Cultural Studies Project on Media - Essay Example

"Ugly Betty" is particularly interesting because it represents the stereotypical migrant Mexican family, struggling to make ends meet in America. Betty was born and lives with her poor but upright family, which comprises her father, her older sister, and her young, gay nephew. They are not the typical working-class family for a variety of reasons. While in most cases, working-class families are portrayed as scrupulous and scheming, Betty's family, most especially her father (whose values Betty tries to take after) are the paragons of morality in the show.

Setting them against the high-paced, cruel fashion world where Betty works, they end up solving most of their problems and the problems of those around them, often without compromising their values.Also, Betty's family stays intact and loving amidst all of the drama. Usually, when a working-class family is the subject of a television show, internal conflicts and uber-dramatic exits and falling outs within the family is the main driver of the story. The fact that they come from a different ethnic background is also of particular curiosity because unlike a lot of media products, the White people, i.e. the industry people in the show, are the "bad people" in the story.

But in this case, Betty and her "colored" family dominate the sphere of morality and goodness.Opposite this, "The King of Queens" espouses the typical conniving representation attributed to the working class. Doug and Carrie, while portrayed as good and remorseful of their mistakes towards the end of all episodes, will do anything to achieve success in whatever field. Together with Carrie's father, Arthur, who lives with them, they represent a blue-collar family that is in constant conflict. The tensions between them mostly brought about by their financial and social standing, are very latent.

For example, because Arthur burned his house and cannot afford to buy a new house. This causes problems with Doug and Carrie's intimacy and relationship.Fiske (1987) writes:A text is the site of struggles for meaning that reproduce the conflicts of interest between the producers and consumers of the cultural commodity. A program is produced by the industry, a text by its readers.Indeed, a lot of tension is created by the constant producer-audience dialectic. But media texts should not be studied in isolation, for oftentimes, the ideologies they promulgate become more pronounced when studied with other texts and broader trends in the industry.

And while representations can never fully mimic reality, the multitude of representations of a single group or identity helps carve a space where dialogues are spoken, re-negotiations are made.