Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story1988

Title Card:
The self-imposed regime of the anorexic reveals a complex internal apparatus of resistance and control. Her intensive need for self-discipline consumes and replaces all her other needs and desires. Anorexia can thus be seen as an addiction and abuse of self control, a fascism over the body in which the sufferer plays the parts of both dictator and the emaciated victim who she so often resembles. In a culture that continues to control women through the commoditization of their bodies, the anorexic body excludes itself, rejecting the doctrines of femininity, driven by a vision of complete mastery and control.