Are the Henrickson sister-wives – Barb, Nicki and Margene – from HBO’s original drama Big Love truly breaking new representational ground, contributing to a vibrant conversation on the state of contemporary feminism, or merely recycling old stereotypes under new guises? Wife number one Barb was born into a traditional Mormon family marrying Bill Henrickson straight after university and bearing him three children. After being diagnosed with cancer followed by a radical hysterectomy, she chose, along with her husband, to invite Nicki to be his second wife. (A decision placing considerable strain on relations with her mother and sister, both active in the Mormon Church.) Wife number two may judge harshly the valueless secular world she lives in, but nonetheless incurs huge credit card debt filling a void in her life that faith cannot address. And wife number three may find comfort in a sense of family absent in her childhood, but somehow thought she was only marrying Bill. Overcome at daughter Teenie’s baptism (the youngest child of Bill and Barb) Margene jumps in the pool pledging herself to the family: “I was marrying sisters, my sisters, that was my choice, and I’d make that choice all over again” (‘The Baptism’, 1: 10).

Mixed feelings, complicated sleeping rosters, the deception of respectable society in order to keep up appearances; and the choices and actions of the sister-wives, seemingly at odds with feminism, baffling to most, push us into new directions in the post-feminist age.

The Henrickson sister-wives probably feel they have no need of feminism. Does not, in fact, being content to stay at home raising children, in the service of God and their husband, give representation to the ideal of American womanhood that the media works so hard to promote (Faludi, 1992)? Given that America has recently been in the throes of a seismic political and religious shift to the right, shaped by the rise to prominence of the fundamental Christian Right with its pro-life, pro-family, anti-gay agenda, Barb and Nicki at least are well rehearsed in its rhetoric. At the moment of baptism when Margene pledges herself to her sister-wives, insisting that it is her choice, and co-opting a liberal feminist rhetoric to do so, she finally accepts what being a sister-wife really means. In many ways Margene finds feminine salvation through religious fundamentalism and polygamy. Personal redemption wrapped up in religious rhetoric. But in an HBO twist she doesn’t pledge herself to the patriarch but to her sisters to help her find the way.

To their suburban community the Henrickson women appear unremarkable. Barb is married to Bill, and both Nicki and Margene are single parents who just happen to live next door. But behind the respectable veneer of three adjacent homes is a common backyard through which Bill can move unobserved between the three women’s beds.

Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake contest that “living up to images of success requires keeping secrets” (2003: 41). Who but the Henrickson sister-wives know more about keeping up appearances, bearing the heavy burden of family secrets? (Well, maybe Carmela Soprano.) Heavily invested in living the ideal as respectable citizens and mothers requires them to deny what such an image is built on – bigamy and the shifting sands of moral relativism. But given that this is television and that the longer serial narrative arc, to quote Michel Foucault, “imposes meticulous rules of self-examination” (1998: 19) disclosure is inevitable. Operating within a longer television serial form, subject to its particular narrative mechanisms, it is hard to keep secrets.

Considering Barb has long been “invested in the work of keeping silent, shoring up images and narratives that [she thinks] help [her] survive” (Heywood and Drake 2003: 41) it is not too surprising that her head gets turned by the Mother of the Year award. Surviving cancer, working as a substitute teacher, doing good works in the community and for her church, and bringing up children are enough to get her nominated by Teenie. And, after all, hasn’t she sacrificed enough for her family – her womb, her marital bed, her place on the roster when another wife is fertile, her affair with Bill. At first she accepts Nicki’s reasoning that she cannot possibly accept the nomination because, as her sister-wife points out: they all bring up the children and Barb’s re-entry into the work force would have been impossible without the others keeping the home fires burning. But when a photographer from the local paper arrives to take a family portrait, she does nothing to send him away (‘Where There’s A Will’, 1: 11). At first she pretends to have forgotten about the appointment, but then assembles her three children in the dining room, closing off the kitchen so no one can see behind the façade. Nicki and her children gatecrash nonetheless and Barb introduces her as a neighbour. One of Nicki’s sons asks if they are all going to be in the picture but the photographer tells him that this is just for family. Barb says nothing. She does not want to pull out. As she later confesses to Nicki she realises that it is important for her to be publicly recognised as a good mother.

Barb makes it to the final (‘The Ceremony’, 1: 12), but is disqualified when confronted with her polygamy. Fighting back tears, she confesses. Forced to walk from the competition, in front of the entire community, is a truly excruciating moment. But the aching disappointment, the pain of her dilemma, goes to the very heart of living the approved script. Believing that she might, could even, get away with the deception reveals the messiness involved in keeping the boundaries that hold her sense of self in place; to inhabit the image of feminine perfection means silence must shroud anything that falls outside this privileged representation. And here lies the rub. Barb is committed to working with contradiction and inconsistency in order to ‘collude with the approved script’ (ibid) from which she gains most pleasure. But it is a calculated risk. “I got what I deserved”, admits a crestfallen Barb. Her sister-wives have no consoling words, only silent tears.

But judging and being judged goes to the very heart of the feminine politics of Big Love.

On the surface it may seem that what is at stake in Big Love are male property rights, to women and everything else. But, as the conflicts deepen and the plot thickens, the contradictions and paradoxes of the women’s lives are made visible less through their relationships with men than in and through their relationships with each other and other women. For example, it is Wendy, Bill’s employee, who exposes Barb, disgusted by the practise of polygamy and its degradation of women; it is the First Lady, the governor’s wife, who shakes her head at Barb in disbelief, uttering, “Good Heavens,” on hearing the news of Barb’s polygamist lifestyle; and it is Nicki, the one who frets most about the family’s moral course, who judges Barb most harshly for vanity and risking exposure while at the same time sharing and knowing only too well her desire for recognition as a good mother and virtuous wife. Indeed the poignancy of Nicki’s words, “Barb, what have you done,” judging her, policing her, while sharing tears, supporting her, loving her too much. And it is, for us, this kind of complex feminine censure that makes Big Love so compelling.

