In praise of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

In praise of Super­star: The Karen Car­pen­ter Story

08 Apr 2022

Words by Nick Joyner

Four images showing people in different settings. Top left: People in what appears to be a record shop. Top right: A person sitting alone in a room. Bottom left: A close-up of a person's face. Bottom right: An abstract image with patterns and textures.
Four images showing people in different settings. Top left: People in what appears to be a record shop. Top right: A person sitting alone in a room. Bottom left: A close-up of a person's face. Bottom right: An abstract image with patterns and textures.
Over 30 years lat­er, Todd Haynes’ exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary remains a vision­ary look at female celebrity.

For a film made almost entire­ly with Bar­bie-sized dolls”, Todd Haynes’ Super­star: The Karen Car­pen­ter Sto­ry has sur­pris­ing human­i­ty. In a sen­tence, the film fol­lows the life of musi­cian Karen Car­pen­ter, from the begin­ning of her singing career to her death by ipecac poi­son­ing on Feb­ru­ary 4, 1983. It packs a lot into its 43-minute run­time, flirt­ing with semi­otic the­o­ry, musi­cal, his­tor­i­cal satire, mock­u­men­tary, fan trib­ute, eat­ing dis­or­der ped­a­gogy, and hor­ror cin­e­ma, to name just a few ideas. It takes the form of a tapes­try of repur­posed news­reels, staged talk­ing head inter­views, campy PSA videos, and of course, doll-sized drama­ti­za­tions of Carpenter’s tur­bu­lent life. Haynes called the film a docu­d­ra­ma at times, and Bar­bara Kruger laugh­ing­ly called it a doll-u-dra­ma” in her ear­ly Art­fo­rum review. The genre is up for debate if it has one at all, but Haynes’ film is most often lumped in with the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary tra­di­tion, which is the most inter­est­ing forum to exam­ine it within.

In many ways, Super­star is cinema’s most deft explo­ration of the female celebri­ty expe­ri­ence – one that resists total­iz­ing, over-deter­min­ing, and map­ping pre­con­ceived nar­ra­tives onto the unfold­ing of events. In stark con­trast with the cur­rent spate of celebri­ty doc­u­men­taries from the past few years, Super­star stands alone as a pin­na­cle of sto­ry­telling ingenuity.

Part of Superstar’s eter­nal allure is its infamy and elu­siv­i­ty, due to its short-lived pub­lic life and even­tu­al ban­ning. Todd Haynes made the film as an MFA stu­dent at Bard Col­lege, and it enjoyed a suc­cess­ful run in the down­town New York exper­i­men­tal film cir­cuit. But it wasn’t long before Richard Car­pen­ter caught wind of Super­star and served up three cease and desist let­ters for unau­tho­rized usage of The Car­pen­ters’ music. The film was sub­se­quent­ly removed from cir­cu­la­tion and forced under­ground, where it quick­ly estab­lished itself as cult favorite in illic­it group screen­ings. The film became a boot­leg clas­sic, and it became com­mon prac­tice to make VHS copies of the orig­i­nals, copies of those copies, and so on. Even­tu­al­ly, it was qui­et­ly resold in DVD for­mat before being dig­i­tal­ly trans­ferred and uploaded to the Inter­net. Today Super­star exists as the per­fect sim­u­lacrum, as a film that does not exist in its orig­i­nal form or qual­i­ty And as the film has lived on through a chain of hasty dupli­ca­tions, its integri­ty only con­tin­ued to degrade. Almost every copy rep­re­sents a wors­ened repro­duc­tion, with low­er audio­vi­su­al qual­i­ty than its par­ent copy. It is a film that has tru­ly been loved to pieces by its fanbase.

Locat­ing a copy of Super­star to view is a unique chal­lenge in and of itself. At present, you can watch it on Youtube with Por­tuguese sub­ti­tles, on Dai­ly­mo­tion with fre­quent inter­rup­tions by DiGiorno piz­za com­mer­cials, and on the Inter­net Archive. Of the four or so YouTube uploads, at least two appear to be uploads of the same moth­er copy. On them, the VHS is over­sat­u­rat­ed and the char­ac­ters look hyper­re­al, scat­tered, and degrad­ed. Still, Karen’s melan­choly con­tral­to cuts through all the noise, clear as day. There is one copy that is notice­ably dif­fer­ent, with grayed col­ors and more pro­nounced sta­t­ic hiss. One can only imag­ine what diver­gent path it took before arriv­ing on Youtube.

A blurry image of a person's face, partially obscured by a dark, defocused background.

And what of the boot­leg view­ing expe­ri­ence? Depend­ing on who you ask, it could be a frus­trat­ing or free­ing one. At times, it feels as though you’re look­ing through a fil­ter; that there is a phys­i­cal and aes­thet­ic dis­tance placed between you and the dolls. Film aca­d­e­m­ic Lucas Hilder­brand, the fore­most expert on all things Super­star, writes that the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing Super­star is a con­stant nego­ti­a­tion of one’s own per­cep­tu­al atten­tion,” as you’re forced to decide whether to focus on the action itself or the visu­al dis­tor­tion and jum­bled audio. On anoth­er lev­el, there is per­haps no bet­ter way to nar­ra­tivize and visu­al­ize the trau­ma of anorex­ia than through a film that is phys­i­cal­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ing itself. This cin­e­mat­ic deres­o­lu­tion com­ple­ments Karen’s own wast­ing away on screen. The audio­vi­su­al infor­ma­tion falls away and so does Karen’s body.

