They Are Not There: The Body of a Pop Star in “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” and “I'm Not There” by Todd Haynes

Karolina Kosińska

Abstract

In Todd Haynes’ films corporeality of the characters takes center-stage. The body is an area on which one’s identity is built, and is the carrier of that identity. However Haynes does not present the body as a sign of psychological depth of the character; it also does not have a pre-discursive character, it is never natural and self-determining. Just like identity, the body is only a construct shaped by the pressure of a given social and cultural order. The author, with the help of the analysis of two of Haynes’ films - Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988) and I’m Not There (2007), tries to describe the director’s artistic strategy. In Superstar, a film telling the story of Karen Carpenter, the pop star who died in 1983 as a result of anorexia, all of the roles were given to Barbie dolls. In I’m Not There, an experimental biography of Bob Dylan, the main role was written for six actors, including a woman and a black teenage boy. The body fulfils in these films a function of a sign, it distances the viewer, it makes him interpret rather than identify with the characters. The “body” of the movie also plays here a considerable role: Haynes juggles the conventions and film schemas, refers to film genres, uses cliches and borrowings. Bodies treated in this manner show a remarkable interpretative potential of the films of the American director.