Tuesday Morning

Yesterday was busy. It was my night to make a presentation in my feminist film theory class but the professor hadn't posted the reading assignment until Sunday morning. Consequently, I only got to the essays yesterday morning and had to read and distill them for my six o'clock class. Fortunately, the students are out of the building this week and so I had plenty of time to read, take notes, and prepare. The presentation went well and I think Dr. Shaviro was pleased.

We watched Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story last night and it was pretty interesting. It came out in 1987 and has been famous for one reason or another since then. The trick is that Todd Haynes (he directed Far From Heaven and the recent I'm Not There) told the story of Karen Carpenter's rise to fame and her struggles with and ultimate death by anorexia -- and he did it all using Barbie dolls instead of live actors. As Karen wastes away, he uses thinner and thinner doll bodies to represent her. It's campy and funny in parts but surprisingly affecting in others. The movie plays with different film genres -- the after-school special, the educational film, the star biopic, etc. It poses questions about what we expect from our celebrities in terms of how they look and how, in turn, we change ourselves according to what the stars do.


It was a sensation when it was released but Richard Carpenter sued and won the right to have all copies removed from any kind of commercial display. (The movie makes him look like a career obsessed jerk who was unkind to his suffering sister and also hints that he's a closeted homosexual. He claimed he was suing solely on the grounds that the movie uses Carpenters songs without permission.) So there were to be no video rentals, no showings at film festivals. The movie took on underground bootleg status and people began copying and circulating tapes. Dr. Shaviro bought a VHS copy back when it was still legal and made dozens of copies for friends and students during the 90s after the ban. Now he has a VHS transfer on CD which is what we watched last night. One of the essays I read was about how the bootleg copies of the movie deteriorated over time (a copy of a copy of a copy, etc.) just as Karen Carpenter herself wasted away. It was interesting.

Anyway, the whole movie is now available online here. To my knowledge, it's still "illegal" to watch it so I imagine it's just the fact that Richard Carpenter and his lawyers don't know it's out there. It's only 44 minutes long so you feel like being a rebel and watching an interesting, little-seen movie, now is your chance.

There are other things in the world worth mentioning:

This last Saturday Suzanne ran her first official 10k and finished it in exactly one hour and 33 seconds. It's a really impressive accomplishment. The girls and I loved sitting on the sidelines in the sun and watching her barrel in at full speed. I'm really proud of and impressed by her.


Also, my older brother Jason was just accepted to the University of Idaho's law program for this fall. He and his family are going to sell their house in Pocatello and move to Moscow where he'll pursue a JD. He's been doing the work of an immigration lawyer for several years now only without the pay or prestige. I think he's brave and crazy and I'm proud of him too.