Portrait
of a Woman as an Actress
Agenda, Issue #17
In
the tradition of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lady Diana Spencer, and Imelda
Romualdez Marcos, the comebacking daughter of the country's most infamous
rulers is mastering the art of playing with image to win public consciousness.
What is your image of Imee?
Mine is of her clad in Kabataang Barangay t-shirt, maong pants, and rubber shoes. Rebel Princess Barbie. Forever fighting her mother's excesses, making a stand against her father's politics, consulting with Lino Brocka and other socially-aware artists on how to spark change within the much maligned regime that she could not help but be part of.
Even when a social butterfly recounted to me his first hand vision of Imee, of how, during a grand party, the guests suddenly parted like the Red Sea, a hush descending upon them as Imee Marcos arrived ceremoniously, covered with fur, her ears dripping with diamonds, then suddenly dropped her fur coat to the ground upon reaching the party floor to reveal that she was still wearing her usual Kabataang Barangay t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers - even then I was proud of my Imee rebelling yet again.
The woman who is facing me now, who exudes the unmistakable aura of privilege and power in spite of her proletarian cargo pants and rubber sandals, who refers to her exalted former existence "back in the Palace," whose life is divided before and after 1986, who knowingly flouts the rules of grammar with tongue-firmly-placed-in-cheek by responding to statements that do not begin with "it is" with "is it?", this woman is not my Rebel Princess Barbie. Whereas Rebel Princess Barbie would have self-consciously played down her status, this one has grown into hers much too gracefully.
A few hours ago, Imee Marcos and I were sitting at the steps that lead to the lanai of their beautiful but imposingly huge mansion on P. Guevarra corner M. Marcos Street in San Jun. There was power outage and we were taking refuge from the storm winds and lighting that was all too visible from their lanai. The dark, the sudden unexpected intimacy of the situation was somehow conducive to small talk. "My friends had so many questions they wanted to ask you," I started tentatively. "Really? Like what?" Imee asks point blank, putting me on the spot with no easy answers. "Well, like uh-."
We are riding her Pregio accompanied by four uniformed maids at the back, the bodyguard and the driver in front, trying to decide where we can have a decent conversation. "Prefereably in Ortigas" being her only qualification. "Club Filipino?" I volunteer, mentally bashing my head in as soon as the words came out. Hello? EDSA Revolution? Cory's inauguration? Hello?
She
responds curtly: "Too many people. How 'bout Shangri-la EDSA Plaza?
Or is that too sosyal?"
"It is. I was thinking of something more intimate."
"Bistro Lorenzo?"
"Too showbiz. Maybe we're better off at some humble eatery somewhere."
"Agree."
And that's how we ended up in Ling Nam of all places. This much- too-crowded dimsum restaurant in Shoppesville, Greenhills, where heads have been turning ceaselessly her way ever since we arrived, where her presence is almost surreal.
Everyone is string at her.
"Do you ever get used to the stares?" I ask her while we are waiting for our table.
"I think they come with every territory. And you start walking around with your own personal air bubble so it's not a problem. Also, I think there is an aspect of…celebrity and notoriety. But the point is, hindi rin kami pareho eh. In our case, people are quite deferential."
I can't help but look around the restaurant. I'm watching people watch Imee. It's remarkable how the feelings behind each stare is undisguised. Some eyes project open admiration. Some, fascination. Other eyes are full of contempt, even disgust. I'm thinking, how does one deal with this on an everyday basis?
And yet, yet Imee, true to her word, is seemingly oblivious to the stares. She tells her story with utmost focus. Talking to me as if I were the only person in this crowded restaurant: "When I first got back in 1991, I was very worried that there would be hostility. But I suppose at the end of the day, no matter how much the President said against my family…siguro hindi Pilipino 'yon eh,,.to display open hostility even if your sentiments are in fact antagonistic. "Yung pambabastos…it's not in the Filipino context, where if anything, our crime is the other way which is sobrang nicey-nicey. Walang tigil na chikahan."
I bring up the Imee of my youth. The style icon. The radically chic chick. "It's curious because I don't really consider myself to be a militant fashionista anymore. Or ever was. My take on fashion at that time was very theatrical. I don't really think of clothes as important. Except as costume. I mean they're shields. You wear them as, I dunno, protection or entirely ornamentation. They are never, never utilitarian. They're never useful."
"Is it true that you once wore diamonds together with your Kabataang Barangay t-shirt to a party?" I ask her. "Yes, I did." She answers without blinking. "Absolutely. I think I actually did it several times. I also did it secretly from time to time.
