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[UPDATE: Upon being contacted by GLAAD, ABC News has changed the opening sentence of the article from "The beating death of a transgender teenager in Colorado may have been provoked by her lifestyle, police said" to "An 18-year-old found dead inside her Colorado apartment last week may have been targeted because she was transgender, police said"].
The murder of 18 year-old Angie Zapata in Colorado last week has been slowly gaining attention from national media with the latest report coming today from the national bureau at ABC News ("Transgender teen's death a hate crime?").On Wednesday I noted that transgender blogger Monica Roberts at TransGriot was incensed that the original Associated Press article on the murder failed to disclose that Angie was transgendered (the AP reporter wrote a follow-up piece in which he wrote Zapata was "living as a woman").David Scoetz at ABC News brings the discrepancy up indirectly:While Zapata may have lived as a young woman, [Sgt. Joseph] Tymkowych, the police spokesman, explained that because she never legally changed her name to Angie, prosecutors can only bring charges in the case using Justin Zapata to identify the victim.
'We don't have a problem using 'Angie,'' Tymkowych said. 'We don't want to offend the family or anyone with gender concerns, but for it to be a good, clean prosecution, we can't identify a victim who doesn't exist.'
More disturbing to me is Sgt. Tymkowych's statement that the murder "may have been provoked by her lifestyle."Being transgender is not a lifestyle just as being gay isn't (lifestyles can be easily changed, gender and sexual identities not so much) although I realize how entrenched these erroneous concepts are in some parts of society.As for ABC News leading the piece with that statement, I realize they are paraphrasing someone else's words but their placement certainly gives them weight.As for Angie's family, it's incredibly moving to see how much they loved her. They spoke to the local Colorado Fox News affiliate Fox 31 yesterday ("Family of transgender teen speak out"). You can find a link to a video interview with Angie's sister at the site.
Previosuly on Blabbeando:
With so much advance critical praise and positive word-of-mouth, Thursday night's premiere of Ugly Betty brought beautiful rating numbers for ABC. It drew 16.1 million people without piggy-backing on a big hit (though it was followed by the blockbuster "Grey's Anatomy") which made it the top rated debut series so far this season (I wonder what the demographic breakdown was).In the age of YouTube, ABC is trying a new approach this year and allowing potential viewers who might have missed episodes of some of their shows like "Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy" (my current favorite) to watch them online - but only for a week after they have aired. This includes "Ugly Betty" so if you missed the first episode (or any future episodes) just go here a couple of days after that week's episode airs.We certainly fretted about the debut in a previous post and expected to be let down (at first because we thought it would be impossible to translate Betty from its original Colombian television soap incarnation and then after the overwhelming advance praise since it was hard to believe the show would live up to the hype). So, how did it fare?The good: America Ferrera is amazing! She IS the show and carries the true spirit of the original Betty. Also, most of the exteriors were actually shot in New York City (and Queens) instead of a make-up "NYC world" (see "Friends"). I also loved the character of Justin, Betty's 12 year-old nephew, who knows more about fashion and couture than any 12 year-old boy should truly know, unless... And then there are the telenovelas within the show which Betty's family always seems to be watching on their television set with producer Selma Hayeck vamping it up for laughs. Good stuff.
The bad: Vanessa Williams: I hate that the show has chosen to make one of the most beautiful and talented women in the United States such a hateful and bitchy villain. I also thought that it was a mistake to turn everyone else at the office into truly unlikable foes when, in the original, even the bad folks had a sweetness to them. Actress Lorna Paz (pictured above), for example, played a hilarious ladder-climbing "dyed-blond" secretary who would flip her long hair and have men fall at her feet (she can be seen flipping her hair here). She would splurge on high-commodity items such as a BMW and wear top-line clothing to make sure that she would look stunning and make people think she was high-class. But she'd always be borrowing money and, secretly, she wouldn't even pay her electricity bills (when inviting someone over, she'd light up a bunch of candles purportedly to 'set the mood' though the audience knew that without them her place would be dark).
We previously had said that some of the Betty re-makes lost something in painting their characters too broadly and robbing them of complex character traits and, at least in the pilot, the US version seems to have done this as well with the exception of Betty and, perhaps, her nephew.
