Todd Haynes
Safe
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
Greetings, dear readers, I hope you’re having a good week! After last week’s controversial, convoluted, and confrontational movies it felt appropriate now to turn to director Todd Haynes: an expert purveyor of controversially convoluted cinematic confrontations. I was only somewhat familiar with the work of legendary queer Capricorn director Todd Haynes before this evening—having watched Velvet Goldmine last year for Pride Month, and having watched his 2015 film Carol for a film class in college. My controversial opinion is that I was not as obsessed with Carol as everyone else was/is, due to my phobia of sad movies more than anything else. But I’m in the minority here, as Carol easily became Haynes’ most popular project—up until last year’s release of May December, that is. It was May December that ultimately inspired tonight’s Todd Haynes deep dive, because I was completely blown away by this perfectly prickly film. (Charles Melton you will get an Oscar one day.) Haynes has, of course, had many successes over his 4-decade career, but with each well-deserved dousing of critical acclaim there has also been a strange amount of controversy and misunderstanding associated with his work(s). With May December, there was the classic criticism of relying upon a shocking true story, and in some cases, criticism that it wasn’t shocking or exciting enough. The most appalling description given to the film was that it was camp or, as the Golden Globes dubbed it, a musical or comedy. The contents of May December’s scathing script and careful direction are rightfully disturbing, and appropriately uncomfortable. It is about more than just the predatory and exploitative nature of this woman and young man’s odd relationship, it is a meta-commentary on the inherently-predatory and exploitative nature of how these stories are told in Hollywood. It’s no surprise to this critic that the inflated, precious ego of the Academy couldn’t handle this brazen story, because the key players in this industry would never dare to confront themselves the way May December forces them to. And this has been a theme throughout Todd Haynes’ career: he serves up powerful and at times painful narratives that the festivals and film nerds tend to appreciate, but by the time they reach the masses, it’s anyone’s guess if his film(s) will be uncomfortably understood or willfully written off. In the case of both of tonight’s films, the messaging was almost entirely cast aside to make room for questioning the intention behind them, and picking apart their visual styles as if it were a negative distraction to present unpleasant tales in pretty packaging. First, I watched a film that has only more recently garnered an appreciation beyond its aesthetic achievements, an unsettling and captivating portrayal of isolation and illness: Haynes’ 1995 classic Safe. Safe was not only Haynes’ first film to break through to mainstream audiences, it is also the first time that Julianne Moore led a film by herself. Safe imagines Moore as an affluent suburban housewife named Carol White. We first meet her as she exits her Mercedes Benz with her husband (Xander Berkeley), enters their gleaming home in the San Fernando Valley, and endures dissatisfying missionary sex. From the first moment we see her face, we know just how alone Carol is. Even in aerobics class or at the dry cleaners, directing the housekeeping staff and engaging in shallow conversations with her neighbors, Carol is not only isolated in her suburban mundanity, she is suffocated by it. The year is 1987: housing developments are popping up everywhere, jazzercise and fad diets are all the rage, and the quiet roar of the AIDs epidemic is tearing its way through our population—not that the white, privileged, and protected likes of Carol have this on their minds. Even before the central conflict comes into play, we’re presented with uncomfortable truths of this time. Carol sits through conversations with her friends that drift between death and renovations like they’re one and the same, she listens to her stepson’s school essay on gang violence in Los Angeles, all while dressed in the chicest silk robes, draped over the chicest furniture that this era had to offer. But then Carol starts to get sick, at first very casually, then to a crucial degree. The smog from the trucks in front of her on the freeway send her into a debilitating coughing fit. Her sudden decision to get a perm at the hairdresser for the first time results in her getting a nosebleed. She has a headache that will not go away, and when she turns to her husband for comfort, he grows frustrated and even skeptical—at least until she pukes on him. Her doctor is confounded by these unrelated, seemingly-out-of-nowhere symptoms, and suggests that she see a psychiatrist, since this might be a stress-related issue. Carol tries her best to live her life normally but she can barely jazzercise, she cannot sit through her friend’s baby shower, and when she enters the dry cleaner’s as it’s being fumigated, Carol collapses and begins to convulse. Carol finally begins to seek assistance outside the stuffy confines of hospitals when she sees a flyer that asks “Are you allergic to the 20th century?”, and finds a network of other individuals who suffer from random, debilitating illnesses. Carol, and all of her newfound, sickly, mask-wearing friends, deduce that she likely has an “environmental illness” that stems from the various toxins and fumes and chemicals that she’s come into contact with. This was a time in the American culture when environmentalism was actually a concern, a time when people became at least somewhat aware of