At The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, we’re celebrating Barbie Week, doll’s history of pop culture, our favorite Barbie memories and a major movie. Read our full coverage here!
Barbie has appeared in numerous movies and television shows, and has played countless roles on and off screen, from doctor to dancer, flight attendant to computer engineer. Yet perhaps her biggest role is the role that power holders try to overlook: the role of legendary singer Karen Carpenter in a cult classic that heralds the arrival of one of America’s most daring modern directors.
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story An early 43-minute short film by the famous auteur Todd Haynes behind it. Trustworthy, far from heaven, Caroland approaching May December (premièred in Cannes and will open the New York Film Festival this fall). Haynes recounts the film’s iconic protagonist’s rapid rise and death from anorexia nervosa in avant-garde ways, highlighted by her decision to use Barbie dolls to tell her story. A deliberately artificial and stylized biopic featuring live-action sequences, archival news and TV clips, schizoid static footage, text cards and narration, it was an underground hit when it debuted in 1987. Its reputation only grew in the years that followed, as it has been virtually impossible to find since 1990, when it was withdrawn from distribution due to allegations of copyright infringement.
During Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story It has been reported that Karen’s brother and music partner Richard had the Carpenters songs published (“( They Long to Be) Close to You”, “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Superstar”) for unauthorized use. The painful portrayal of him and his family contributed to his fate. (The film is now available to watch unofficially.) Haynes’ eclectic film, co-written with Cynthia Schneider and completed while completing her MFA at Bard College, is a compassionate portrait of Karen and an informative prelude to anorexia. It is also a brutal condemnation of culture and home life, provoking the singer and drummer’s fatal condition that led to his death at the age of 32. superstar It is a daring work of multimedia research, empathy, and criticism, and key to its power lies in its form—most memorable—starting with the front and center use of Mattel’s famous doll.
Barbie isn’t just a unique dramatic tool for Haynes. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story; rather, the ideal figure to “play” the similarly healthy and fresh-faced Karen, as a symbol of cheerful American purity and beauty. The director’s subsequent pulling back the curtain on the artist’s life to expose dysfunction, abuse, and ugliness with Barbie pantomimes appeals to his caustic assessment of American stereotypes of feminine appeal and female agency, all embodied in the toy. Interspersed with footage from Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War (and protests), and brilliant sitcoms and variety shows (everyone in the family, Brady Group, Partridge Family) Haynes aptly combines Barbie and Karen in her own act to lie to the superficially optimistic brilliance of the ’70s. In doing so, she exposes her fierce, abrasive belly.
superstar It begins with the perspective of Karen’s mother, Agnes, on February 4, 1983, when she finds her daughter dead in the closet of their Downey, California home. She then flashes back to Karen’s childhood in this family home run by the domineering and controlling Agnes and her husband, Harold. Hearing Karen’s wonderful singing voice, Agnes pairs her up with her older brother Richard, and they soon visit Mr. A&M (acting record manager Herb Alpert), who praises them as “a couple of kids next door”. Alpert then convinces the Carpenters that “all you have to do is surrender yourself to my hands”. It’s a Faustian accord and underlines its horror, dark shadows capture the recurring image of a human hand reaching outward, a woman’s scream, and a clip of a naked Holocaust victim thrown into a mass grave.
Haynes’ combination of real and reproduced trauma and horror is simultaneously crazy and shocking, and it continues to dig that vein. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. At the same time, he takes Karen’s mistreated situation seriously and sympathetically. On-screen text (sometimes black and superimposed over images that is difficult to read) provides details about anorexia; In a striking sequence, the narrative discusses the post-World War II rise of supermarkets, refrigeration, and ample food availability, while discussing how the disease “unleashes a complex apparatus of internal resistance and control.” Combined with other scenes that brutally subdue Agnes, Howard, and Richard, which are depicted as the camera pulls back to trap the performing Karen in an isolated spotlight, and they manipulate Karen’s every move to a suffocating degree, the film presents how women behave, look, and act. The micro and macro view of a society full of oppression that dictates what it should be.
superstar He suggests that Karen’s anorexia is both a byproduct of her desire to conform to oppressive standards of beauty (to a degree that is warped and unhealthy) and to rebel against the authoritarian control of her family and profession; It is seen as an addiction and abuse of self-control, a body fascism in which the sufferer plays the roles of both the dictator and the emaciated victim he often resembles.” Such academic notions are tied to mournful snapshots of Karen’s daily ordeals, as well as parodic street interviews with people asking PSA-style questions about anorexia. Throughout the movie, as in her life, she has to deal with a brother who is her main concern (“What are you trying to do, ruining both of our careers?!?”) and a mother who doesn’t loosen her grip on him. her daughter. Quickly, she also mentions her brief marriage to real estate developer Thomas Burris, which may have pushed her further and resulted in her tragic, Ipecac-induced death.
A cheeky formal mélange (slow until distorted in late passages), whose melancholy is most poignantly expressed in The Carpenters’ own beats, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story A biography like no other, and much of its lasting impact comes from Haynes’ cunning use and manipulation of Barbie, that epitome of mid-century American innocence, charm, and virtue. Ultimately, shaving the doll’s face to make Karen look slimmer, and using additional toys for supporting characters – including a Ken doll that’s, descriptively, the perfect Ken doll for the distasteful Richard – Haynes curses with her striking style and substance. Barbie has never been so charming and animated.