The Banned Karen Carpenter Biopic Was Barbie at Her Most Subversive
It’s Barbie Week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, celebrating the doll’s pop-culture history, our favorite Barbie memories, and a certain major movie. Read all of our coverage here!
Barbie has starred in numerous films and television programs, and—on screen and off—she’s played countless roles, from doctor and dancer to flight attendant and computer engineer. Yet perhaps her greatest part is the one that the powers-that-be have tried to keep hidden from view: that of legendary singer Karen Carpenter, in a cult classic that heralded the arrival of one of America’s most daring modern directors.
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is an early 43-minute short film by Todd Haynes, the acclaimed auteur behind Safe, Far from Heaven, Carol, and the upcoming May December (which premiered at Cannes and will open this fall’s New York Film Festival). Haynes recounts the film’s iconic title character’s meteoric rise and anorexia nervosa-driven demise through avant-garde means, highlighted by the decision to use Barbie dolls to tell its tale. A deliberately artificial and stylized biopic that also features live-action sequences, archival news and TV clips, schizoid static imagery, text cards and narration, it was an underground hit upon its 1987 debut. Its reputation has only grown in the following decades, thanks in large part to the fact that it’s been almost impossible to find since 1990, when it was pulled from distribution due to copyright-infringement claims.