the various impurities that float in the air and exist on surfaces. But this was also a time of peak self-help-talk, the language we now refer to as “wellness” that implies a form of control and personal decision-making that can positively or negatively effect one’s health and wellbeing. The wellness industry is not inherently toxic, but this was also during the peak of AIDs, and the peak of a cultural denialism led by a president who was not only unwilling to act upon this issue, but unwilling to acknowledge it at all. I now understand why this film was not brought into my consciousness until 2020, when, as the New Yorker’s David Roth brilliantly pointed out that it is now a “tale of two plagues.” As Carol leaves all of her things behind to join a New Age clinic and becomes further immersed into this convent of wellness, her symptoms don’t recede, but her understanding of her new identity as a sick person, and her newfound sense of community, do contribute to a different kind of healing. Safe is a complex and heavy film, one that I struggle to condense into a quippy commentary, so I must quote David Roth’s beautifully-written article:
“Safe was conceived and executed as a sort of fable about a disease that landed with brutal specificity and unprecedented cruelty on marginalized communities, and which was not merely misunderstood but laughed off—quite literally laughed at—by people in power, well into its devastating peak. In his essay accompanying the film’s Criterion Collection release, Dennis Lim notes that the blame-driven denialism that rules Wrenwood echoes that of the New Age author Louise Hay, whose “The AIDS Book: Creating a Positive Approach” offered a similarly specious self-reliance approach to an epidemic that the state had pointedly chosen to ignore. That particular plague was eventually brought to heel by activists and scientists, but the pervasive and implacable unease running through “Safe” has outlasted it, in large part because the dread at the heart of it—that something invisible and relentless is loose and at prey, and that anyone could become susceptible to it, at which point they would be very much on their own—has never really dispersed. The film’s vision of a culture fundamentally incapable of comprehending or countenancing illness and weakness has insured that “Safe” has stayed not just unsettling but queasily current.”
What I love about Todd Haynes’ films is the simultaneous beauty and brutality, the confrontational nature that doesn’t feel forced, but in fact necessary. And the fact that Julianne Moore can drink a glass of milk and make it seem like the most glamorous thing ever. Safe has thankfully been given its flowers now, but one film that will always live in infamy and controversy and never-ending litigation is Todd Haynes’ first major project: a 1985 short film about the singer Karen Carpenter. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, is centered upon a tale that has been told and retold time and time again—in daring after school specials and deeply cheesy Lifetime films. What is different about Superstar, other than the fact that it is censored and banned and highly-sued by Karen’s brother Richard, is the way in which this story is told. Haynes’ eclectically arthouse and ruthlessly real telling of Karen Carpenter’s saga as a star and eventual victim of anorexia was made entirely with Barbie and Ken dolls, not actors. This was a revelation to this critic, a long-time Carpenters fan who’d been forced to watch one of the aforementioned after school specials in a health class. It wasn’t until I read this article in Indiewire that I was made aware of this short film’s existence, and the fact that it was one of the reasons why the 2023 Barbie movie met so much opposition when it was being pitched around. I had no idea of Superstar’s cult following, but now that I’ve seen it (and as someone who used to recreate movies with dolls with their sister), I completely understand it. Haynes creates a cookie-cutter dollhouse of a world where Barbie plays Karen, and with the use of voice actors, tiny sets, and periodic shots of real human hands and landscapes, effectively tells the haunting story of how this true talent met her tragic demise. If you’re not familiar with the rise and fall of Karen Carpenter, I’d recommend you read about it before watching any film dramatization, but if you’re looking for a shockingly humanistic and vividly chilling depiction, this short film is actually a great place to start. Like I said, I was very familiar with this story and of course the melancholic melodies of The Carpenters’ music, but it wasn’t until this short film that I was aware of the claustrophobic control that Karen’s family had on her. The unauthorized use of their music is what caused Richard Carpenter to sue and win a lawsuit against Todd Haynes, but what was most troubling to witness was his family’s complicity in her suffering. In between vignettes of her rise to stardom and her eventual struggles, Haynes includes a series of eloquently-written text that perfectly outlines the disorder of anorexia, and Karen’s particular ailment. Due to the poor quality of this film (that is available on Youtube 🤫) I was unable to make out every word of this text, but I thought I’d share some of it here, because it is wildly sympathetic and thoroughly well-researched for a film that was made with dolls in ten days:
“As we investigate the story of Karen Carpenter’s life and death we are presented with an extremely graphic picture of the internal experience of contemporary femininity. We will see how Karen’s visibility as a popular singer only intensified certain difficulties many women experience in relation to their bodies.”
