“Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” by Todd Haynes
Film, 1987, 43 min.
With Barbie dolls as the principal actors, Superstar portrays the life of Karen Carpenter and her battle with anorexia. Haynes never secured the rights to the Carpenters’ music he used in the movie, and Richard Carpenter filed an injunction that kept Superstar from public release. Even without Carpenter’s court order, the film would probably have been stopped by the notoriously litigious Mattel, the makers of Barbie.
Copies of the low-fi film keep creeping up online. It’s a great film, an underground queer classic, by a great filmmaker. (It’s Todd Haynes’ first film.)
It’s of particular interest to me because the central thrust of my artistic work and my life is about celebrating and deconstructing beauty, femininity and glamour.