Dismembering Superstar

If you've never seen Todd Haynes' Superstar, you really should at least watch a few minutes of it. You'll never look at Barbie dolls, The Carpenters, or food the same way again.

[There's a link to the video in the Works Cited list following the essay. I could have included one up here, but way make things too easy?]


~•~
(2nd draft)


ENG 384
September 29, 2009
Essay 1: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Dismembering Superstar


Loneliness is a such a sad affair...
―Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell

In the underground film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), Todd Haynes uses the elements of horror cinema—particularly the slasher genre—to construct a sympathetic portrayal of Karen as a victim of her family's desires and the expectations of the musical industry which made her into a celebrity. Her situation becomes the masked killer, which stalks, tortures, and ultimately, kills her.

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960), is seen as a prototype for the slasher genre, where unusual and disturbing camera angles create a semblance of the insanity which afflicts the protagonist, Norman Bates. The film's narrative uses these angles to toy with the viewer's perceptions, as well as assumptions and expectations. These same traits were mimicked by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), and were likely influences upon the way the camera was used for as a character's point-of-view in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick 1980).

Todd Haynes uses these methods and effects in Superstar, beginning with a common horror movie theme, the allusion of slasher film victims as being "dolls" to be played with by the killer. In a case of metafictional, Haynes indeed tortures his dolls before killing one of them and subjecting several to burning, scarring, flaying, and dismemberment throughout the film.

In an early scene, we have an example of archetypal horror movie angle: a voyeuristic POV shot from outside the Carpenter's suburban home looking in through the window of the kitchen. Inside, Karen sings along with a Dionne Warwick's sugary pop song—"I'll Never Fall In Love Again"—which plays in the background, similar to the tantalizing radio-friendly song of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Öyster Cult) playing on a car stereo in an early scene of Halloween. As the camera closes in on the kitchen window, it seems as if an intruder is approaching. And, in a way, this is the case. The intruder is the audience, and like a future victim being stalked by a killer, Karen Carpenter is oblivious to her impending doom. Her singing has also drawn the attention of her own family, who hear her from the living room which sets into motion the horror story that will take her life.

In the next scene, the camera pans along the wall into a normal living room. The mise-en-scène is arranged so that eerie shadows are cast from the furniture and table lamps; light glaring in through French windows creates the shadowy pattern of gothic arch across the background wall. A house plant obscures the couch on with Agnes Carpenter sits, her sharp, shrill voice cutting her son Richard down to size with what sounds like one more lecture. Richard's father sits on the arm of a chair, his features obscured by the darkness that clings to the edges of the scene. Richard himself sits with his back to the camera, dutifully agreeing with his parents that his music is lacking something essential.

This sets up the mundane aspects of life that are needed for the introduction of the uncanny which shows an immediate registry of change: the slow rising in background volume of Karen singing from the kitchen.

Richard complains, "Mother, I can't sing, play keys, and lead a band all at the same—"

"Shh!" Agnes hisses.

Just as the need for a singer is mentioned, Agnes hears her daughter in the kitchen. Agnes gets up from the couch, rising into frame. The close up of her head leaves the background in a disorienting blur—reminiscent of the effect a film noir wide angle lens zoom shot creates. It's a common technique in horror films when revelation has struck a character, or the monster is about to be revealed. In this case, the revelation and monster are one and the same: Karen herself, singing on the other side of the kitchen door.

The comparison Agnes' close up to the revelation at the end of Psycho when the desiccated figure of Norman Bates' mother is shown is aptly made by Glyn Davis in his Cultographies book on Superstar (50). In Psycho, Norman's downfall was caused, previous to the narrative of the film, by a over-bearing mother who drove him murderous insanity. In Superstar, Karen's downfall is precipitated on screen by her own domineering mother who suggested she become the singer—and thus the public face, voice, and body—of Richard's band.

Another analogy here would be that of the mother figure in Cunningham's original Friday the 13th. In this, we have gone through the length of the film with the intended belief that the masked killer is Jason, when in fact, the gruesome serial killer has been Jason's mother all along.

Although the literal "killer" in Superstar is Karen—who mistreats her body to the point it fails to properly function—but on another level, the killer is her mother's unreasonable demands placed upon Karen, which leads to a metaphoric strangulation which chokes the life out of her.

This parallels the typical story-line of a slasher film. The victims, usually teenagers or young adults, are warned in an over-the-top manner about the bad things that will befall them if they go to a certain place or display a particular behavior. By ignoring these warnings, the victims offer themselves up to be killed. In this sense, Karen offers herself up to be killed by agreeing to the Faustian bargain for fame and fortune, along with which comes impossible expectations about endurance, behavior, and body image.

