Brian De Palma’s "Carrie" turns the bullying, body shame, and the overwhelming emotions
of everyday teenage life into the stuff of horror.
"Please see that I'm not like you, Mama, I'm funny...
I mean, all the kids think I'm funny I don't wanna be.
I wanna be normal.
I wanna start to try me, a whole person before it's too late for me!"
You’d be hard-pressed to find a film that makes adolescence look worse.
But when you think about it, the movie isn’t so far-fetched.
Carrie magnifies teenage life to show how teens can feel like they are monsters.
Horror movies realize our worst fears, and in adolescence, we’re terrified of getting
rejected by our peers and puberty transforming our bodies beyond recognition.
The thing every teenager wants most is to control their classmates, their parents, and
their own rapidly changing bodies and emotions.
Carrie’s telekinesis gives her this control.
So while her high school experience is way worse than the average teen’s, she’s also
much more powerful.
But the film shows us that when a hormonal teenager gets her way and resorts to mind
control instead of learning how to express herself, the result is disaster.
The film juxtaposes idealized scenes of teenage life with sudden violence.
every moment that looks like a perfect teen dream descends into a nightmare.
A game of gym class volleyball ends in vicious bullying.
And the feminine, sensual scene of Carrie showering accompanied by flute music becomes
harrowing when she gets her first period in the presence of her heartless classmates.
These sweetly innocent scenes that reveal their corrupted inner nature --
"Did you hear about Tommy Ross?"
"What?"
"He's taking Carrie White to the prom."
Show us that sugarcoated depictions of teenage life are a lie.
The film exposes every picture-perfect image as something much darker, from the beginning
through to the final scene, when we get a glimpse of Sue’s dream.
This closing lovely, soothing fantasy turns again into a nightmare, ruining the sentimental
takeaway we thought we were getting.
Tommy's and Sue’s good deed in inviting Carrie to prom is no competition for the popular
kids’ cruelty.
“Did any of you ever stop to think that Carrie White has feelings?
Did Did any of you ever stop to think?”
The gym teacher, Miss Collins tries to protect Carrie.
“Carrie, let’s think about this now.
I mean it might be terrific, you might have a really good time.”
But even she believes that Tommy and Sue are playing a mean trick on the girl.
“Why’d Tommy ask her to the prom?”...
“Why?
What for?
What could you possible have in mind?”
We see that high school is a cynical, unkind world where all good deeds are suspect.
And the meanest behavior is rewarded as the cool kids impose what’s essentially a reign
of terror.
The film builds from recognizable aspects of teenage life to capture how actual adolescence
can be as unpredictable, violent, and scary as a horror film.
Teens feel isolated and trapped and a surprise attack is always just around the corner.
The scene where Tommy and Carrie spin around during a dance at the prom should feel romantic,
but instead it makes us feel unsettled and sick.
The image visually represents the dizzying, overwhelming nature of adolescent experiences,
as the camera spins faster and faster, and Carrie asks a series of questions that receive
circular answers.
“Why am I here?”
“Because it’s the prom.”
“Why am I here with you?”
“Because I asked you.”
“Why’d you ask me?”
“Cause I wanted to.”
“Why’d you want to?”
The wholesome fun at the prom, which feels almost like an after-school special, is just
a setup for the terrible moment we know is coming.
We get a bird’s eye shot of the bucket of pig’s blood that mean girl Chris is going
to dump on Carrie, reminding us that our most special moments as youths can be spoiled in
an instant by our peers’ cruelty.
Her mother’s warnings about her peers -- which at first seemed over dramatic --
“He’s gonna laugh at you.
They’re all gonna laugh at you.”
-- turn out to be spot on.
Evidently, in high school, we should be suspicious of everything as too good to be true.
The worst part is that before the bucket falls, we recognize that Carrie has actually started
to mature.
She resists her overbearing mother, accepts her telekinetic powers --
"There's nothing to do with Satan, Mama, it's me, me."
-- and forces herself to socialize and be a normal teenager.
Her first steps into adolescent life are so tentative and delicate that the suddenness
of the pig’s blood attack really does seem like a violent injury.
The blood makes it look like Carrie’s been wounded -- and she has.
Parallel scenes in the film before this also show Carrie waking up to the cruelty of this
world.
The pig’s blood scene happens in front of all of Carrie’s classmates, exaggerating
that universal high school fear of somehow winding up naked and vulnerable in front of
the whole school.
The primary colors in this scene are childish, just as Carrie is young and immature, and
has no idea how to deal with what she’s facing.
The intensity of the opposing blue and red in the split screen visualizes that she’s
torn in two directions, and the sharp contrast of the blood against a blue background also
shows her at odds with herself, out of her depth.
She has one foot in childhood and the the other in adulthood, and she’s being ripped
apart.
