Producing Chinese Ugly Betty: Decentered Political and Centered Economical Controls.

With the emerging transcultural flow of television formats, local television stations are now preoccupied with tasks of localizing these formats to fit their socio-political context. Based on ethnographic observation in the production community, this paper examines the localization of the television format, Ugly Betty, in China, which inevitably results in diverse variants as different from the original Mexican version and other western versions. The intriguing question is what the major factors are that can account for the discrepancy. We argue that the production of Ugly Wudi, the Chinese version of Ugly Betty, is largely confined by the political economy of China. While the political is a decentered control pervasively conditioning the production community, the economical control is systematic within the production process. By the description of production practices, this study explores the power relations in Wudi's production and tries to reflect the control and survival in China's social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]