The ugly: The humiliating scene in which Betty is asked to dress up for a fashion shoot was cruel, humiliating and unduly harsh. Gina Gershon's poodle-totting, silicon-lipped Italian caricature was humorless and distracting. The concept of a Mexican-family in Queens didn't quite congeal into a whole, and the actors playing them seem to be channeling members of totally different families. And, judging by previews of the next episode, they already will be cashing in on the popularity of "The Devil Wears Prada" with a storyline that seems directly lifted from the film.
OK, maybe some of that is not quite ugly but it certainly is somewhat disappointing. I'll keep watching thanks to America Ferrera and hope that, this being the pilot, future episodes will allow the other characters to breathe a little and hopefully become the great show that was promised. If only there was a little more Lorna Paz-ness.
A whole different take on the show at Miss Wild Thing's.
Other assorted takes:
- Pop culture junkies ruminates even longer than I do here
- I seem to have channeled some Good Nonsense here
- TMZ has a video capture of the telenovela within the show here
- TV Squad gets it right, right here
As someone who was born in Colombia, South America, it's difficult to explain why a Colombian television soap opera should be the source of so much pride - but it is. In it's original incarnation "Yo Soy Betty La Fea" (which debuted in Colombia in 1,999) broke television rating records in Colombia (as it would when it was re-broadcast in the United States on Telemundo as "Betty La Fea") and marked the culmination of a period in which Colombian television was producing some of the best and most original television fare in Latin America with the exception, perhaps, of Brazil.What distinguished Betty from the rest was the fact that it up-ended the usual Latin American television soap tropes, at least for a while, by being razor-sharp in lambasting the vacuous, greedy and self-involved world of the wealthy while making its nerdy and prat-fall prone heroine, her co-worker secretaries and her low-income family the moral center of the story. That the show did it with panache, incredible amounts of humor and a focus on narrative and character development added to its sweetness (lead writer Fernando Gaitán had to do a lot with this). Incidentally, it was also one of a number of Colombian television shows that had a leading gay character shown in a positive light despite the fact that as the lead designer for the fashion firm in which the show takes place, the character makes life hell for Betty.The casting of beautiful actress Ana Maria Orosco as Betty betrayed an original intent of eventually succumbing to genre and making "Betty La Fea" conform to an ugly-duckling narrative and, to their credit, once the soap became as popular as it did, the writer and the producers did their best to delay the "transformation," despite polls that showed that viewers wanted Betty to remain ugly (for Halloween, little girls went out trick-or-treating dressed up as little Ugly Betties). Unfortunately, by then it was obvious that the story-lines were being stretched (possibly to cash-in to Telemundo's demands for more and more "Betty" since episodes were being shown in the United States before the soap came to an end in Colombia). In any case, a classic had been born.Following the success of Betty, Univision stole the characters from Telemundo an produced a sequel that flopped big time. They bowdlerized the characterizations, broadened the humor by stripping away any complexity and went for the easy laugh, which included turning the gay character into a stereotypically bitchy queen stick-figure bordering on homophobic. It also began the unfortunate trend in Spanish-language television of training actors to lose their regional accents purportedly in order to appeal to a larger viewership and of drawing some of the best acting talent from Latin America to take part in mega-soap productions that draw on the worst aspects of Latin American soap operas (take the trashy but dramatically limp "Pasion de Gavilanes" on Telemundo which creates a bizarro-world cowboy environment for actors from different countries to play related family members in the middle of an overwrought feud between dynasties).Recent re-incarnations of "Betty" haven't fared better, at least the Spanish language ones. Univision is currently showing "La Fea Mas Bella" ("The Most Beautiful Ugly One") produced by Mexico's Televisa which amps up the caricature factor and loses out on subtle humor. Though I hear that there's a version of Betty in Germany played for drama rather than humor that has been well-received. Online you can even compare the opening credits and segments of the original here (with a handy Hebrew translation), to those of the version from Spain here, Mexico here, Russia here and here, India here and here, Germany here (yes, the phenomenon is THAT wide-sperad and why the show, just like the singer