In the final scene of Superstar, we are treated with an barrage of horror film staples. It begins with a montage over which is the sound of a telephone ringing. A vertical shot angled down at a man spanking a girl's bare bottom, which is taken to be Karen as a child being spanked by her father. Abusive parenting of a killer is a common thread in slasher films. Then we see the murder weapon: a bottle of ipecac. In a disturbing juxtaposition of coherence, the sound of the telephone continues to ring as we see a hand reach across the screen to hang up a telephone handset. Then, as Karen speaks to her doctor in a voice over, the camera takes on her POV as she wanders through the darkened hallways of her apartment until she reaches the brightly lit bathroom where her bottles of ipecac wait. The most obvious parallel to the horror genre here is to the opening scene of Halloween when the camera takes on Michael Meyers' POV as he enters a kitchen, draws a butcher knife from a drawer and walks through his house from the lighted downstairs to the darkness upstairs where he stabs his babysitter to death.

More than Halloween, however, the sound in Superstar's final scene can be compared to The Shining (Stanley Kubrick 1980). Throughout The Shining, music and sound play significant factors in creating the tension of atmosphere and an overwhelming sense of dread—mixing ambient sounds with minimalist music that is sometimes only a wash of screeching viols or clanging metallic percussion ("De Natura Sonoris No. 2" and "Utrenja" by Krzysztof Penderecki).
In Superstar, Karen's voice over continues as strains of multiple Carpenters songs begin to play at different speed, creating a warped cacophony of sound and music with a synthesized effect similar to Bernard Herrmann's often imitated music for Psycho's infamous "shower scene."

Once in the brightly lit bathroom, Karen Carpenter drinks two bottles of ipecac and, with a quick montage of brutal images, she throws the bottles in the trash and vomits. With the horrid blur of sound continuing—the songs over-lapping each other and playing at different speeds—the montage shows flash cut images of a lurid yellow background when Karen pukes, the trash can where she throws away the ipecac bottles, Karen's bare leg sticking out from under a bed sheet covering her lifeless body, and historical footage from a German concentration camp where guards toss an emaciated body into a ditch with others. The montage ends with a static image of the real-life Karen Carpenter, her face beaming a smile beneath colored stage lights.

This unsettling montage resembles flash cut shots in The Shining, when the young boy, Danny, has visions of the hotel's past—the bloody hallway where the twins were hacked apart with an axe, and a torrent of dark red blood pouring from the golden-colored doors of the elevator.

Todd Haynes uses sound and imagery to great effect in achieving his horrorshow of Karen Carpenter's death. Yet, even as he brutalizes the actors—the dolls playing the roles in his film—he manages to solicit sympathy for the victim/killer, Karen herself. Much like Hitchcock did in Psycho, the murderer is seen as someone we as an audience identify with, and ultimately feel sorrow for because of the situation which drove them to kill. Unlike the slasher films Haynes draws from, the only death in Superstar is ultimately the killer herself. And Karen Carpenter dies a lonely death as a result of the circumstances inflicted upon her, and throws herself away just as if she were a doll that had been abused to make a cheap macabre film.

•

Works Cited

Carpenter, Karen. "Superstar."

By Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell.

The Carpenters. Jack Daugherty, 1971. CD.

Davis, Glyn. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

London: Wallflower, 2008.
Print. Cultographies.

Friday the 13th. Dir. Sean S. Cunningham.

Perf. Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King,
Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram.
Paramount/Warner Brothers, 1980. DVD.

Halloween. Dir. John Carpenter.

Perf. Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis,
Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles.
Compass International, 1978. DVD.

Herrmann, Bernard. "Theme from Psycho." 1960. CD.
Penderecki, Krzysztof. "De Natura Sonoris No. 2." 1971. CD.
Penderecki, Krzysztof. "Utrenja (Morning Prayer)." 1969-71. CD.
Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Perf. Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh,

Vera Miles, John Gavin.
Paramount/Universal, 1960. DVD.

Roeser, Donald. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper."

Blue Öyster Cult.

Sandy Perlman, 1976. CD.

The Shining. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Perf. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall,
Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers.
Warner Brothers, 1980. DVD.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

Dir. Todd Haynes.

Perf. Rob LaBelle, Gwen Kraus, Bruce Tuthill.
1987. Google Video.

Warwick, Dionne. "I'll Never Fall In Love Again."

By Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David, 1969. CD.

· • ·