Astrid Henry in her 2004 study of third wave feminism Not My Mother’s Sister identifies how generational conflict, the battle-lines drawn between mother and daughter, shapes feminist thinking and pushes forward the discourse. She persuasively argues that each new generation advances its own radicalism, and advocates its own unique position by denouncing others. Second-wave feminists vilify their fifties housewife mothers, postfeminists reject the radicalism of the second-wave; then along come the third wavers, raised on the promise of feminist equality.

At the heart of this discord, for Henry at least, is what she terms, “dis-identification,” an identification against something. Based on the work of Diana Fuss, and building on the theories of Judith Butler, this idea of refused identification, she argues, means that it is only by refusing to identify with earlier feminisms that the latest wave can create one of their own. It seems to us that rooted in any feminine discourse, feminist or otherwise, is regulation, a policing of women’s theoretical endeavours, of their behaviours, their sexual pleasures and their lifestyle choices. And it is this regulation through dis-identification that makes visible the nuanced, often poignant, dilemmas of these very modern women living in a quiet suburb of Salt Lake City as they set about policing themselves and each other.

Power relations are indeed complex. In the patriarchal world par excellence of a fundamentalist church where women are unlikely to have much say, or even be considered important enough to matter beyond providing domestic support, the sister-wives have long understood the formidable power embedded in roles to which no one pays much attention. They take great pains to be seen playing by the rules, operating inside meticulous codes – of marriage to powerful patriarchs, of motherhood extolled by media rhetoric, of family valorised and sanctified by religion. It is a lesson in unseen power whereby the wife and mother quite literally lay down the law; she is privileged, she is privilege. No wonder the policing process is so complex as the sister-wives jostle for power and influence. It pitches younger women against older women, mothers against daughters, new wives against first wives and one set of family values against another.

Contradiction is inherent in the uneasy choices that these women must make in order to live the life they choose; it is in their perplexing decision-making, in their complicated morality, in their competing desires, in their holding fast to scripted fantasies of heterosexual romance that feminism warns us about, in their being aroused by politically incorrect erotic pleasures, in their reproducing sexism and sexist stereotypes, sometimes even in their collusion with those who oppress other women – and in our complex emotional investment in them. In this sense, Big Love gives representation to our complex age of troubled emancipation. Steering clear of feminist agendas, but valuing individuality, these women have much to tell us about the contradictions we live with.

Citations:

Faludi, Susan. 1992. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. London: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel. 1998. The Will to Knowledge. The History of Sexuality. 1. trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin.

Henry, Astrid. 2004. Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Heywood, Leslie and Drake, Jennifer. 2003. “We Learn America like a Script: Activism in the Third Wave; or, Enough Phantoms of Nothing.” Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Eds. Heywood and Drake. University of Minnesota Press. 40-54.

Images:

1. Big Love

2. The Sister-Wives of Big Love

3. “The Ceremony”

Feel free to comment.

This year will see the last ever episode of The Sopranos. It all seems a far cry from the days when HBO was riding high and our favourite mobster drama was at the forefront of a distinctive roster of groundbreaking and original series. Chris Albrecht, now former CEO of HBO, confirms how these shows made the cable company’s reputation when he says, ‘We’ll never have anything like that experience again, because between The Sopranos and Sex and the City and Six Feet Under all happening in that short period of time [1998-2001], we came of age in a way we hadn’t before[1].’

With The Sopranos ending it leads us to ask: What has the show done for HBO, and how will the company survive without it?

Viewers and TV journalists have long come to expect provocative subject matter and thought-provoking television from HBO. But, we contend, original programming like The Sopranos has not so much changed television as much as said something important about how the institution of television has changed. In 1996 the Telecommunications Act was ratified in both Congress and the Senate, an Act intended ‘to provide maximum economic and content freedoms for the broadcast industry[2]’. Increasingly the television industry, and supported by Washington, placed emphasis on diversity, innovation and competitiveness, which, in turn, made visible the TVIII era, defined by Mark Rogers, Michael Epstein and Jimmie Reeves[3], as driven by niche markets, consumer demand, and customer satisfaction.

New broadcasting regulations, far from resolving the question of cable’s status in the public sphere, in actual fact initiated a succession of struggles over precisely that question. A great deal of uncertainty still remains as to the future of cable, as evidenced by the 2006 Congress hearings on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) involvement in regulating pay-for-view channels. In this context, the audacious tagline, ‘It’s Not TV. It’s HBO’, seems about more than just the company’s intention to place itself in another league, but as somehow making visible – and possibly redefining – what we mean by television in the post-1996 era.

HBO has instituted a discourse of quality based on creative risk-taking and artistic integrity as well as original tele-literary products that emphasise smart writing, compelling stories told in an innovative way, high production values and a unique creative vision behind each project. But the company has surely not invented any markers for defining quality, and neither has it discovered any new ones. It has, nonetheless, defined new rules for talking about and understanding what we mean by quality TV in the post-1996, post-network era. HBO has imposed itself as a model for producing quality TV, enforcing those ideals, and spawning new forms of television culture, new opportunities for transformation in creative practices and business strategies.

