers violently, her countenance is overwrought. The camera pulls back to reveal her pointing the pistol at a dark, handsome Latino, his tie loose and shirt undone. He reaches out and grabs her wrist. Seizing Esmeralda, he crushes her to his body. The camera zooms in on a close-up of her distress. She tries to resist. ‘No! No! No!’ she sobs. But he gains mastery over her with ‘a punishing kiss’ (Modleski 1999: 51). The music swells. Esmeralda drops the gun. As anguish gives way to desire, she ...

Table of contents

• Author Biography
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction: ‘Oh Betty, You Really Are Beautiful’
• The Whole World’s Unlikely Heroine: Ugly Betty as Transnational Phenomenon
• Our Betty: The Legacy of Yo soy Betty, la fea’s Success in Colombia
• Acquiring Ugly Betty for Channel 4: Interview with Jeff Ford
• Interviews with TV Executives Involved in the German Adaptation, Verliebt in Berlin
• Betty and Lisa: Alternating Between Sameness and Uniqueness
• Ugly Betty, Flemish Sara: Telenovela Adaptation and Generic Expectations
• Recreating Betty’s World in Spain
• Towards a Cultural Economy of Chou Nu (Nv) Wu Di: The Yo soy Betty, la fea Franchise in the People’s Republic of China
• How Ugly Can Betty Be in India?
• Ugly Betty on Turkish Television: Updating Popular Cinema
• Esti Ha’mechoeret: Ugly Esti as a Local and Successful Israeli Telenovela
• The Greek Maria i Asximi: The Never-Ending Journey of a Myth
• Czech Ugly Katka: Global Homogenization and Local Invention
• Glamorously (Post) Soviet: Reading Yo soy Betty, la fea in Russia
• Travelling Narratives and Transitional Life Strategies: Yo soy Bea and Ugly Betty
• Our Betties, Ourselves
• Endnotes