"They've made mincemeat out of my brother and sister because we have a penchant for dress-up parties. I don't think it's debauchery or decadent."
This
reminds me of all the footage I've ever seen of Marcos parties as documented
in those People Power TV specials. I still can't help but think that it
is debauchery and decadent. And whether the Marcos family likes it or
not, this image will forever linger in the minds of the masses as the
ultimate symbol of, well,…debauchery and decadence.
The funny thing is, in spite of al my middle class misgivings towards the Marcoses, I almost understand Imee when she says, "It's more a question of making fool of yourselves, which I thought at that time, was very healthy, given the situation that you're all very high and mighty and you grew up in a Palace with tons of security.
It was just like being silly and relaxing because we spent most of our time in the goldfish bowl of public life.
"We were just kids of famous people. We didn't do anything. We were just born there."
How's that for a new twist on your old image of the Marcoses? Come to think of it, in their youth, the Marcos kids probably were clueless. Teenagers simply having fun. Okay, maybe not simply. Grandly. And whether this "bakla shenanigans," as Imee herself puts it, were made at the expense of millions of Filipinos is cause for another heated discussion.
It's a discussion which I avoid.
"I know a lot of guys who were enamoured of you when you were hosting Kulit Bulilit, carefully enunciating words like Tamban Team and Bangus Team."
"Is it?" is her trademark, non-sequitur response to a statement that does not necessarily begin with "It is…" in the manner described earlier.
"Learning Tagalog was a very deliberate, self-conscious effort," she continues, this careful cultivation of a language that was alien to her which made her manner of speaking all the more amusing. "Yung nanay ko kasi Bisaya. Waray 'yung usap ng mga yaya. All the guys outside naman, security and all, puro Ilocano. So our awareness of Tagalog was very tangential."
"(When I was studying in England) I had people send me, it was very funny, all these terrible, terrible komiks and much worse, showbiz, magazines. All these mga Tik-A-Tik, Wakasan. Nakakatawa nga eh, I'm pretty sure that's where my Tagalog came from.
"Pagbalik ko, there was a whole stretch when I really had an English accent pa. Ang then my Tagalog was still wobbly. After doing all that Kabataang Barangay stuff, puwede na. Tumino na siya."
"What fascinates me is this image of you befriending Lino Brocka against your mother's wishes."
"Lino Brocka was a very good friend. And yes, I was very rebellious. My Mom had a heck of a time. But I don't think really that…" Her unfinished sentence, her voice trailing off, her tentativeness unsettles me. Slowly I begin to realize that whereas I have been carefully choosing trying to reconstruct my old image of Imee throughout this interview, she has been carelessly deconstructing it.
All this time I had assumed that Imee's rebellious streak was borne out of the guilt of her privileged existence. Or her socio-political frustrations. Or an acute sense of social injustice. The truth was, it stemmed from a reason that was largely personal.
The
clue to this reason can be found in their house in P. Guevarra which I
took the liberty of touring while Agenda was shooting her. Almost every
table, every flat surface in that house was weighed down with layers upon
layers of silver-framed photographs of her parents, Ferdinand and Imelda.
In every single picture that she was in, Imelda was impossibly beautiful
and statuesque. A goddess-like vision of a mother that any daughter will
have a hard time living up to.
"I think I've said that on many occasions before that my Mom was very beautiful. She's sort of a legendary Filipina beauty. It was a real problem for me growing up because, of course, they would tell me, 'you don't look at all like her.' And I was like 'neither do you.' Nobody looks like my Mom. It's not my fault you know."
At the end of the interview, I ask Imee if she thought that the reign of the Marcoses, their so-called "happy days", would ever end. This time, she answers in a manner that is most consistent with the fading image of Imee. The Imee I held sacredly in my youth.
Her words are carefully chosen: "I always expected it to end. Because, well, I used to do around a lot so I was very aware of the restiveness, the unhappiness as well as the genuine need in many quarters economically. It was something I was very keenly aware of for years and years ahead. It's not that it came as a shock. What came as a shock was how it happened. I didn't expect the manner by which it happened.
I have this fading image of Imee. An image of hope. In this image, she is eternally-clad inher Kabataang Barangay t-shirt, maong pants, and rubber shoes. Rebel Princess Barbie. Forever fighting her mother's excesses, making a stand against her father's politics, consulting with Lino Brocka and other socially-aware artists on how to spark change within the much maligned regime that she could not help but be part of.
It is an
image I intend to hold on to for as long as I can.