Early in the first season of Ugly Betty (ABC) we learn that Betty's father, Ignacio Suarez (played by Cuban-American actor Tony Plana) is having some problems with his Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). He is ill; his medicine has run out, but he does not want to ask the HMO for a new prescription. In the episode 'Fey's Sleigh Ride', Betty (America Ferrera) must go in person to the pharmacy where she discovers that her father has been using a fake social security number. Up to this point in the narrative, Ignacio has been depicted as an unusual man and father. He is the primary care-giver to his two daughters: he cooks for them, stays at home, and shows kindness and emotional wisdom not typically associated with an older working-class Latino male. He has been made sympathetic through softening (or perhaps feminizing) his masculinity. But the plot throws a monkey-wrench in the narrative when we discover that he is an undocumented immigrant, one who has committed what the legal and immigration system tried to define as a felony. Perhaps because of this sympathetic representation of an undocumented immigrant, perhaps because the show casts Latinas/os in key production, writing and acting positions, Ugly Betty is seen in the media world as a great example of good media corporate ethics. However, Ugly Betty is the only one-hour show centered on and at least partly produced by Latinas/os on prime-time English-speaking US television. Ironically, by its very existence, the show has helped ABC maintain a respectable reputation regarding diversity programming. In its exceptionality, and in the discursive positioning of the show as good corporate ethics, Ugly Betty illustrates current understandings of diversity and labor in today's deregulated media environment.Using Latina/o media and citizenship studies, in this article I will show that current ideas of diversity and labor are constitutive of Ugly Betty's exceptionality.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.