It seemed like a joke at to us the time . I was with her in a mall in Manila, and as we walked along the endless corridors, we saw this tarpaulin hanging by a snack shop to attract customers. The head of the woman on the right in the photo had been cut out so that people could substitute their faces for hers.
My companion saw it and laughed, ran around behind and stuck her head in the hole. “Take my picture!” I took her picture, we looked at it and laughed, and went on our way. But when I look at it now, I see something more than our old joke.
The Tarpaulin to begin with. The invitation to pose in it is: “look famous, imagine yourself a celebrity”. But who are these “celebrities” pictured here that she was invited to join in fantasy? High fashion American men and women- people about as remote from ordinary Filipinos as they could possibly be. Not only are they white, blue eyed and expensive looking- but they seem unreal even in those terms.
The man in front has a particularly empty smile and cold eyes, like an expensive banker refusing a loan. He’s formally dressed, complete with lapel flower (as if for an inauguration ball), but he hasn’t shaved that day and looks grungy.
No one knows what the woman on the right looked like before she lost her face, but the women behind the man on the left are positively sinister looking, with hard eyes and contemptuous expressions.
Why would anyone want to join this group, even in fantasy? No matter how false, it seems to be am image of ultimate glamour imprinted in the minds of half the people in the world. It’s not the fault of the people who make the tarpaulins and t-shirts and commercial ads- that picture is already fixed mental furniture around the world, celebrities and advertisers are just catering to it.
The image may be fantastic and totally false, but it leads to a double fantasy on the part of people who want to be part of it: not only do they want to be part of the “glamorous life” they imagine, but they also imagine real Americans to be like the people in their fantasy when they meet them in the flesh. This often results in bitter disappointment on both sides.
