Ugly Betty and the Emergence of the Latina/o Producers as Cultural Translators

Abstract

A critical examination of Betty's adaptation process sheds light on the disjuncture between global television distribution trends and national television markets' business cultures. The process of bringing the ''ugly duckling'' format to the English-language mainstream media market can be better understood as symptomatic of the larger changes taking place within the U.S. television industry, but also as the crucial intervention of Latina/o producers with their cultural and symbolic leverage to make the project possible. In pushing the project forward, Latina/o producers' involvement reveals how their hybrid subjectivities position them in the industry as cultural translators building a bridge to mainstream and global audiences.

Beyond the positive–negative paradigm of Latino/Latina news-media representations: DREAM Act exemplars, stereotypical selection, and American Otherness

“…News-media representations of Latino/Latinas have historically been marked by distortions and negative stereotyping, some of which have rendered members of this group synonymous with 'immigrant', and even 'illegal immigrant', although only about 18 percent of US Latino/Latinas are undocumented (Taylor et al, 2012). The broader scope of the mass media's treatment of Latino/Latinas has been marked by similar inaccuracies, primarily exclusion from mainstream representations and negative stereotyping (Barreto et al, 2012;Chávez, 2008;Greenberg et al, 1983;Mastro and Behm-Morazwitz, 2005;Mastro et al, 2007;Piñón, 2011;Ramírez Berg, 2002;Rivadeneyra, 2011;Rodriguez, 1999;Saka, 2005;Santa Ana, 2002;Tukachinsky et al, 2011). In recent decades, particularly with the growth of the US Latino/Latina population and increased attention to immigration policy, the phenomenon of exclusion/invisibility gradually has been replaced by an array of negative stereotypes.…”