Joanna (Sinyue) Tsang

Rahul Mukherjee
5/24/2010

Lucas Hilderbrand’s Grainy Days and Mondays: Superstar and Bootleg Aesthetics
I. Bootleg and Piracy issues on Haynes’s Superstar
1. Superstar did not get its public exhibition and wide distribution due to
copyrighted issues on the Barbie-size doll and the Carpenters’ music
i. Thus, exhibited through private screening and distributed through
bootleg circulation
ii. Pirated videotapes of the film, suggested by Hilderbrand, “inscribe
a bootleg aesthetic that exhibits audience’s engagement in a love
affair – watching, sharing, and copying the illicit text so that the
viewers’ reception of Superstar becomes historically, perceptually,
and emotionally reshaped.” (pg.276 in reader)
iii. Mattel (manufacturer & patent owner of Barbie) didn’t want
Haynes to use Barbie to relate to death subject
- Ironically, Mattel’s basic premise on Barbie doll play is to have
children/adults to “enact imagined, unauthorized narratives”
- But Mattel imposes a certain ideological doll plays’ generic
situations (like house and school), NOT DEATH-RELATED
II. The narrative combines different generic modes
1. The film imitates star biopics, disease-of-the-week television movies,
health education films, and feminist documentaries
i. Expresses characters’ emotional states and producing audience
affect
- Focuses on body genres and intertextuality
ii. But Hilderbrand states that “the more historically removed we get
away… Superstar will increasingly be seen as “just” about eatind
disorders and media culture” (p. 277 in reader)
III. Also, the film’s public screenings and private viewings suggest varied ways the
film positioned for audiences (e.g: avant-garde art film, festival indie,
museum piece, etc.)
 1. These different identities and modes of address suggests the film’s appeal
to different audience on different “affective and intellectual frequencies”
IV. Hilderbrand suggests that Carpenters’ songs set the film’s rhythm
1. Songs shift emotional tensions and transition in genre and address
2. Also serve in dual registers: “visualizations of music that provide the
essential narrative exposition while exploiting the song’s emotive
potential.” (pg. 277 in reader)
V. The aesthetic of the film also expresses the theme of the film
1. Fallout of the image and sound mark, and deresolution of the tapes
(because of illegal duplication of the film) expresses and reflects the
narrative of Karen Carpenter’s wasting away
2. The aesthetic goes against standard spectatorial engagement with the
narrative
3. “a trace of the format mismatch remains and contributes to the film’s
expressive effect” (pg. 282 in reader)
4. The images and footages in the film “suggest a nostalgic, decayed quality
and foreground their own plasticity” (pg. 283 in reader)
- Not referring to specific moments, but to a general cultural
memory of the time
5. Intercutting between bootleg footages and the Barbie-size dolls sequences,
and also repeated video reproduction of these bootleg video tapes serves
as a device to convey Karen’s psychological state at that time:
- “…reflects Karen’s subjective and bodily wasting: her
disappearing body becomes manifest in the material
information loss” (pg.285 in reader)
VI. These bootlegged tapes of Superstar have also became “souvenir of the fans who
have made them”
- Souvenir of specific period (nostalgia)
- Suggests distribution of these tapes is like scattering Karen
Carpenter’s ashes into the collections of fans and cinephiles