Post by klep on Dec 2, 2019 8:08:48 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/2: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
OBSCURE FILMS WEEK!
CW: Eating disorders
By now it's common knowledge that our culture puts an insane level of scrutiny on the bodies of women - their hair, their makeup, their clothes, and of course their weight. There's always some asshole out there willing to find something they find objectionable about a woman's body and try to make her feel bad about it. For celebrities, it's even worse.
Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters started dieting in high school, but it wasn't until she became famous that she developed a true eating disorder. She would suffer from anorexia nervosa for almost the entire rest of her life. It ultimately killed her - she died of heart failure resulting from her disorder just shy of her 33rd birthday. When he was a budding young filmmaker, Todd Haynes decided to explore her struggles in his short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.
Superstar is a brief 43 minutes, but it manages to capture the entire arc of Karen Carpenter's career through the prism of her more personal struggle. But rather than using actors, Haynes gives us a puppet show using Barbie dolls. Barbie, of course, has long been criticized for fostering unhealthy body images among girls and young women. Her impossible proportions are presented as an ideal to aspire to - an ideal that can never be achieved.
So Haynes presents young Karen as a Barbie doll - already a beautiful woman, with nothing about her body to be ashamed of. But of course our misogynistic society (and even moreso 50 years ago) won't allow a woman to feel good about her body. And so when a journalist writing about The Carpenters calls her 'chubby' it reawakens her latent insecurities.
At the time anorexia and other eating disorders were poorly understood. The film notes that treatment typically stopped at getting the sufferer up to a target weight and leaving it there, which doesn't address the underlying issue. Not an exception, Karen's family routinely seems not to understand the depth of her difficulties. Haynes puts her brother and bandmate Richard in a particularly unflattering light, making him out to be more concerned about their performances than Karen's health. It's not until the early 80s that Karen herself is able to admit she has a problem, but by then the damage has been done. As Karen's disorder ate at her body, so Haynes whittled away at her doll until by the end there isn't much left.
Haynes intersperses his narrative with impressionistic imagery, sound, and montages. The first meeting with the A&M executive is lit and scored ominously, ending with a handshake and a scream. Discussion of The Carpenters' wholesome image and their early hit Close To You is played over footage of protests, Nixon, and Vietnam. And of course there are multiple montages flipping between food, Ex-Lax, and an ever-decreasing scale - ticking down the pounds like a clock ticking away on Karen's life.
Naturally the film encountered a host of legal problems and is currently only available in bootleg and pirated form. Richard Carpenter unsurprisingly took great offense at his family's portrayal in it and used its unauthorized soundtrack as a pretense to get it removed from circulation. But for those who know where to look, it remains an exciting and clever work from a director who was only just getting started.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/9: Speed Racer
IT'S LADIES' WEEK!
The Wachowski Sisters made their mark with the darker tales of Bound and The Matrix, but their subsequent career has largely been defined by truly wholesome faire. Join us next week for the purest of their films, 2008's Speed Racer. Speed Racer is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 12/3: Kramer vs. Kramer
The next podcast pairing is about a pair of marriages in dissolution with Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer and the new Noah Baumbach film Marriage Story. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of the older film, which is available for rent in the usual places.
OBSCURE FILMS WEEK!
CW: Eating disorders
By now it's common knowledge that our culture puts an insane level of scrutiny on the bodies of women - their hair, their makeup, their clothes, and of course their weight. There's always some asshole out there willing to find something they find objectionable about a woman's body and try to make her feel bad about it. For celebrities, it's even worse.
Karen Carpenter of The Carpenters started dieting in high school, but it wasn't until she became famous that she developed a true eating disorder. She would suffer from anorexia nervosa for almost the entire rest of her life. It ultimately killed her - she died of heart failure resulting from her disorder just shy of her 33rd birthday. When he was a budding young filmmaker, Todd Haynes decided to explore her struggles in his short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.
Superstar is a brief 43 minutes, but it manages to capture the entire arc of Karen Carpenter's career through the prism of her more personal struggle. But rather than using actors, Haynes gives us a puppet show using Barbie dolls. Barbie, of course, has long been criticized for fostering unhealthy body images among girls and young women. Her impossible proportions are presented as an ideal to aspire to - an ideal that can never be achieved.
So Haynes presents young Karen as a Barbie doll - already a beautiful woman, with nothing about her body to be ashamed of. But of course our misogynistic society (and even moreso 50 years ago) won't allow a woman to feel good about her body. And so when a journalist writing about The Carpenters calls her 'chubby' it reawakens her latent insecurities.
At the time anorexia and other eating disorders were poorly understood. The film notes that treatment typically stopped at getting the sufferer up to a target weight and leaving it there, which doesn't address the underlying issue. Not an exception, Karen's family routinely seems not to understand the depth of her difficulties. Haynes puts her brother and bandmate Richard in a particularly unflattering light, making him out to be more concerned about their performances than Karen's health. It's not until the early 80s that Karen herself is able to admit she has a problem, but by then the damage has been done. As Karen's disorder ate at her body, so Haynes whittled away at her doll until by the end there isn't much left.
Haynes intersperses his narrative with impressionistic imagery, sound, and montages. The first meeting with the A&M executive is lit and scored ominously, ending with a handshake and a scream. Discussion of The Carpenters' wholesome image and their early hit Close To You is played over footage of protests, Nixon, and Vietnam. And of course there are multiple montages flipping between food, Ex-Lax, and an ever-decreasing scale - ticking down the pounds like a clock ticking away on Karen's life.
Naturally the film encountered a host of legal problems and is currently only available in bootleg and pirated form. Richard Carpenter unsurprisingly took great offense at his family's portrayal in it and used its unauthorized soundtrack as a pretense to get it removed from circulation. But for those who know where to look, it remains an exciting and clever work from a director who was only just getting started.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/9: Speed Racer
IT'S LADIES' WEEK!
The Wachowski Sisters made their mark with the darker tales of Bound and The Matrix, but their subsequent career has largely been defined by truly wholesome faire. Join us next week for the purest of their films, 2008's Speed Racer. Speed Racer is available for rent in the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 12/3: Kramer vs. Kramer
The next podcast pairing is about a pair of marriages in dissolution with Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer and the new Noah Baumbach film Marriage Story. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of the older film, which is available for rent in the usual places.