Doing differently, setting itself against what is prohibited on network television, has emerged as a crucial institutional strategy for HBO. The station has long made a virtue of its autonomy from the constraints and restrictions limiting network television. With no commercials to interrupt and no advertisers to placate, no FCC to censor, and an institutional status that places them beyond the reach of industrial regulation, HBO stakes its reputation on consciously violating codes – how it defies, resists and scandalises. Nothing approaches the levels of free expression and explicit sex and violence that the cable company can include. But to break any taboo is no easy matter; and what HBO did with its original programming was to insert the illicit into a system of values, institutionally managed and regulated. Latitude to tell stories differently, creative personnel given the autonomy to work with minimal interference and without having to compromise, has become the HBO trademark – how they endlessly speak about and sell themselves, how the media talks about them and how their customers have come to understand what they are paying for.

Yet, this notion of creative autonomy is not random but a continual struggle for institutional survival and market leadership. Pushing the limits of respectability, of daring to say/do what cannot be said/done elsewhere on the broadcast networks, is entwined with being esoteric, groundbreaking and risk-taking. Assuming the mantel of industry pioneer has led Albrecht to go as far as to liken the company’s position ‘to the Medicis of Italy, the Renaissance patrons of the arts[4]’. Evoking the powerful and wealthy Florentine merchant family who sponsored a revolution in art is a bold statement. But it suggests nonetheless that HBO takes great care to be seen – but more importantly insists we never forget to think about the company – as benefactors of a television revolution that is experimental and searching out the new.

So what of the future when the show that best defines HBO bows out.

Interviewed in April’s Vanity Fair, Albrecht said: ‘Now people go, “What’s next? Where’s the next Sopranos?” There is no next Sopranos[5].’ Such a comment, for us at least, suggests that this is not a matter of producing another Sopranos, but that another can never be made. With a zeitgeist show this successful, a phenomena that even HBO could never have anticipated, the series, we would argue, represents an age of television now passing. As The Sopranos draws to a close its conclusion may say more about the end of a particular era of television drama than anything else. In short, The Sopranos may have been named the best drama ever, but is it not the case that it made visible what drama was at this particular historic moment.

It maybe that other network and cable channels are now emulating the original programming formula – for example, the FX network has consciously modeled itself as the HBO of basic cable and produced controversial and risqué shows like Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, The Shield and Huff! (And let’s face it – there would be no Desperate Housewives without Sex and the City.) It maybe the mob-hit along with other HBO signature shows helped the channel come of age as nothing before, and HBO maybe lamenting its passing, but as Albrecht has recently said, it is also ‘the beginning of something else[6]’.

HBO has long been at the forefront of Video on Demand. In fact, we would argue that the company pioneered it through box-sets which not only allow non-subscribers to view programmes exclusive to HBO (thereby taking television out of established schedules). But also appealing to what Mark Lawson has called a core audience that is demographically likely to include the ‘income rich, time poor viewers that like to believe they are in charge of their own lives[7]’. (Exactly the demographic that HBO imagines for its original programming). In fact the box-set replicates Video on Demand with its notion of self-scheduling: in this case the prospect of viewers downloading from a central menu programmes that are no longer divided by time-slots or channels. (It is also worth noting that The Sopranos is the first ever series to be available on HD-DVD. Once again demonstrating how HBO announces the new through its flagship series.)

HBO on Demand now accounts for about 10 percent of the viewing for most HBO programmes; and this figure is set to rise, as the service becomes more readily available including in the UK via Virgin Media. Jeff Bewkes, now President and Chief Operating Officer of Time Warner, has even touted HBO on Demand as the way for the cable division of HBO to compete with Apple iTunes and other emerging forms of digital distribution. According to him, one of its main advantages is that programmes are delivered directly to televisions rather than being downloaded and watched on computer – one of the major stumbling blocks for the networks in their attempt to convert to digital delivery.

September 2006 and HBO again tried something new in an effort to keep the small but loyal fan base for The Wire, its drama about the Baltimore drug trade. In an unprecedented trial, the network put each episode out on its On Demand service six days before its regular Sunday night broadcast. In its first week the programme was viewed On Demand over 188,000 times. By the fourth week the number had already grown to over 430,000, which, in turn, helped boost The Wire’s viewing figures up by 200,000 over the previous season’s total. Albrecht cites this as a success story for the future of HBO by saying, ‘We have always been about the quality of our work and the convenience of watching it. In a world where kids are downloading Lost or whatever they want to download – that is the HBO model, and it has been for a long time[8].’

HBO’s latest venture is HBO Mobile. The company is for example producing original mini-episodes of the series Entourage for Cingular Video customers who subscribe to their service. In addition, HBO Mobile distributes full-length episodes of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Deadwood and Da Ali G Show.

HBO has also recently launched an Internet channel to rival YouTube. Reaching out to a younger audience – particularly university students who will mature into the key demographic targeted by HBO – is a smart investment in the future.

For a company once known for its portfolio of niche programming attracting a loyal subscriber base, what we are now seeing is HBO developing a portfolio of niche delivery platforms that will retain that base.

HBO have typically been immune to traditional forces governing broadcast networks especially when broadcasters assembled large audiences around a few prime-time shows and sold those audiences to advertisers. For half a century this model has proved the unquestioned leader in profitability and ratings. Not any longer. In an increasingly fragmented market, the networks are now struggling to maintain profits during their conversion to digital delivery. HBO has long made a virtue out of being subversive, defying established network powers (although HBO is part of the Time Warner empire that also owns NBC). Their subversion is based on their ability to conjure away the present and appeal to the future, suggesting that that future will be hastened by the contribution they are making – despite it being a future without The Sopranos.

