Labor and the Legal Structuring of Media Industries in the Case of Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006)
Labor and the Legal Structuring of Media Industries in the Case of Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006)
This chapter critiques the popular television dramedy Ugly Betty to explore how political capital accumulation is manifested under the guise of media corporate ethics and liberal politics of accommodation. Ugly Betty demonstrates the convention of having the discourse of citizenship produced and disseminated from the subject/legal position of the citizen; in doing so, it helps to reproduce notions of labor equity that are ultimately harmful to Latinas/os. In relation to this example, the chapter argues that the use of citizenship in media studies often disregards “the legal production of citizenship”: how law effectively generates the category of the citizen and its companion, the “illegal” noncitizen.
Keywords: Ugly Betty, media corporate ethics, political capital accumulation, labor equity, production of citizenship
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