Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Plot

The film covers Karen Carpenter from the time of her "discovery" in 1966 to her untimely death by cardiac arrest (secondary to anorexia nervosa) in 1983. The movie begins with a quasi-first person recap of her mother Agnes Carpenter discovering Karen's body in her parents' Downey, California home on February 4, 1983, and then returns by flashback to 1966. The story touches on major points in Karen's life from 1966 on:

An unusual facet of the film was that, instead of actors, almost all parts were played by modified Barbie dolls. In particular, Haynes detailed Karen's worsening anorexia by subtly whittling away at the face and arms of the "Karen" Barbie doll. Sets were created properly scaled to the dolls, including locales such as the Carpenter home in Downey, Karen's apartment in Century City, restaurants, recording studios – including minute details such as labels on wine bottles and Ex-Lax boxes. Interspersed with the story were documentary-style segments detailing the times in which Karen Carpenter lived and also detailing anorexia; these segments were seen as dry and melodramatic parodies of the documentary genre. The underlying soundtrack included many popular hits of the day, including duets such as Elton John and Kiki Dee and Captain & Tennille, and songs by Gilbert O'Sullivan, Leon Russell, and the Carpenters themselves.

The tone of the film was sympathetic to Karen, especially in regards to her anorexia, but much of that sympathy was gained by making the other characters as unsympathetic as possible. Karen's parents, Harold and Agnes, were portrayed as overly controlling, attempting to keep Karen living at home even after she turned twenty-five; Agnes, in addition, was portrayed as unaware of the extent of Karen's problem with anorexia. The duo's initial meeting with A&M Records owner Herb Alpert was inter-cut with stock footage of Vietnam War scenes. Richard Carpenter was portrayed as a rampant perfectionist who frequently sided with his parents against Karen, and was also depicted as more concerned with his and Karen's careers than with Karen's health. This culminated in a scene where Richard berates a fatigued and obviously ill Karen for not meeting business demands, asking her, "What are you trying to do? Ruin both of our careers?", causing her to break down in tears. Haynes even insinuated during a fight between Richard and Karen that Richard was gay – which, if it had been reported to the public in the 1970s, would have destroyed the Carpenters' "clean-cut" image and the group's career.

Haynes' treatment of the film was quite dark; his choice of black captions often blended in with the scene, rendering them unreadable. Additionally, Haynes worked spanking (a common theme in his works) into the film with a repeated segment featuring a black-and-white overhead view of someone, possibly Harold, administering an over-the-knee spanking to a bare-bottomed adult Karen. The meaning of this segment is never discussed, leaving it to the viewer's imagination – it may be an actual event, a representation of Karen's self-loathing regarding her inability to be the "perfect" child, or a representation of the self-discipline involved with her anorexia.

Songs

Response

Upon its release, the film was a minor art hit, and was shown at several film festivals. However, shortly thereafter, Richard Carpenter viewed the film and became irate with its portrayal of his family, in particular because the film insinuated Richard was gay. It later emerged that Haynes never obtained music licensing from either Richard or the Carpenters' label, A&M Records, for the numerous songs used in the film. Richard Carpenter sued Haynes for failing to obtain the clearances and won. As a result of the lawsuit, all copies of the film were to have been recalled and destroyed. The Museum of Modern Art retains a copy of this film but is not authorized to screen it. Nevertheless, bootleg copies remain in circulation.

In his analysis of Superstar's bootleg existence, Lucas Hilderbrand, a professor of film studies at University of California, Irvine, stated: "Analogue reproduction of the text rather than destroying the original's aura, actually reconstructs it. Materially the fallout of the image and sound mark each successive copy as an illicit object, a forbidden pleasure watched and shared and loved to exhaustion."