Notes:
[1] Carter, Bill. ‘[1] Carter, Bill. ‘After “Sopranos,” a Need for a Hit’. New York Times. 22 March 2007.
[2]Rowland Jr., Willard D. ‘The V-Chip’. The Television History Book. Michele Hilmes. Ed. London: bfi Publishing, 2003: 135.
[3]Rogers, Mark, Michael C. Epstein and Jimmie Reeves. ‘The Sopranos as HBO Brand Equity: The Art of Commerce in the Age of Digital Representation’. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. David Lavery. Ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002: 42-57.
Epstein, Michael M., Jimmie L. Reeves and Mark C. Rogers. ‘Surviving “The Hit”: Will The Sopranos Still Sing for HBO’. Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO. David Lavery, Ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006: 15-25.
[4]Johnson, Ted. ‘Risks and Rewards’. Variety. 25-31 August 2003: A6.
[5]Biskind, Peter. ‘An American Family’, 198.
[6]Carter, Bill. [6]Carter, Bill. ‘After “Sopranos.”’
[7]Lawson, Mark. ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ The Guardian (G2). 2 November 2006a: 7.
[8]Chaffin, Joshua. [8]Chaffin, Joshua. ‘HBO adjusts to programme in world of choices’. Financial Times. 21 November 2006.

Images:

1. The Sopranos.

2. The Shield.

3. The Wire.

Please feel free to comment.

Anyone living in the UK in the latter part of January this year could not open a newspaper or turn on the television without being aware of the Celebrity Big Brother race row. For those of you that might not know about the furore, here is a re-cap. Channel 4’s high-profile reality-TV show haemorrhaged viewers almost from the start with its tired concept and bored-looking contestants. Enter Jade Goody and her family. The strategy was clear: bring in the underclass to create conflict and boost viewing figures. It paid off almost immediately as Jade’s mother Jackiey Budden clashed with Ken Russell and, after an altercation with Jade, he walked. But worse was to come. Jade and two other housemates – model and ‘Wag’ Danielle Lloyd and ex-pop star Jo O’Meara – turned against Bollywood film star Shilpa Shetty. The mood turned ugly as vitriol spewed. The three white working class girls joined forces in a shocking display of ignorance, as the Indian star became victim of their bullying in the worst possible way.

It caused a minor storm.

Shilpa Shetty

Big Brother’s executives were quizzed over their failure to manage the situation and Carphone Warehouse withdrew their lucrative sponsorship deal. The row shone a spotlight on the channel’s remit and its future public subsidy was called into question. The brouhaha ignited international political controversy with protests held across India hijacking a diplomatic visit to the country. Questions were raised in the House of Commons forcing the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to comment on the situation and leading Alan Johnson, education secretary, to call for teenagers to be taught ‘British values’ in schools to combat racism and ignorant attitudes. Ofcom eventually logged a record 45,000 complaints against Channel 4.

Before we go any further we need to make a confession. We have been friends for 14-years and writing partners since 2000. We may have quibbled over content, clashed over commas and parlayed over prepositions – but never have we rowed – until Jade Goody. Her appearance on a Friday night chat show threatened a potential friendship schism like nothing before it. Details aside, it was the ferociousness of our disagreement over the ‘star’ of reality TV that shocked us more than anything.

We are not alone in being passionately divided over this woman.

Jade Goody, ex-dental nurse and council estate girl from Bermondsey, is indeed a polarising figure. Champion of the chav, scourge of the middle classes, she is an easy target. Originally shooting to fame as a housemate on Big Brother 3 Goody became the subject of a frenzied media witch-hunt. Instantly christened ‘Miss Piggy’ by The Sun, she became the very definition of the modern unruly woman – slightly overweight, outspoken, ignorant, loutish and generally out of control. Her exit from the house followed news headlines like ‘Ditch the Witch. Gobby Jade is Public Enemy Number One’ and was accompanied by a mob braying ‘burn the pig’. Her life since then has been lived in the public gaze. Her pregnancies played out in celebrity gossip magazines, her on/off relationship with her children’s father fodder for the tabloids and her various moneymaking ventures turned into series for cable channels. Goody is famous for being famous.

And yet, surely this is not enough to threaten a solid (and otherwise rational) friendship. Good feminist scholars that we are, we should know that what is being played out over the figure of Jade Goody is media manipulation at its best. Is she not, above all, a figure of ambivalence straining at the margins of class, race, femininity and feminine propriety? She may be painted as white trash, as the underclass that will not shut up, but surely we understand how representation works. And, recognising the unruly woman’s liminal status we should be alert to what gets mapped onto her.

With her initial appearance on Celebrity Big Brother we found ourselves tentatively circling each other over the ‘Jade Goody Row’. Surely after the first time round she would have learnt how the Big Brother script plays. It was her mother that was the liability this time (we argued) and Goody, having been through the first media frenzy, would surely be a bit more savvy. Neither of us are avid viewers of Big Brother. In fact after the pain of Germaine Greer and the humiliation of George Galloway, we were not keen to witness another bunch of minor celebrities making fools of themselves. But once the scandal broke we, like the rest of Britain did tune in.

Jade Goody

Let’s face it: Nothing justifies what these women did.

Watching Lloyd and O’Meara display appalling ignorance of Indian eating habits, Lloyd suggesting Shetty should ‘fuck off home’, and Goody calling her ‘Shilpa Fuckawallah’ and ‘Shilpa Poppadom,’ was indeed repulsive. Their comments reeked of xenophobia and, particularly at a time when the British government was preaching racial tolerance and social inclusiveness, this was unacceptable. No one could excuse their petty-mindedness but, while The Sun continued to insist that Goody was ‘a vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class,’ the broadsheets began to question the debacle, digging under the headlines and concluding that the housemates’ attitudes probably said more about class and cultural inequalities than racism alone.

