SOURCE: Mendible, Myra. “Desiring Images: Representation and Spectacle in Dogeaters.” Critique 43, no. 3 (spring 2002): 289-303.

In the following essay, Mendible explores the significance of popular culture and mass spectacle to Hagedorn's representation of Filipino society and politics in Dogeaters.

To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.

—Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

The following description of an Imelda Marcos “performance” during a 1965 political rally in Manila suggests the unstable boundaries between politics and spectacle, authority and image making, captivation and captivity:

Led to the microphone, she touches it, and prepares to sing her winning repertoire. […] She has lost weight considerably […] it is a slight and vulnerable back that rises above the scoop of her neckline. […] She knows...