Shakira, has been embraced as some sort of national symbol in Colombia).So excuse me if I cringed when I first heard that Selma Hayek had bought rights to the soap and was producing a pilot for ABC. And things didn't necessarily look spectacular when ABC released its pilot promo reel with a crass poncho joke and with news of changes to the script that do away with Betty's camaraderie with her co-workers (even though I LOVE America Ferrera who will be playing Betty).Surprisingly, though, the promo reel might not be all there is to it. Recently, it was announced that the first episode of "Ugly Betty" would be moved to Thursdays at 8pm (EST), just before the ABC jugger-naut "Grey's Anatomy" - based on advance buzz at pilot screenings. The show won't be debuting until September 28th but today it just got a huge advance push from the Los Angeles Times ("Ugly never looked so good" - Sept. 16, 2006) which quotes anonymous producers who have seen it as being "faithful to the original."The Houston Voice says "The ugly news is that 'Ugly Betty' is coming, and gay viewers will love her."The Washington Post says "A scream, a howl, a hoot and a joy, this buoyant, poignant series about a less than gorgeous young woman working for a fashion mag is the season's best and most beguiling new comedy" (they also say that ABC plans to show the debut episode online after Sept. 29th, should anyone miss it).The Hollywood Reporter says "At first blush, it seems as if there's too much going on in 'Betty' -- the pilot plants the seeds of everything from a murder-mystery plot to a hint at a developing love triangle for Betty -- but it helps to remember that it's inspired by a telenovela, something the show does subtly by showing Betty and her family frequently watching over-the-top Spanish-language serials at their home in Queens."Ok, so the show that was originally set in Bogota, Colombia, is now set in Queens, New York, and who can argue with that?With so much advance praise, it's easy to set "Ugly Betty" as a show that won't live up to expectations but I really hope that it's as good as it's been reported. I also hope that the ABC version, if successful, won't jump the shark and offer a very special 'transformation' episode. America Ferrera is one beautiful woman, but PLEASE ABC, keep Betty ugly!!
UPDATE: The good, the bad and the ugly (September 29, 2006)
The 9th ward of New Orleans in late 2005.
Additional photos by reporter Rex Wockner here
Any recent event in the United States pales, and I mean any recent event - including 9/11 - pales, when you are confronted by the scale of tragedy, death and governmental ineptitude that were exposed when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans a year ago and nearly erased one of the major cities in the United States from the map.
I've never been a Spike Lee fan but his understated, devastating, mournful and angry "When the Levees Broke" (on HBO tonight and tomorrow) is as powerful a documentary as I have probably ever seen in my life (and that's only talking about part 1, part 2 airs tomorrow and that's when the New York Times says that the documentary "rises to greatness" - though I find it hard to believe that part 2 will be able to top the amazing part 1).
There is no way that you can watch this documentary, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, and not acknowledge that this government has been an utter and complete failure. Unfortunately, unlike the documentaries that were aired on national television just a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks (specifically "9/11" on ABC), you have to have a subscription to HBO in order to see this particular masterpiece. After August 30th it will also be available on 'HBO on demand' for those of you who have access to the cable systems. Hopefully it will also be released soon enough on DVD and provide even more people reason to throw this government out of office once election season comes around.
Immediate Reactions:
- Welcome, HBO Viewers! (The Irish Trojan's Blog)
- A Different Side of Me (Mr. Clark, Laurelton, NY)
- Acts one and two (Emanuel, Brooklyn, NY)
- Acts One and Two (Todd. B. Walton, Richmond, VA)
- Okay so I'm Done Crying Now (Ms Feisty, AintChoBidness, Md)
- "When the Levees Broke is Excellent" (Daily Kos)
- When the Levees Broke (Queer Texan)
- When the Levees Broke: A Spike Lee Film (Izzi Mo's Blog)
- When the Levees Broke (Kelli, Louisiana, NO
- Spike, man, what can I Say? (Andrea, Rhome, TX)
- Spike Lee's Hurricane Katrina HBO Documentary (Life After the Storm, Sidell, LA)
- Spike Lee and Hurricane Katrina (By the River)
[UPDATE: Upon being contacted by GLAAD, ABC News has changed the opening sentence of the article from "The beating death of a transgender teenager in Colorado may have been provoked by her lifestyle, police said" to "An 18-year-old found dead inside her Colorado apartment last week may have been targeted because she was transgender, police said"].
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