But in the scramble for the moral high ground, there has been barely a mention of the way these women, and Goody in particular, are talked about.

With the media storm still raging it was almost inevitable that the subject would come up on BBC1’s flagship political debating programme Question Time. The panellists were asked to respond to events still emerging on Channel 4. Edwina Currie, former Conservative MP and erstwhile lover of John Major, said of the trio of housemates, ‘They are crude young women having a go at another young woman in the most horrendous fashion. She is a beautiful young lady and they are slags.’ Her choice of words drew a few gasps from the auditorium but, in general, nobody seemed particularly shocked. Some of the audience even laughed and applauded, arguably echoing O’Meara and Lloyd’s earlier Greek chorus in the Big Brother house. Currie was unrepentant. Nothing more was said.

While the battle was being fought over whether Goody was racist or not, headlines reading: ‘”Ugly” Jade not so Goody’ slipped under the radar. And comments such as Currie’s went un-remarked.

Let us be clear about this: racism in any society is abhorrent. The media should demand its eradication. And it is admirable that broadsheet journalists expose any class issues. But something has gone terribly awry when there is no mention of the sexism inherent in the Celebrity Big Brother media coverage.

Protestors

We are still waiting for the outrage.

Today’s women may be ‘growing up in a generation oblivious to the gender struggles of the past’ but they ignore today’s gender issues at their peril. Warns writer Ariel Levy, ‘just because we are post doesn’t automatically mean we are feminists … simply because my generation of women has the good fortune to live in a world touched by the feminist movement, that [does not] mean everything we do is magically imbued with its agenda.’ This is clearly the case as women on both sides of the Atlantic struggle with an uneven status quo. Many express no need for feminism. With equal access to a good education, successful career and unlimited choice, there is particular stratum of twenty-thirtysomething women who enjoy the gains of the feminist movement without ever having to engage with its politics.

Yet they may do well to beware of complacency.

And ask why it is necessary to constantly compare themselves with ‘boob-enhanced trophy Wags … so iconic for doing absolutely nothing but sleeping with a footballer and applying self-tan.’ And what of the antagonism this provokes? According to Susan Faludi, this is precisely how patriarchal backlash works, by employing: ‘a divide-and-conquer strategy: single versus married women, working women versus housewives, middle- versus working-class. It manipulates a system of rewards and punishments, elevating women who follow its rules, isolating those who don’t’ (emphasis added). Looking back over the Shetty vs. Goody spectacle and the resulting media storm it is clear that the Big Brother controversy exposed a paradox at the heart of twenty-first century womanhood. In this televisual instance of backlash the upper middle-class Bollywood film star is pitted against the lower working-class British reality TV star; one has a first-rate education and is skilled in the art of representation, and the other clearly is not. We do not need a crystal ball to predict the winner in this particular game of divide and rule.

And we may do well to heed Susan Faludi’s warnings when she tells us that despite the fact that backlash is not an organized political movement, this too works to its advantage, ‘It is most powerful when it goes private, when it lodges inside a woman’s mind … until she begins to enforce the backlash, too – on herself.’ If there is any doubt that the Shetty vs. Goody row has touched upon a raw nerve for British women then the words of one young Oxford Graduate should send a chill down our collective feminist spines: ‘on the one hand you have this post-feminist message about achievement and on the other, there’s the message that the quickest, most secure route to wealth is going on Big Brother and having your boobs done. … Maybe that’s just yet another aspirational drive of my generation.’

No wonder we are bemused.

Big Brother maybe able to paper over the cracks and Shilpa Shetty may draw a line under her part in the affair, but things are not that easy for Goody, Lloyd and O’Meara. Within days of leaving the Big Brother house, all three were reportedly on the verge of nervous breakdowns: Lloyd lost bookings and her boyfriend; O’Meara collapsed; and Goody, facing a career in tatters, checked into a private clinic suffering from depression and stress. Police have now questioned all three over their part in the Celebrity Big Brother race row.

And still no one has mentioned the sexism.

Such is the fickle face of television celebrity that Mary Riddle, looking back over the debacle remarks, rather depressingly, ‘the spectacle … has licensed a campaign of abuse and bullying against a reality show star manufactured and destroyed by venom.’

And as for us? We stand united. Bruised and battered maybe, hung-over from the fall-out of Celebrity Big Brother and sickened by its ramifications. But ever more alert to the stealth of patriarchy, and the power of the media to institute sexism that empowers women while at the same perpetuating oppression.

And, yes, we’re still friends.

Notes:
Barbara Ellen used this phrase in her critique of the Big Brother debacle: 21 January 2007.
Mary Riddle, The Observer. 21 January 2007.
Stuart Jeffres, The Guardian. 24 May 2006.
Thursday 18 January 2007.
Even Germaine Greer’s usually strident and unapologetic feminism seems diluted. With an air of resignation she observes: ‘it’s a funny old world, to be sure. You can call her [Shetty] a “dog”. Sexism is fine. What you mustn’t do is call her a “Paki”. As if to be Pakistani was to be worse than being a dog.’
Louise Carpenter. The Observer 11 March 2007.
Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. New York: Free Press. 2005: 5.
Carpenter op cit.
Susan Faludi. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women, 1992: 17.
Faludi 16.
Carpenter op cit.
Riddle op cit.

Image Credits:
1. Shilpa Shetty
2. Jade Goody
3. Protestors

Please feel free to comment.

