Superstar

From the reading regarding fan culture, and fans creating low budget renditions or continuations of their favorite interests, I was reminded of an experimental film I saw in another class MCOM class. Though not necessarily a fan based production, the means of production are very similar to some of the examples used in the book. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story was a film written and directed by Todd Haynes (more recently notable for his musically related films I'm Not There and Velvet Goldmine.

Superstar is a short biographical film about Karen Carpenter, lead singer and drummer of 1970's sweet-as-candy group The Carpenters. What makes this film so interesting is that the entire production uses Barbie dolls as the actors. The rest of the sets are all completely scaled down to fit with the dolls to create a realistic (though, completely fabricated) environment. This film must have taken so much time to actually put together, that we can see how dedicated Todd Haynes was to this story and means of creation. After the film's release, Karen's brother and band mate, Richard filed a lawsuit in terms of the copyright infringement of the songs used, and so now it can only be viewed through bootlegged copies (can't help but love my teacher for having one of his own).

An interesting film, very sympathetic to the truly tragic hero, Karen Carpenter. No surprise that copyright was used to bring it down either...I would imagine protecting the family's image is more important than the use of songs.