The falling blood is a perverse baptism -- specifically teenage baptism -- as this deeply brutal high
school world has transformed a scared girl into a teen monster.
As teens, we desperately want to control the people whose opinions seem so important – to
have power over the popular kids in school – but the film shows what it would be like
if this desire were realized.
As Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to close the gym doors and kill everyone inside, she’s
finally in control of the forces that have been bullying her, but actually getting this
control is terrible.
Red lighting and flames turn the decorated gym into hell, and Carrie is the ruler of
this world now -- she’s no longer the prom queen she wanted to be.
She's the devil.
This is a body horror film, where the scariness comes from the human body itself.
Carrie shows us how women are taught to fear their bodies and see themselves as frightening
and even monstrous.
Film critic Barbara Creed’s theory of "the monstrous feminine" says that women's ability
to horrify comes from their sexual, reproductive bodies.
Carrie reacts to her period almost like a feral child, totally unprepared for the behavior
of her adult female body because no one in her society has taught her that getting her
period is a normal, natural event.
“Help me!"
Most characters we meet are women, but other than Miss Collins, they show no real sense
of female kinship.
These women have learned to be disgusted by each other as much as by themselves.
"Shut up Chris.
Just shut up."
Carrie’s mother, Margaret, is a religious fanatic who sees womanhood as inherently shameful.
“Help this sinning woman see the sin of her days and ways.
Show her that if she had remained sinless--”
“No!”
“-- the Curse of Blood would never have come on her.
She may have been tempted by the Antichrist.
She may have committed the Sin of Lustful Thoughts.”
Margaret’s repressive, misogynistic belief system indicts women for simply existing.
Margaret makes Carrie feel guilty and disgusted by her changing body.
“Pimples are the lord’s way of chastising you.”
And her sexuality.
“I can see your dirty pillows.
Everyone will.”
“Breasts, mama.
They’re called breasts.
And every woman has them.”
But we come to see that Margaret’s fear of sexuality actually comes from her confusion
at having enjoyed sex with Carrie’s father, which she thinks was wrong.
“I liked it!
With all that dirty touching of his hands all over me.”
When Margaret kneels in front of Carrie and confesses her shame for enjoying sex, it’s
as if Carrie is the virgin Mary, a symbol of purity in her blue nightgown.
The family’s threatening version of the Christ figure looks more scary than comforting.
And when Margaret stabs Carrie, it’s clear that no woman can win in the confines of this
twisted worldview in which being female is an original sin.
The film shows us the damage of the mixed messages young women are sent -- to have sex
but not enjoy it, to have adult female bodies but not menstruate.
They’re taught that being prom queen should be their ultimate goal -- but no girl should
ever really believe she’d be worthy of that crown, as the teens laugh at Carrie for getting
taken in by the hoax.
Hopefully most don't have a mom as bad as Margaret, the way Carrie is taught to fear
and despise her own body speaks to something universal in the teen girl experience.
As her abilities grow stronger, the fear and confusion she inspires could also be a commentary
on how women’s developing emotions, like their bodies, tend to be treated as a distasteful
problem.
Carrie’s telekinesis expresses the intense mood swings that teenagers and their parents
know all too well.
Her first telekinetic moment comes when she’s overwhelmed and her feelings are stronger
than she is.
Throughout the film her powers get the best of her when she’s angry or upset, so the
horror that results comes from her not learning how to properly express and deal with her
emotions.
We also see other teens not knowing how to deal with oversized emotions.
Chris is Carrie’s tormentor, but she’s also unsure of how to express herself and
ends up taking out her feelings on others.
Chris’ constant rage seems confusing at first.
“Billy, I hate Carrie White.”
“Who?”
We can’t figure out why she hates Carrie so much -- but it may be that she sees Carrie
as a representation of the vulnerable or feminine parts of herself.
And by abusing Carrie, she’s really trying to self-punish or to distance herself from
the traits she sees in Carrie.
And it’s not just the girls -- any teenager’s emotions can change suddenly and intensely.
For a horror movie monster, Carrie looks pretty frightened -- she’s deeply afraid of herself.
Much of the power of the film comes from the fact that she’s both the villain and the
victim in this horror movie.
We feel bad for her, even as she’s becoming a mass murderer.
She finally starts to get revenge, but she still can’t control her body or her emotions,
as we see when her telekinetic powers go completely haywire.
Even if we’re well past Carrie’s age, the film resonates with us because the traumas
of high school embarrassments and rejections never really leave us.
And it may disturb us to realize as we’re watching that we identify more with Carrie
in the gym scene than we do with her peers.
Her revenge may be scary, but we also know that these bullies had it coming, and we feel
a catharsis of sorts.
Our ambivalent reaction to Carrie's transformation from victim to villain shows us that getting
even sometimes feels even more empowering than being crowned prom queen.