UK's Channel 4 pinned its ratings hopes on latest US import Ugly Betty. The show delivered; and when it first aired on Friday 5 January 2007 4.5million people tuned in. It may not have been the massive 16.3million viewers enjoyed in the States; but for a channel suffering a ratings slump after the departure of Friends, Frasier and Sex and the City it was good news. We must, however, wait to see if the latest sharp-edged American import will help the minority terrestrial channel woo back its young, hip and predominantly female audience that once flocked to watch Carrie Bradshaw looking fabulous in vintage as she navigated the Manhattan dating scene.

Yet this is no simple Imperialistic tale of a transatlantic trade in programmes from the US to Britain. Instead the stylish US hit comedy Ugly Betty is the latest incarnation of a truly global phenomenon that started life as a Colombian telenovela back in 1999. The ugly duckling has since migrated to Mexico and Russia, from Germany to Israel; and recently landed in Greece and Spain. So what does the Ugly Betty phenomenon have to say about the international circulation of TV fictions as the locally produced Latin American telenovela is sold to, and/or re-made for and within, different national contexts? What does it tell us about the tensions between the commercial demands of multi-media conglomerates pursuing international ambitions, the regulatory forces of national broadcasters struggling in competitive markets, and the known preference audiences have for local TV fare? And what is more, has the global exporting of the ugly duckling tale led to a branded homogenisation of cultural storytelling and audience experience, obliterating the local and threatening indigenous cultural representation?

Ugly Betty is in fact the ninth production. Yo soy Betty, la fea/ I am Betty, the Ugly One (1999-2001), produced by RCN (Radio Cadena Nacional), which reaches approximately 97 percent of the Colombian population, became a national obsession. Viewers tuned into the five-episodes-a-week to follow the smart but less than attractive Beatriz Pinzón Solano (Ana María Orozco) climbing the corporate ladder, becoming an executive and marrying her boss. So popular was it in other Latin American countries that the ratings in March 2001 were higher in Ecuador (58.9 audience share) and Panama (56.5) than its native Colombia (50.7) with Venezuela trailing with “only” a 41.5 percent share. And when the finale screened in May 2001 more than 80million people in this region along with the US tuned in. Dubbed for export, it has been broadcast in Mexico and Brazil, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, Turkey, Malaysia and Japan. Its enormous popularity has led to several international remakes:

in Mexico as El amor no es como lo pintan/ Love Is Not As They Paint It (TV Azteca, 2000) and later as the glossy La fea más bella/ The Prettiest Ugly Girl (Televisa, 2005); in India as the hugely popular Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin/ Nobody is Like Jassi (SET, 2003); in Germany as the phenomenal hit Verliebt in Berlin/ Falling in Love in Berlin (Sat1, 2005); in Israel as Esti Ha'mechoeret/Ugly Esti (SET, 2003); in Russia as the much-watched Esti Ne rodis'krasivoy/ Be Not Born Beautiful (STS, 2005); in the Netherlands as Lotte (Talpa, 2006); in Spain as the aptly titled Yo soy Bea/I am Bea (Telecinco, 2006) (Bea rhymes with fea which means ugly); and its newest incarnation in Greece as Mαρία η άσγημη/Maria, The Ugly (Mega Channel, 2007).

What intrigues us is how the format of the series is used and/or adapted as it moves from one (national) broadcasting context to another. One finds that this traffic is not one way but instead becomes entangled in a “complex connectivity” (Tomlinson 2004: 26) involving the spread of a globalised media, regulated local markets, and agencies giving representation to cultural identities (gendered, ethnic, national, etc.). Yo soy Betty, la fea, for example, screened initially in the States on the Spanish-language broadcast and cable channel Telemundo, owned by NBC since late 2001 and aimed at over 35million Hispanics living in the US. The show may have first belonged to the Latino community, but with US Spanish-language television firmly incorporated into the corporate media mainstream, it was no minority TV–and this complex cultural dialogue/exchange continues in and through Ugly Betty. That said it was largely thanks to the efforts of Hollywood “A” list Mexican actress Salma Hayek that the Colombian telenovela ripened into Ugly Betty. Purchasing the format for her production company Ventanarosa to develop, Hayek says: “We've been trying to bring the Latino experience to television for many years. I was a big fan of Betty, la fea because it was different–it was very funny. So we thought this would be the perfect bridge where we could bring something that all the Latin community would feel is theirs into American culture” (Wilson 2006: 7).

Maybe, but in that bridging process the series has become enclosed within US broadcasting working practices and prevailing television conventions. Unlike American scripting processes, story arcs for the telenovela are planned well in advance: conclusions are already mapped out; and writers work toward those goals. Not so for the American Ugly Betty. Subject to network dictates and the vicissitudes of ratings no one can foresee how long a specific show will last. With no definite end in sight it is difficult to predict the length of a particular storyline–for example, the possible love entanglement between Betty and Daniel–as you can with the telenovela. (In a twist the German telenovela, Verliebt in Berlin, ran into difficulty when its broadcaster Sat1 decided to recommission the hugly popular series for a second year but without the main couple whose narrative arc had been resolved. Fans were not impressed.)

