Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)

Director:

Todd Haynes

Writers:

Todd Haynes (writer)
Cynthia Schneider (writer)

Genre:

Short

Plot:

Karen Carpenter's battle with anorexia nervosa and the cultural influence of the Carpenters in the 70s. |

Plot Keywords:

Cult Favorite | Ken Doll | Barbie Doll | Disease | Experimental Film

Cast

Rob LaBelle	...	Dad / Mr. A&M (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Gwen Kraus	...	Narrator (voice)
Bruce Tuthill	...	Narrator (voice)

Runtime:

43 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Not Rated (Banned)

Company:

Iced Tea Productions

Trivia:

The film has been out of legal circulation since 1990, subject to a cease and desist order pertaining to unauthorized use of the Carpenters' music.

Movie Connections:

Version of The Karen Carpenter Story (1989) (TV)

Richard and Mattel aren't amused at the honesty of anorexia.

Part 1: An important film by one of the few AIDS-awareness directors. All of Todd Haynes' films/stories symbolize the alienation, decay, and whenever possible, rebirth, of the gay man vis-a-vis AIDS. We've lost so many to AIDS, and although today the horror slumbers often, the story here is just as gripping. Combining the details of Karen Carpenter's existence with his motif/approach, Haynes tells us a lot about the suffering, solitude, and emotional blackmail that comes with that yearn for success. I am amused that most film critics stuck to the surface story and paid lip service to Karen Carpenter's ordeal as a girl in a nuclear family bubble. Civil sympathy is a bit of a bore.

Richard and Mattel, the creators of Barbie, have blocked the film's availability; all prints are legally supposed to have been destroyed. Richard blocks it because of the usage of the Carpenters' music, which ought to be public domain anyway!. Mattel blocks it because of the usage of Barbie dolls for all the characters and the overt implication that plastic existence has drastic consequences.

It's amusing and then gripping the overlays of text, music upon music, narrative, darkness, and camera pans that punctuate the film. But the surface story -- Karen lost in her own world of hopeless perfection as envisioned by her domineering mother, Agnes Carpenter -- is a fine one as it depicts a cultural shift from Vietnam's horror to Nixon's false-father stability. (The Carpenters were invited to perform for the President at the White House.) Wholesomeness, in Haynes' tale, requires grit, profanity, endless self-subterfuge and a propensity for collapse. That A&M Records is seen to be malevolent cannot be Karen's reason for self-starvation. That the rest of the rock world is living it up while Carpenters sweat it out in the studio cannot be the reason either. And yet the reason for her illness, like the bird attacks in Hitchcock's 1963 thriller, is never disclosed -- as if it could be, and Haynes shows us his chains of reasoning and events and all we can do is marvel at the Edgar Allen Poe Barbie Dolls and Karen's gradual transformation into Munch visual madness.

Todd Haynes takes liberties with what happened, but usually only as a convenience; it all comes through and through regardless: the family's accidental discovery that Karen could sing like nobody else; the switch from laxatives to syrup of ipecac and vomiting; the allegations that Richard Carpenter has always been homosexual.

Word-of-mouth will get you a copy of the film, which only benefits from the acres of great music the duo produced. Karen Carpenter is dead, like so many other against illness and massive ignorance. Haynes' paean to her strength and helplessness, her soulful gloom and snatches of love, transforms the viewer, who is pressed to create his or her own Barbie-format epic!