But of course, we are not deal­ing with Karen’s real body or even a straight­for­ward human rep­re­sen­ta­tion there­in. From the out­set, Haynes under­stood the chal­lenges that come with mak­ing a film about the life of Karen Car­pen­ter; that is, rep­re­sent­ing death, anorex­ia, and celebri­ty. His deci­sion to use a plas­tic doll side­steps many of these con­cerns, or expos­es their prob­lems nonethe­less. In a 1989 Film Threat inter­view, Haynes explained that he want­ed to pro­voke the same kind of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and invest­ment in the nar­ra­tive as any real movie would,” hop­ing that this emo­tion­al involve­ment in dolls or some­thing com­plete­ly arti­fi­cial” would force audi­ences to reflect on their own char­ac­ter iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Karen as a plas­tic actress por­trays actions that human Karen Car­pen­ter might have embod­ied in some real sense but did not actu­al­ly enact in front of a cam­era. As a Bar­bie, she becomes rife with spec­u­la­tive and sug­ges­tive prop­er­ties that would not be afford­ed to a human actor.

The fig­ure of the doll is a very gen­er­a­tive object. In the case of Karen in Super­star, she becomes many things: a poster child for anorex­ia, a cau­tion­ary tale„ a grown woman with lit­tle con­trol over her own life, and a fig­ure con­trolled by media nar­ra­tives of her­self. As a real celebri­ty, Karen was an object to be con­sumed. Fans watched her grow thin­ner between TV appear­ances and con­certs, as they spec­u­lat­ed about her dis­or­dered eat­ing. In mul­ti­ple scenes in Super­star, Karen sits in front of the TV watch­ing her­self per­form. In one moment she even exclaims, I looked real­ly fat!” It’s com­i­cal to see a Bar­bie doll – whose anatom­i­cal improb­a­bil­i­ty has long been a sub­ject of crit­i­cism – com­plain about her weight. But Haynes soon knocks the wind out of the moment, carv­ing out Karen’s cheeks and petite fig­ure as the film pro­gress­es to repli­cate her descent into dis­or­dered eating..

Super­star is endur­ing­ly effec­tive because of the way that it dra­ma­tizes, decon­structs, and refash­ions the celebri­ty doc­u­men­tary genre. Much of the film is spec­u­la­tive reen­act­ments or fab­ri­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tions mapped onto a gen­er­al time­line of Karen’s career and ill­ness. There are moments, for exam­ple, in which Haynes intu­its that Karen’s broth­er Richard is gay and that their par­ents were abu­sive. At oth­er turns, there are inex­plic­a­ble scenes of a doll being spanked. Pre­sent­ed with­out expla­na­tion, these scenes inject ambi­gu­i­ty into Karen’s life, hint­ing to the audi­ence that there are things about Karen that we will nev­er real­ly know. In this way, it breaks with doc­u­men­tary nar­ra­tive con­ven­tions that seek to paint tidy, lin­ear pic­tures of our favorite celebri­ties and explain away all the nuance of their lives.

In the past few years alone, there has been a dra­mat­ic increase in doc­u­men­taries of this sort, which seek to cash in on the estab­lished fan­bas­es of female celebri­ties and use the unscript­ed genre for disin­gen­u­ous purposes.There are films about celebri­ties like Tay­lor Swift (Miss Amer­i­cana), that cede nar­ra­tive con­trol to the sub­jects them­selves and open the door to unin­ter­rupt­ed PR build­ing. Oth­ers like Demi Lova­to: Danc­ing with the Dev­il, sell them­selves on their unfil­tered access that allows celebri­ties to tell their own sto­ries. And there are the films about emerg­ing star­lets like Bil­lie Eil­ish (The World’s a Lit­tle Blur­ry) and Olivia Rodri­go (Dri­ving Home 2 U) that look to mythol­o­gize celebri­ties who in the past might have been too ear­ly into their careers to mer­it such screen time. Films of this sort are obsessed with the enter­prise of star-mak­ing – of estab­lish­ing new dolls to play with.

Although many music doc­u­men­taries fea­ture celebri­ties divulging details about their pri­vate lives or pur­port to offer inti­mate access to fans, oth­ers don’t. Some are more pry­ing and spec­u­la­tive, risk­ing exploit­ing the very peo­ple they’re sup­posed to pro­tect. Fea­tures of this sort, like Fram­ing Brit­ney Spears and What Hap­pened Brit­tany Mur­phy?, take a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to the lives of so-called trou­bled women.” Even when they’re pur­port­ing to be help­ful, they know that audi­ences love to watch a trainwreck.

In this way, their inten­tion isn’t as impor­tant as the appetite that these films feed. At best, they are pop­u­lar because of the inde­fati­ga­ble pub­lic desire to know every­thing about the inner lives of these women. At their worst, these films are suc­cess­ful because they feed a blood­lust for sto­ries about fall­en stars and new celebri­ties, pre­car­i­ous sub­jects whose stay­ing pow­er has not yet been established.

As the dia­met­ric oppo­site, Super­star shows us that we nev­er can nev­er know these women ful­ly, and asks us why we might seek to in the first place. And when the film is done play­ing on your lap­top – the only real way you can watch it these days – and it fades to black, you’re left look­ing at your­self in the reflec­tion, caught in your own gaze. Undoubt­ed­ly, video links will be bro­ken, copy­rights will be enforced, and the eter­nal daisy chain of dig­i­tal fac­sim­i­les will con­tin­ue. The process is eter­nal and incor­rupt­ible. And just like Karen the plas­tic doll, Super­star will live forever.

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