Michel Foucault has maintained that power relations are not seamless, but instead are always producing new forms of culture, identity and subjectivity, new chances for change and transformation. Where power exists, he claimed, so does resistance. Dominant institutions and values are persistently being infiltrated and reinvented by forms, conventions and values that have developed and gained potency and uniqueness at the periphery. Existing at the margins of American television culture long behind it, the telenovela has moved from the outer edge to the centre. A shift self-reflexively made visible in Ugly Betty as it self-consciously references the distinctive cultural heritage of the generic form that originated in Latin America in the 1960s. Anyone familiar with the telenovela is not likely to forget its distinctive look and outlandish plotlines. It is possible to watch episodes of both Vidas de Fuego and Muchas Muchachas, the telenovelas watched in the Suarez household, on the official Ugly Betty website with Salma Hayek playing the role of privileged heroine Sofia Reyes, whose attempts to seduce her stepson and gain control of the family business are central to the narrative. Each short episode begins by a tracking shot through the Suarez family home into the television and the highly melodramatic world of the obviously dubbed telenovela–a shift from one fantasy space into another. Enclosed in the fictional world of Ugly Betty, the telenovela with its hyper-melodramatic storyline, Hayek's camp portrayal of the outlandish heroine, and tawdry stories of sex, seduction and betrayal is made strange; its tales are as out of sync with the heart of the story that belongs to Betty Suarez as is the dubbing. But Ugly Betty reinvigorates and diversifies the serial dramedy form as it absorbs codes and conventions from elsewhere. Such transformation is not startling; but emerges only gradually in its bold visual style, representational types, proliferation of new identity politics and (cultural) values while paradoxically continuing to adhere to prevailing US TV norms (narrative structure, generic format–and we knew that it was too good to be true that American TV executives would actually hire a genuine ugly duckling to play the lead role).

At a recent conference at Manchester Metropolitan University in Crewe, UK, doctoral candidate Bianca Lippert offered a comparative study of the Colombian, Indian and German versions of Yo soy Betty, la fea, investigating similarities and differences within mythic narration, fairy tales and melodrama. It provoked intense debate from the assembled crowd over what Betty's femininity represented (and why unruly eyebrows, a bad haircut and thick spectacles are ubiquitous signifiers of ugliness). The Cinderella story maybe popular enough to sell globally, but selling on the concept for indigenous production companies to develop within the “local” indicates more complex meanings. That each woman heads for the big cities–New York, Berlin–leads us to suggest the importance of a more cosmopolitan cultural outlook that comes from increased mobility, and speaks of a globalisation in which these fictions circulate. But how these women respond to the challenges express 'local' difference.

For example, in the Colombian version Beatriz is a symbol of uncorrupted innocence. In a region where corruption has destabilised successive governments, the “goodness” of Beatriz has particular political resonance. In India Jassi's story is about an aspirational middle-class young woman who leaves behind her family to find work in the city. Providing a new twist Jassi does not marry her Prince Charming, Armaan, but instead realises that self-esteem and dignity are worth more than a wedding ring. According to channel head Tarun Katyal the message is clear: “She is no longer interested in being a walkover. Through her we want to send out a wake-up call to all timid middle-class girls caught in oppressive relationships–it could be with a parent or a boyfriend.” Much more work is thus required to fully understand the complex identities (gender, class, ethnic, cultural, national, regional, etc.) in play within the local/national/global contexts.

In the week when Ugly Betty picked up the Golden Globe for Best Comedy TV Series, and America Ferrera won Best Actress in a TV Comedy, news reached us about the “Be Ugly” campaign. The idea behind the US project, we are reliably informed, is to promote self-esteem and end stereotyping at a time when there has been a trend toward an obsession with celebrities of skeletal proportions and Size 00 models. Is this not what our Betty means to us in the US and UK? Have we not seen too much? Routinely invited to look behind the body imagining process–plastic surgery, extreme diet and exercise plans, radical dental work, anti-ageing substances to be applied and/or injected–are we not meant to conclude that the attainment of glamorous perfection is less a shop window than a modern day freak show? Have we thus entered a new age of geek chic? Is Ugly Betty the new Sex and the City where self-esteem is priced more highly than Manolo Blahniks?

Works Cited

Tomlinson, John. “Globalisation and National Identity.” Contemporary World Television. Eds. John Sinclair and Graeme Turner. London: BFI, 2004. 24-27.

Wilson, Benji. “Ugly Betty.” Observer (Review). 31 December 2006: 7.

Image Credits:
1. The set of Ugly Betty
2. Amor no es como lo pintan
3. Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin

Please feel free to comment.

Artie Bucco is having a bad episode (”Luxury Lounge”, 6: 7). Business at Vesuvio is floundering: the restaurant is almost deserted, apart from Benny hitting on new hostess Martina, American Express fraud investigators are asking uncomfortable questions about stolen customer credit card numbers, Amex cancel their services until the matter is resolved, Artie has a meltdown, accusing staff of stealing from him, everyone is raving about the food at Da Giovanni's and there are mutterings that Artie's cuisine is not what it was.

Apologies for coming late to the table, but season 6 of The Sopranos is only just airing here in the UK. Dana Polan eloquently wrote about Tony and Carmela's obsession with sushi back in April. Devouring the hottest food fad our urban, upscale couple dine at their favourite sushi restaurant, Noh. Tempted by tempuras, and greedy for gyoza, furore over futomaki ignites the latest rift in the Soprano marriage. Gone are the days of Tony's philandering with goomahs. Nowadays he plays away from home with some raw sexy sashimi.

All this ends with Tony's near fatal shooting. No more talk of sushi as the mobster boss hovers between life and death, apparently somewhere between a New Jersey hospital bed and a hotel bar in Orange County, California.

Relatives, friends and the crew gather round. Pizza and Rigatoni become the plat-du-jour. No getting away from it. In times of family crisis raw fish is no substitute for a dish of steaming home-baked ziti. Melancholia descends over the text; symptoms of trauma permeate the narrative; and nostalgia, a desire to return to the old ways, pervades the series.

Tony's near death experience, in fact, becomes the founding trauma for season 6 reminding us that all things must end. Even though we know this show will not be over until the fat man sings, his brush with death traumatizes the text.

