Three Little Maids From Malacañang Are We
/
Above, left, advertising artwork for the film based on the original portrait by kitsch painter Ralph Wolfe Cowan, one of nineteen portraits commissioned by the former first lady, Imelda Marcos, totalling some $800,000 of the Filipino people’s money.
Maid in Malacañang, a take on the 2002 Jennifer Lopez film, Maid in Manhattan, tells the dramatized version of the last few days of the Marcos family in Malacañang palace before opposition mobs forced them out of power in the People’s Power revolution of February 1986. The film is told and experienced through the eyes of three of their maids—or, as in the Philippines and in many societies with colonial pasts, their faithful domestic servants—highly dramatized versions of Miss Lucy, Santa Nanay, and Biday as a sort of The Mikado’s “Three Little Maids Are We ”: Peep Bo, Pitti Sing, and Yum Yum.
Of course, in this world according to presidential sister, Imee, all the principals inside the beleaguered Malacañang compound are heroic, self-sacrificing characters put upon by the forces of evil outside. Ferdinand and Imelda are naturally given all their mythic hero/ine booster shots and qualities but have moved on to the tired and listless end of their lives of “unselfish” service to the nation.
Okay, once in a while, oldest daughter, Imee, and one of her surrogate maids become hotheads and resort to curses and imprecations, but only because someone has to take charge in the ensuing chaos of the final hours when even Ferdinand and Imelda could no longer make last-minute decisions for survival.
Originally, the film was intended to be an independent feature targeted for release during the May 2022 presidential elections. However, when Imee Marcos supposedly entered the picture as the film’s primary “accuracy consultant,” it became a full blown BBM campaign weapon (even though it was eventually released after the elections.) How else to explain the fact that the filmmakers had full access to the old Marcos homestead in San Juan to fill in as the “Malacañang Palace”?
It was also originally meant to be released only in a streaming version due to pandemic concerns in early May. But when BBM’s victory was all but certain and the campaign didn’t need to use it as a tool, Hans Sy (of the SM empire) convinced Imee Marcos and Viva Films to release it commercially to recoup film costs, offering his SM theaters for starters. Foreign bookings shortly followed.
Before its commercial release in the theaters, the film had looting scenes in Malacañang, the streaming version showing looters in Ku Klux Klan hoods. That sounds like a director Darryl Yap idea. That might have been effective for a US audience, but for the Pinoy C, D and E markets, what would the passing inference to the KKK mean? Those scenes were reshot without the KKK hoods.
The original version also had a far more defamatory portrayal of Cory Aquino. In the last scene, the incoming “usurper”/new president supposedly told the American evacuators of the fleeing rats that she wanted them “out of the Philippines” in a very hard-ass manner. And after she hung up, Cory returned to the mahjong table with nuns(!) supposedly as her table-mates! Yikes!
Again, that felt like a cheap “Darryl Yap witch-widow” moment, the better to tarnish the late Mrs. Aquino’s image since she and her subsequent president son are no longer around to defend themselves.
Original scene from Maid in Malacañang shows the late President Cory Aquino (Giselle Sanchez) supposedly playing mahjong at a convent in Cebu City while the results of the 1986 snap elections sorted itself out. The scene was reshot with three elderly ladies but not as “nuns,”
After hue and cry put up by certain quarters, including the Catholic Church in early previews of the film—director Yap and Imee seem to have forgotten that Imelda Marcos had an older half-sister who was a nun--the scene was reshot with old biddies instead of three nuns. But the whole scene still portrays Mrs. Aquino as a hard-ass b*tch, a claim only Marcos loyalists would make.
Also, there were apparently enough actors in Philippine show biz who had not pledged their votes to Leni or Manny, and thus could make a few pesos by appearing in the film.
Of course, BBM’s victory in 2022 revives the myth that the passion behind the 1986 People Power uprising rose only in Manila and completely overwhelmed the results of the snap election. There is the school of thought that if Marcos had not set up means to cheat that were exposed, he might have actually won as the people’s legitimate choice if voters in the provinces had been taken into account.
Grand Omissions in the Film
The film, and therefore Imee’s version of events, fails to include the fateful call from US President Ronald Reagan, conveyed to Marcos via Senator Paul Laxalt, that “it was time to cut.” For students of real history, that was the lynchpin in Marcos’ decision to step aside.
While showing the Marcoses as beneficent leaders and martyrs who were pushed out by “evil and greedy forces who wanted power only for themselves,” what is never hinted at is the nearly $10 billion that Marcos plundered from the country during in his 21-year reign. (That $10 billion doesn’t even include likely another $6 or $7 billion secreted away by Marcos cronies and associates in quieter and sneakier ways. Of course, with Junior at the helm, any accountability for those years of plunder will now be officially erased).
Much as I pre-judged this film and was under no illusions as to what it is for, I actually enjoyed most of it. The screenwriters managed to carve out real drama between a family that held almost complete power and on the verge of collapse, and the ordinary folk who worked for them and what the larger dramatic turn of events would mean to their little lives.
Actresses, left-to-right, Karla Estrada, Elizabeth Oropresa, and Beverly Salviejo portray the real-life Marcos maids Crisanta, Lucy, and Biday. The film’s story is told through their eyes. Reportedly, only Biday is alive today and back in the service of the Marcoses.
Of course, seeing the celluloid Marcos family face their removal from power brings up images of the Romanovs of Russia and the Pahlavis of imperial Tehran hurriedly fleeing their palaces while the unkempt hordes threatened at the gates.
As the film Imee purportedly takes charge of the hasty packing of their worldly goods, my thoughts wandered to Donald and Melania Trump leaving the White House in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Trumpist attack on the Capitol, and the current brouhaha over top secret documents The Donald took with him, which could turn out to be the nail that seals his coffin.
A film for uto-uto, the incurably naïve? Yes. Those who see Maid in Malacañang should not forget that it’s slathered with insidious Marcosian icing and topped with glaring omissions.
SOURCES:
Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books:
· Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2021);
· Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes (© 2016); and
· Of Adobo, Apple Pie, and Schnitzel With Noodles (© 2018)—all available in paperback from amazon.com (Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Europe).
Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians, contributing to the ISOH Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com
More articles from Myles A. Garcia
