Nora Aunor vs Ferdinand Marcos

Abstract

This chapter examines how Philippine actress Nora Aunor’s potentially subversive star image was tempered into a safer expression of permissible freedom that also promoted forms of desirable behaviour and values in the 1970s. Such an image functioned to inhibit social and political dissent, indicating how popular films responded to President Ferdinand Marcos’s regulation of Philippine cinema during the martial law era. The chapter discusses the role of the studio in ensuring compliance by instituting complementary policies that shaped popular star images and film production. Hierarchies of power and submission were reinforced through Aunor’s persona in films that appealed to the lower classes, encouraging noble suffering and acceptance of one’s fate.