The Musicology Colloquium presents a talk by Caryl Flinn:

Music, Camp, and the Case of The Carpenters

Despite extensive sales and popularity in the 1970s, Karen and Richard Carpenter were widely treated as a campy joke. In this talk, Caryl Flinn examines camp features initially tied to their act and considers how Todd Haynes’s underground film Superstar —that focused on Karen’s struggle with anorexia using Barbie dolls–helped inaugurate a more affectionate and appreciative understanding of camp.

Caryl Flinn is the author of five books: Strains of Utopia; The New German Cinema; Music and Cinema; Brass Diva; The Sound of Music and the forthcoming Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind.  Her work on film music and sound has appeared in dozens of anthologies and in journals such as Camera Obscurer and JCMS. She is a Professor of Film, TV and Media at the University of Michigan.

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