Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

When one watches "Superstar..." they are drawn into the tightly-knit household of The Carpenters as well as the state of America in the 1970s.  A recurring theme is perfection; Nixon describes The Carpenters as being demonstrative of "America at its very best" and Karen wants her recordings "to be perfect."  America's interest in wholesomeness is a pressure to Karen, and one woman even admits to never having trusted The Carpenters' idyllic image.  Tabloid headline-like suspicions are voiced from a critical voice, the source of which is never seen.  Do The Carpenters have secrets? 

Toward the end of the film, the overlapping of many Carpenters songs coupled with choppy footage of bathroom tiles and laxative boxes draw the viewer into a sense of delirium.  The caption about rationing being over by this period in time, replaced for an emphasis on consumption and storage of products -- especially food products - makes the viewer question excessive American cultural behavior.  Overall the film develops a hypnoticism, through the mesmerizing imagery, especially that of a shifting composer's hand and the shifting meter on the scale that displays Karen's shrinking weights throughout the film.