In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

>> 161 5 Labor and the Legal Structuring of Media Industries in the Case of Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006) Ethnonationalisms are flexible and can welcome others under certain conditions. Processes of inclusion are political but also cultural, and media participates by giving a few members of society the ability to construct the narratives that matter to the entire polis. This chapter reflects on processes of cultural inclusion by investigating the show Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006–2010) and by asking the questions, what can Ugly Betty tell us about the conditions Latinas/os have to fulfill in order to be part of mainstream English-language media? and, as important, what can these conditions tells about the relation of Latinas/os, mainstream media, and citizenship excess? Before trying to answer these questions, let me frame the show in terms friendly to citizenship excess. Early in the first season of Ugly Betty, 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 162 > 163 diversity and labor in media reproduce processes of political capital accumulation to the benefit of a citizen defined in ethno-racial ways. These ideas on diversity and labor craft pathways of inclusion that naturalize unjust labor systems and that, like alchemy, turn the racist political and labor practices of mainstream media into political gold. Giorgio Agamben (2005) theorizes how inclusions can be used for exclusions and how “inclusive exclusions” constitute nation-states. Diversity fits Agamben’s parameters for inclusive exclusions. Instead of being publicly shamed for embracing labor practices that systematically marginalize racial and ethnic minorities, mainstream media such as ABC use the disciplined public performances of Latinas/os, who are often thankful for the privilege of inclusion, to accumulate political capital. In short, Ugly Betty’s circulation as an exemplar of mainstream media ethics relies on the systemic marginalization of Latino labor in the industry and on a definition of diversity tuned more to corporate interests than to social justice (Brown 2004, 423). In the fusing of political and capitalist goals, the public circulation of this dramedy exemplifies processes of racialized political capital accumulation under the guise of what Thomas Streeter (1996) calls “corporate liberalism.” This term refers to the deep influence of capitalist logic on the egalitarian philosophy of liberalism and to the framing of political values in the language of capital. In the case of Ugly Betty, racialized political capital accumulation and corporate liberalism impact the legal production of citizenship by defining the show through media legal frameworks that normalize ideas of diversity and corporate civics that are unlikely to improve the overall social standing of Latinas/os and other minorities. The following section links political capital accumulation to media, thus providing the general framework of analysis for the case. The next four sections speak to Ugly Betty as an exception to two rules about labor and politics: Rule 1: Controlling the meaning of labor and of labor laws is political capital. Rule 2: The power to control and narrativize labor is an intrinsic part of media cultures that use this power to marginalize Latinas /os. The four sections are organized dialectically in terms of the two rules, alternately explaining a rule and then discussing how Ugly Betty managed to circumvent or negotiate that rule. The first of these sections discusses the first rule and explains how political capital is extracted from the control of the meaning of labor and from labor law. This section starts with discussions of labor and race at the birth of the nation and ends with contemporary nativist media discussions on undocumented labor to ultimately show that being able to shape the discourse on labor is great 164 > 165 juridical fields distribute resources, a factor that makes labor a type of politics and thus subject to citizenship excess. Fictional media is speech that has a political, economic, and legal basis. Examples of citizenship excess include the normalization and continuation of sexist, classist, racist, and ethnocentric textual traditions (Aparicio and Chávez-Silverman 1997; Fregoso 2003; Santa Ana 2002; Ramirez Berg 2002; Molina-Guzmán 2010; Beltrán and Fojas 2008; Valdivia 2000). But citizenship excess also exists in the way labor laws organize speakers, easing the path of some while blocking the advance of others. In media, labor laws help define hiring, firing, and advancement processes, which are attentive to political capital . Equally important is...

Share