E. Ann Kaplan, extending Sigmund Freud's theories on trauma, and including his problematic treaty Moses and Monotheism, argues that at certain historical moments particular aesthetic forms emerge 'to accommodate fears and fantasies related to suppressed historical events' (E Ann Kaplan, 'Melodrama, Cinema and Trauma,' Screen 42: 2 Summer 200: 203). Focusing on melodrama, and understanding this generic formation as repeating the traumas of both class and gender struggle, she argues that 'melodrama would, in its very generic formation, constitute a traumatic cultural symptom … [and that] taken up by cinema, it arguably continued to repeat, while concealing cultural traumas too painful to confront directly (ibid). In this context, it is reasonable to associate melodrama, as an aesthetic form, with the dissociated traumas of a post-9/11 America, the mobster world disintegrating – a television series ending and a network in crisis.

Which returns us to Artie Bucco.

Long have we known the restaurateur as prone to melodramatic outbursts. His passion for pasta is as famed as his emotional eruptions. With Artie there is always a simmering rage bubbling just beneath the surface, ready to spill over at the slightest provocation. Never has a restaurant been so aptly named. Inexplicable anger, random bouts of brutal violence and inappropriate behaviour; Artie is and about displacement. Could it not therefore be argued that Artie – his body, his food, his restaurant – suffers melancholia, a traumatic symptom of the series' elegiac sense of loss – of the old ways, of respect, of honour, of family, of home. No wonder Tony always looks out for his old friend and returns week after week to eat.

Vesuvio resembles a sepia photograph, muted browns and hues. It is the mise-en-scene of nostalgia, its walls are covered with romantic renderings of the old country, the music evokes the Italian soul, it is the place where people come to comfort eat and be with family. But, at the beginning of 'Luxury Lounge' Tony hosts a banquet at the restaurant to welcome in the 'new blood' (Gerry Turciano and Burt Gervasi). Celebrations are marred by complaints that the food is slow in coming; and there are mutterings that Artie is off his game. Long gone are the days of Adriana greeting guests. (Never could you imagine her disrespecting Artie.) Now Mexicans cook the food and the Eastern European hostess trades credit card numbers to buy $600 sandals – things are not what they used to be.

Is it possible that we are witness to the breakdown of the old order – the mob preferring to eat nouvelle Italian cuisine at Da Giavanni's because Vesuvio, like the menu, is looking tired. This episode, to us at least, brings into focus the impact of the near loss of Tony. Hits are being farmed out to Italians who are eager to tour Ground Zero and take advantage of the weak dollar; small time crooks like Benny are disrespecting the old ways of doing business; Christopher while being primed to take over as boss is far more interested in the glamour of taking the helm of a Hollywood gangster movie than actual mob management. (You can never imagine Tony Soprano knocking down Humphrey Bogart's widow for a $30,000 gift basket. Is there no respect for a class act?)

Enough already. Tony takes matters in hand. His failed attempt to intervene in the dispute with Benny results in the chef's hand being plunged into boiling spaghetti sauce and shedding its skin 'like a glove'. Bruised and battered, Artie is comforted by Tony. But it is time for tough love. And here we are given insight into why Tony protects Artie. 'On one of the bleakest nights of my life. After all the shit with my mother. And the terrible storm. I came here with Carm and the kids. We ate. We drank. And we were happy.' Not only does he evoke the significance of Vesuvio as a place of healing, as somewhere the 'family' comes together to reaffirm itself. But it is also a self-reflective moment, a nostalgic reminder in the final season of what has passed. A sense of melancholia descends for times gone. Tony may well recognise that the playing field of business changes, but he returns to eat as he recovers from his near-fatal shooting. After all Artie is the only one who will prepare the bland medicinal food needed for his recuperation. Yet his insistence that Artie stops bothering the customers with his corny jokes (echoing Charmaine's advice earlier) and to get back in the kitchen betrays a textual unease over change.

But Artie does not hear him.

Still at episode end, Artie's actions tell a different story. Alone in the kitchen he is doing the accounts, his hand bandaged, his face battered, he is licking his wounds from the episode – in Tony's words 'wearing his pity'. He is the literal physical embodiment of suffering but he also carries the burden of narrative trauma. Charmaine enters the kitchen. They have customers. 'The kitchen is closed,' Artie says. 'The bottle is already open,' Charmaine retorts. 'They'll eat what I give them,' says the person the NJ Zagat calls the 'warm and convivial host'.

Pulling out a tray of skinned rabbit from the fridge. Retrieving the old and well-thumbed family recipe book. Caressing the notebook lovingly, his fingers lingering over his grandfather's name barely legible on the cover. Stained with good chianti, olive oil and experience. Flicking through the pages, finding the recipe (in Italian of course) before pulling ingredients from the fridge. Despite Charmaine's warning that not everyone likes it –
Artie will cook rabbit. Lovingly he prepares the dish: the old way.

The hauntingly evocative music strikes up 'Recuerdos de la Alhambra' as Artie lights the gas, throws garlic in the pan and enjoys the heavy aromas of his grandfather's recipe. Meanwhile the Italian hit men head home, comparing the gifts they have purchased for their families. Cutting between the two scenes reminds us that food is more than sustenance. It is about tradition. It is about a longer history of Italian immigration trafficking across the Atlantic. It is about a series that has enriched a network.

Cherished family recipes give voice to what cannot be said; and Artie speaks its complex language. Just as the music borders on sadness, on loss, on the inevitability of time passing, it at the same time, and like the food, is tender and comforting. The violence sustained on Artie's body may betray trauma, but these images seal over the ruptures caused by Tony's near death experience and the knowledge that the series must end. It harks back to the past as it hints at continuity. Such a healing moment reassures us that all will be well as long as Artie is in the kitchen.

Image Credits:
1.The Sopranos
2. Family Cookbook

Please feel free to comment.