“Despite her busy schedule, Karen made many friends in the industry, such as Dionne Warwick, Olivia Newton-John, and Marlo Thomas. By 1975, however, it became clear that it was the inner relationship with herself that dominated Karen’s life: her obsession with food and her refusal to eat.”
“The self-imposed regime of the anorexic reveals a complex internal apparatus of resistance and control. Her intensive need for self-discipline consumes and replaces all her other needs and desires. Anorexia can thus be seen as an addiction and abuse of self-control, a fascism over the body in which the sufferer plays the parts of both dictator and the emaciated victim who she so often resembles.”
“In a culture that continues to control women through the commoditization of their bodies, the anorexic body excludes itself, rejecting the doctrines of femininity, driven by a vision of complete mastery and control.”
Through the use of a Barbie doll, rather than a human actor, this story is more ethically-sourced. Karen’s tiny Barbie body is whittled away overtime, her vacantly-positive expression conveys the distinctly feminine burden that is forced-pleasantry. Barbie, being a figure who is used against her will to uphold various forms of the “ideal feminine” is the perfect person to play Karen—another figure who was used and abused until there was nothing left of her. The impossible standards of her thin, talented wholesomeness weighed on Karen in many ways, in ways that likely many people could relate to—if they were ever willing to discuss such a disturbing topic. Much like the abuse of power at the center of May December, the isolation and avoidance at the center of Safe, Superstar forces its audience to confront one of the hardest topics for people to reckon with: eating disorders. And just as Karen Carpenter was misunderstood and forced onto a pedestal of our culture’s creation, this film was of course misunderstood, and swiftly-banned. Haynes’ use of Barbies was just as brilliant as his use of The Carpenters’ own music: considerately incorporating just the right songs (by the Carpenters and other artists of the time) and blending them in a frighteningly cacophonous way as Karen descends further into her illness. This story is a deadly serious one, and I believe that Todd Haynes approached it with dead seriousness. The novelty of the Barbie dolls wears off almost immediately, and what we are presented with is a tale that showcases Karen’s supreme talent, her fight for her independence in a very sheltered home, and her resilience in the face of mockery and being misunderstood. Karen’s story only has one, horrific ending, but Superstar does a superb job of cataloguing her triumphs and her trials in a way that, hopefully, could be better understood. I would not blame any fiercely loyal fan of Karen Carpenter’s for not approving of this film, nor would I fault anyone who’s struggled with disordered eating for finding it to be too intense to watch, but for simply existing at all, for telling this story without making an actress lose weight, for daring to confront this terrible tragedy and how our culture played a role in it—is undeniably impressive to me. For all of the bizarre, niche, and hard-to-track-down cinema I’ve reviewed on this blog, Superstar will likely stay with me the longest. I love you, Karen Carpenter, you velvet-voiced legend. And I love you, Todd Haynes, for making the bold cinema that you make, and for not flinching in the face of pretentious critics or overwhelmingly-unaware audiences who can’t understand it. Not since Sofia Coppola have I seen an auteur so delicately, considerately, but savagely depict female pain, in a way that feels raw and real and somehow still more palatable than the actual experience of such pain. Here’s to hoping your life isn’t painful right now, dear reader, and if it is, I hope things become as beautiful as Julianne Moore saying “prethicely” in May December. Ta ta for now!
