MISS UNIVERSE OF 1974, Amparo Muñoz
Miss Spain, Amparo Muñoz, was crowned Miss Universe of 1974 at the brand-new Folk Arts Theater in Manila. Beauty pageants, boxing matches, the backdrop of films—The Year of Living Dangerously, Platoon, Apocalypse Now. The country in the seventies becomes a theater, a spectacle, a screen for global enterprises of war, fantasy, and sex. The country is a spectacle curated by capitalism and dictatorship, watched over by a theatrical couple, the dictator and his wife, the Marcoses. Eleanor Coppola in her documentary, Hearts of Darkness, captures these times. Her husband’s helicopters for his Vietnam film, rented from the dictator’s army, keep being recalled without excuse in the middle of filming, ruining the film’s budget. Power play by the regime. Meanwhile, the communists in real-life are being killed by Marcos’s machines.
