Thread: How "Ugly Betty" changed...

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January 7, 2007
Ideas & Trends
How ‘Ugly Betty’ Changed on the Flight From Bogotá
By LARRY ROHTER
RIO DE JANEIRO

SO North Americans are finally getting a taste of something Latin Americans have long enjoyed: the guilty pleasures of the telenovela. “Ugly Betty,” a weekly series adapted from a wildly successful Colombian serial, has been one of the surprise successes this fall season for ABC, helping to set off a brief burst of enthusiasm for bringing even more — and purer — examples of the form to American living rooms.

Like any other genre of popular art, the telenovela has its own codes, tropes, and customs, and while “Ugly Betty” obeys many of those conventions, it slides past others to accommodate American viewers.

So it may be worth a close look at “Ugly Betty” and how the series changed as it migrated from Bogotá to Hollywood, if only for a hint at what audiences in the two Americas have in common — and don’t.

“Ugly Betty” tells the story of an awkward, fashion-clueless young woman from a Mexican immigrant family living in Queens who stumbles into a job at a fashion magazine in Manhattan and manages to survive her many pratfalls through decency, luck and folk wisdom passed on by her family.

In the Colombian “I Am Ugly Betty,” Betty worked at a design house rather than a magazine, and in her move to Queens, she changed nationality and acquired a social world with a lot more ethnic, racial and linguistic diversity. In Colombia, she turned from ugly duckling to swan and won the heart of her rich boss. It isn’t clear whether she can do that in New York. Still, one quality wasn’t lost:

“You can’t look at ‘Ugly Betty’ as being just about a charming little misfit, and how, by extension, Latinos in the United States are also misfits,” said Claudia Milian, a professor of Latin American literature and culture at Duke. “You can’t simply say this is an entertainment, because inevitably there is a message and a political reality, too.”

First of all, a disclaimer: a telenovela is not just a soap opera and “Ugly Betty” is not, strictly speaking, a telenovela. The classic form runs for a fixed period, usually five or six days a week for six months or so, with a beginning and happy ending. “Ugly Betty” has no such arc in sight.

Nevertheless, it is faithful to the telenovela’s essence: While the main narrative normally focuses on family or sexual conflicts and betrayals, usually there is a subtext dealing with a social or political problem.

Although the telenovela never preaches, no issue is off limits if addressed artfully and obliquely enough. Telenovelas in Colombia have touched on that country’s civil war, and Argentina’s most popular series last year evoked the issue of the “disappeared” — opponents of military rule in the 1970’s who were arrested and never heard from again. In Brazil, plots have involved land reform, corruption and human cloning.

“It is not the function of the telenovela to discuss social issues,” said Aguinaldo Silva, the author of some of Brazil’s most successful telenovelas. “Journalism does that. A serial wants to be entertaining. But that does not prevent you from addressing those themes. It just has to be in the context of the plot, or else the spectator won’t want to listen to what you are saying.”

“Ugly Betty,” whose title character is played by America Ferrera, juxtaposes the wholesome girl from Queens with the snobbery and infighting of the rich and shallow in Manhattan. With that, the producers have assured the necessary froth and intrigue. But the story line also seems meant to make a viewer ponder issues like immigration, social mobility, ethics in the workplace and the place of Latinos in American society.

The template for the modern telenovela developed in Cuba and descended from “El Derecho de Nacer,” or “The Right to Be Born,” a radio series by Félix B. Caignet that was a hit from its first broadcast on April 1, 1948. Mr. Caignet said it was his intention to “speak in metaphors” about social themes. “What I did was to take advantage of popular emotion to sow something moral, something good,” he wrote.

“El Derecho de Nacer” implicitly raised questions about racism by having its affluent but illegitimate white protagonist disowned by his authoritarian grandfather and raised by his loving black nanny.

These days, in a region that is famous for social stratification, the gap between rich and poor — and the dream of magically overcoming it through hard work or marriage — is far and away the favorite topic.

“The use of class, high and low, with the poor rising to become rich, has always existed in the novela, and has always proven successful,” said João Daniel Filho, Brazil’s most famous novela director. “That’s been true since the time when Victor Hugo, Dickens and Dostoyevsky were writing serials.”

Most telenovelas also contain a camp element — a quality that allows Latin American sophisticates to wink at bad lighting or preposterous plot developments as they watch novelas with their maids. Main characters tend to be broadly drawn archetypes acted in an over-the-top style, with the good guys and bad guys clearly signaled.

Silvio Horta, a Cuban-American raised in Miami who is an executive producer of “Ugly Betty,” freely acknowledges incorporating what he calls “that cheesy element” into the import. Asked about the scheming villain in “Ugly Betty” played by Vanessa Williams, he cited a 1980’s Mexican telenovela, “Cradle of Wolves,” in which the villainess wore a black eye patch. “It’s all very Cruella De Vil and Cinderella,” he said.

Not that the creators of “Ugly Betty” always stuck to the standard playbook. One notable difference is the absence in Betty Suarez’s family of a mother figure; her father is the anchor of her family.

“In the Latin American telenovela, the poor family usually has a loving, nurturing mother” who stoically absorbs all of life’s adversities, Ms. Milian said. “That matriarchal aspect is missing in ‘Ugly Betty,’ perhaps because that kind of passivity just wouldn’t fly with an American viewership.”

For a time last year, American networks seemed eager to produce true telenovelas. That enthusiasm seems to have waned.

But South American veterans of the telenovela industry suggest the genre may have a North American future, after all. The growing income gap in the United States reminds them of their own societies, they say, and it may assure an appetite for feel-good stories about social mobility.

“Betty opens a pathway, because it gives us an idea of what kind of stories will go down well” with American audiences, said Jayme Monjardim, a telenovela director here. “It’s going to be a slow process, because you don’t have a culture up there of watching novelas day in and day out. But this is something we know how to do very well, and when we find out how to translate our sentiments, well, then just watch out.”

I haven't seen this show but it sounds like a complete rip off of "The Devil Wears Prada".

I think it is interesting to watch tv now and to see how it has changed. Many shows and commercials are geared toward Latinos or Latino culture, and soon it will be the norm. The US will become Mexico. I have seen a huge increase in Latino cable channels in my area.

Originally Posted by Neese

I think it is interesting to watch tv now and to see how it has changed. Many shows and commercials are geared toward Latinos or Latino culture, and soon it will be the norm. The US will become Mexico. I have seen a huge increase in Latino cable channels in my area.

I just reprogrammed my Tracfone cell phone with a new card. The reverse of the card was written entirely in Spanish with no English to the side, so I just read what it had to say (I am doing about 50% comprehension of Spanish).

it sucked. basically ABC is getting viewers because it has some spanish and her parents are illegal.

10 to 1 it flops next season.

Nothing happens over night. This will be a gradual change that no one will even notice until it is too late. At some point, all of our channels will be Spanish.