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 Entertainment | October 2007 
More Than an Ugly Fac
 Stephen Armstrong - New Statesman
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| | It may be a funny, frothy sitcom, but Ugly Betty is actually pushing a subversive political agenda. |
Your starter for ten: which US TV show most outraged the Republican right over immigration last year, with bloggers such as Redrover and Stonecold Harbours calling it "a sleezy [sic] way to make illegals appear sympathetic" and complaining that the whole show "disgusts me"? Was it: a) Comedy Central's avowedly pro-Democrat Daily Show? b) Hard-hitting, investigative 60 Minutes? Or c) The frothy prime-time fashion-world comedy Ugly Betty? Yup. It was Betty, giggly, colourful and the most subversive programme on US network television today.
But why? On the face of it, Ugly Betty should be the programme least likely to annoy Bush's heartland. It purported to be a simple Cinderella story at the outset. Warm-hearted Betty Suarez from Queens wanted to be a journalist. By a quirk of hiring mischief, she got a job on the fashion mag Mode as assistant to Daniel, the playboy editor; his dad the publisher hoped that her braces, excess weight and horn-rimmed specs would mean she was the one PA he wouldn't sleep with. Viewers would have been expecting Betty to follow the conventions of US comedy by slimming down, glamming up and ensnaring Daniel in the end. Indeed, that was the plot of the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea ("I'm Betty, the ugly one"), on which the US show was based.
However, early on in the first series a storyline began worming its way out of the show's fluffy core that irritated the hell out of God-fearing Midwesterners: Betty's father, Ignacio, turned out to be an illegal immigrant. The subplot followed his battle with America's tortuous immigration bureaucracy, his deportation to Mexico and his struggle to be reunited with his children. The story played out in spring 2006, coinciding with huge street protests over US legislation known as HR4437, which would classify illegal immigrants and anyone who helped them as criminals. "I love the character of Betty's father, but it really makes me mad that the writers are using this immigration issue to garner sympathy for this situation," Redrover said splenetically.
Even the cast was wary of the storyline at first. "I was afraid that it was maybe misguided for a show in its first season to tackle this problem," says Tony Plana, the actor who plays Ignacio Suarez. "In the first season you just want to be liked. You just want to come out and entertain." Salma Hayek, the Mexican-born film star and executive producer of Ugly Betty, was one of the few Hollywood liberals who marched with Hispanic protesters over the new immigration laws and who publicly opposed building a fence across the Mexican border. She had expected the story to cause a stir, but was still surprised by the strength of the reaction. "There were a lot of hate letters, stuff on the internet - a lot of people that are really upset about it," she says. "You have characters on television that kill other people - that's illegal, too, but everybody is fine with it. Nobody has a problem with The Sopranos. But oh, my God, when you have an illegal alien: let's turn that television off."
And yet Ugly Betty proved a mainstream prime-time hit for ABC - so much so, that the network ordered a second series in double-quick time. Meanwhile, the show's storylines became ever more adventurous. Gay characters are not unheard of in American drama, but Ugly Betty went a stage further by introducing a friendship between the flamboyant gay fashion editor Marc St James (Michael Urie) and Justin, Betty's 12-year-old brother (Mark Indelicato), who is clearly (but not explicitly) struggling with his sexuality.
"It's a relationship we've never seen before on television," says Urie. "We've seen what America is willing to accept with a gay man in a couple, but we've never seen a positive relationship with a young child before." One of the show's creators, Silvio Horta, is gay and says that, as Justin ages, he will experience "the journey". "I see myself in him. Growing up, I certainly felt like an outsider at times. But there is this sweet innocence in Justin that sees the positive."
Towards the end of season one, the Betty producers added a further twist: Daniel the Mode editor's long-lost brother returned as a transsexual. This was played for as much soap-style dramatic effect as you might expect, but it was still handled carefully enough for Betty to win a gong at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media awards as well as a National Arts and Culture Equality Award from the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign. "There is some debate about the way gay characters in Ugly Betty are a bit stereotypical," says Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the campaigning organisation Stonewall. "And it is true - the old 'love of musicals and fashion' shtick is a pretty narrow view. Given that there are very few gay characters on television at all, however, I'm just happy to see relationships like Marc and Justin's on the TV. Certainly if I'd had that when I was growing up it would have made things easier for me."
"I think it's a new experience for most people in this country who talk about issues like immigration and homosexuality in a very hypothetical way," says America Ferrera, who plays Betty and is herself the daughter of a single mother from Honduras. "The show has given a name and a face to so many people that feel invisible in this country, both the gay community and the Latino community. You can't approach the majority of the people out there saying, 'Open your minds and let us teach you something.' No one wants to be lectured. But when you add bright colours and good music and characters you can laugh at and have fun with, maybe you learn a thing or two."
In fact, Ugly Betty is by no means alone. If you flick across the channels in America today, you'll find a wave of younger producers working messages into the television mainstream. Heroes, the NBC hit now showing on BBC2, is a dark fantasy about ordinary people developing superpowers. Its creator, Tim Kring, has made clear that it is about evolution: he has used strands of DNA as a symbol throughout the show in an attempt to take on the creationists. Damon Lindelof, co-creator and exec producer of Lost, cast the British actor Naveen Andrews as a former Iraqi Republican Guard officer, and has made much of his show's recent attempts to echo the Iraq conflict. The 21st-century version of Battlestar Galactica has just introduced a storyline in which humanity's final defence against the Cylon menace is to take up suicide bombing.
During the culture wars of the 1970s, films such as All the President's Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Easy Rider sought to influence the political debate through cinema. Now, with a television set in every home and the film studios still obsessed by the teen market, it seems the next generation is aiming at the small screen.
The great irony is that the only unsubsidised television market in the world is proving an important outlet for liberal politics, while the industry in Britain remains obsessed with reality shows, property and cooking. |
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