PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Though Stephen King doesn’t regard
CARRIE as his best novel, it manages to sustain a better-than-average level of
mythicity while remaining admirably concise—two things one can’t say about too
many of King’s early works, and possibly not about any of the later ones.
As many before me have commented,
Carrie White’s story follows the basic pattern of the “outcast from normal
society,” with a specific emphasis on the outcast who obtains marvelous powers
to strike back against that society.
Carrie, unlike her antecedents—the witches who gained power from devils
or from pagan gods, depending who you ask—gains her power from a natural
mutation that gives her the power of telekinesis. In
addition to being alienated from her high school society, by dint of being the
butt of jokes from boys and girls alike, she’s just as alienated in her home
life. Her father left her mother long
ago, and her mother Margaret—a righteous religious proselytizer—subjects Carrie
to verbal and physical abuse, tacitly resenting her both as the seed of her
father and for being younger and more vital.
Though boys are seen to taunt
Carrie as well, King’s narrative—as well as both film-adaptations—emphasizes
the greater cruelty of the “gentle sex.”
Her mother cruelly keeps Carrie ignorant of feminine biology, so that
during her first period she thinks she’s bleeding to death. This takes place in the school locker-room,
so that all the girls relentlessly torment her for her ignorance, and possibly
as a symbol of their own feminine vulnerabilities. This trauma causes Carrie’s mostly dormant
psychic powers to manifest. As most
film fans know, Carrie is then subject to a terrible prank that makes
possible the fantasy of many high-school nerds: the complete destruction of the
society that torments the nerd, as well as the oppressive parent-figure.
Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation remains
thus far unchallenged as the best cinematic adaptation of the book. His use of intrusive directorial
techniques—particularly his famous use of “split screens” during the tumultuous
climax—has been criticized, but I find that he shows good judgment as to when
to dispense with flat depictions of consensual reality. De Palma dispenses with
many fine details of the book, though rarely at the expense of the characters,
and he “amps up” some scenes, such as the death-scene of Margaret White, who is
literally “crucified” by a host of telekinetically hurled knives. Star Sissy Spacek was just then coming into
her own as one of the major female stars of the period, and for most viewers,
her performance defines Carrie as the intelligent underdog outmatched from the
start by the greater collective evil of society. And of course, the “gotcha” coda—which
resembles nothing in the King book—was so widely imitated that it’s arguable
that CARRIE put an end to any lingering expectation that a horror-film could
ever “return to normalcy” at the end.
The 2002 telemovie version of
CARRIE, aside from one huge flaw, is a worthy adaptation in its own right. As is typical of television productions all
events are depicted in a straightforward “meat-and-potatoes” visual style, but
director David Carson does make good use of close-ups to deliver emotional
intensity. Amanda Bettis delivers a
Carrie just as well nuanced as Spacek’s version, and one arguably closer to the
book, in that Bettis’ Carrie looks more like a downtrodden homebody in attitude
and dress. By contrast, at times Sissy
Spacek was allowed to be a little too glamorous to be believable as an “ugly
duckling.”
With a longer running time, the
2002 version also uses more of King’s book, particularly the framing sequence
in which police detectives try to make sense, after the fact, of the events
that led to the holocaust. Another good
scene from the book, though irrelevant to the main character as such, deals
with the attempt of chief nasty-girl Chris Hargensen (Emilie deRavin) to retaliate against her
righteous gym-teacher by siccing her daddy the Bigtime Lawyer on the
school. For the most part all the
principal characters are well-acted, and I’d argue that Jesse Cadotte as the
vicious Billy Nolan easily outdoes John Travolta’s performance.
There are small flaws. In this version Margaret White’s extreme
Christianity, while still present, seems toned down. Entirely absent is King’s critique—operatic
though it may be—of mainstream Christianity’s focus on repressing
sexuality. In the book this ethos has
the depressing result that even a married woman like Margaret White feels horribly guilty
about having enjoyed sex, and so projects the same guilt upon her daughter. But you wouldn’t know it from the 2002
version.
The huge flaw I mentioned
earlier is the ending. Though Carrie
still trashes the entire school and executes her mother when the demented woman
tries to kill her daughter, Carrie doesn’t die as she does in the book and the
initial movie. Sue Snell, the character
who made it possible for Carrie to go to her prom, intervenes to get Carrie
away from town. According to comments on
IMDB, Carrie survived because some geniuses thought about spinning her off into
her own series. Fortunately, the
telefilm didn’t enjoy ratings good enough to greenlight a series. But anyone watching this version should be
prepared to be deprived of the expected “death-of-the-monster” scene.
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