Brian De Palma's Carrie - Essay Example

?Brian De Palma's 1976 Carrie is a film that has had profound influence, and also is reflective of social and cultural anxieties of that time. One way that the film has had influence is through queer appropriation. This means that many queer productions are based upon the film, mainly because the lead girl, Carrie, is representative of the gay male's experience - bullied , maligned, and gets revenge, which is a gay male fantasy. Furthermore, Carrie, and the representation of female power and menstruation is a part of a genre in which the films influence one another. Lastly, the movie essentially made Stephen King into the pop culture icon that he is today. Carrie was his first novel, and, after the movie, the novel skyrocketed in popularity, making King the juggernaut that cannot attain literary respectability because he is too popular (Palko, 2008). This essay will examine all of these themes. The focus of this essay will be on how Carrie influenced popular films and was influenced by them, focusing on the possible queer themes, as well as the themes regarding how the feminine heroine/monster is portrayed. Feminist and queer literature theories will be utilize to understand these aspects of the film. Also included will be how Stephen King’s career was affected by the movie. One of the ways that Carrie has influenced the cinema and the theatre, according to Elliott (2007) is through queer appropriations. These queer appropriations run not only through the original film, but through the various parodies and the video art that has been influenced by the film. Elliott (2007) states that Carrie, the main character, has much in common with the experience of the gay male – she is bullied, like many gay males are. Then, when Carrie exacts vengeance upon her tormentors, this plays into many gay males’ fantasies regarding how they, too, would like to make their own tormentors pay. Carrie as a film also echoes the gay male experience, in that the main character is coming out, in a sense, in that she is revealing her sexuality to her mother, and she is shamed and guilted for doing so, which is the experience of many gay males. Therefore, Carrie, as a character, is aligned with the gay male experience, and, according to Elliott (2007), the images and the appropriation in Carrie are the themes which are in the different theatrical, film and video appropriations of the movie. These appropriations are drag versions, which are akin to Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) in their structure and musicality; comic book and horror film references; and satires. Elliott (2007) states that the film is especially ripe for parodying for the gay male audience, because of its lighting, melodramatic score and music, colour-coding, and campy overacting from Piper Laurie and Nancy Allen. Therefore, the drag Carrie parodies capitalize on these elements. Such parodies include Carrie: the Musical, which was a Royal Shakespeare Production and a royal flop; an audience participation Carrie, in which the members of the audience were given tampons and encouraged to shout ‘plug it up!; a drag musical called A Very Special Facts of Life/Carrie, in which men in drag play the parts of the Facts of Life girls and Carrie, who is a new girl in the dormitory; and Scarrie – the Musical, which had a rock ‘70s score. Bathrick (1977) states that Carrie has influence in that it changed the way that the cinema approached the female subjects, particularly with regards to their sexuality. In the case of Carrie, her burgeoning sexuality was the cause of destruction of the community, and the film introduced the possibility of new ways to explain “the rationalization of life and the destruction of community,” by using the nature of women. Since Carrie’s telekinetic abilities are used as a metaphor that are connected to her physiological functions and her emerging sexuality. DePalma has managed manifest and connect fear and self-hate with female sexuality, and the film also implicitly states that there cannot be a community among women because women’s sexuality is repressed, which means that the women’s community would be more underground, as they are not able to fully be themselves around one another. Therefore, Bathrick (1977) states that Carrie, introduces in film the concept of destruction being linked with sexuality, or, rather, continues the tradition of such, in that menstrual blood has been, through the years, associated with destructive power. Bathrick (1977) further notes that Carrie also is notable in that director De Palma was fascinated with the subject of female power, and this film was a part of this particular oeuvre for the director. Bathrick (1977) cites two earlier examples of De Palma’s work that centered around the topic of female dualism (females may either destroy society or may preserve it through their reproductive functions). One such film was the film Sisters, in which there were two Siamese twins, one who died during surgical separation, and the surviving Siamese twin took on the homicidal personality of that deceased twin. Another film cited by Bathrick (1977) is Obsession, which was a Hitchcock homage in which a mother leaves behind a daughter to carry out the homicides that were the desires of the mother. Moseley (2002) concurs that Carrie had female power at the core of the story, comparing Carrie more benign instances of female power than Bathrick. He states that Carrie belongs in the pantheon of films and television programs that include Bewitched, Charmed, Practical Magic, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of these programmes are similar to one another, as all of them feature a female protagonist who has supernatural powers, and, in each of these programmes, the female is independent and different from the females who do not have special powers. Woloski (2011), for his part, also puts Carrie into a more benign group of films, simply stating that the movie is a teen classic, grouping the film in with American Graffiti, Beach Blanket Bingo, Grease, Rebel Without a Cause, and The Wild One. If Bathrick (1977) states that the film shows a subtle sexism regarding how women are portrayed on-screen, Citron (1977) concurs with this analysis. Citron (1977) notes that the portrayal of women and girls does not bring them into the best light. Carrie is homicidal, but she is not the only woman who is portrayed in a negative light. Her mother is shown as being psychotic and evil. Susie’s mother is a cipher, living off of Scotch and soap operas. Miss Collins, while being kind, is not portrayed as wise. The peers for Carrie are selfish nymphomaniacs, as they use their sexuality to taunt their male friends and boyfriends into doing the pigs’ blood prank. The only female who is not portrayed negatively is Sue, who tries to help Carrie. The way that the film portrays females, then, are as beings that cannot be trusted, is as old as Eve. The maternal is also brought into question in the film, as Carrie lives with her psychotic mother who is the cause of most of the girls’ trauma. The mother castigates Carrie by stating that her “sin will find you out. Burn it, Carrie! Cast that devil’s red from you and burn it! Burn it! Burn it!” (King, 1974, p. 99). This analysis is furthered by Briefel (2005). Briefel (2005) states that Carrie fits in with the monster genre, in that it features the female counterpart to the male monster. The male monster, according to Briefel (2005), engages in acts of self-mutilation and masochism. The female monster does not self-mutilate, but, rather, menstruates. The act of menstruation makes the audience uncomfortable, much like the male act of self-mutilation and masochism. Briefel (2005) states that Carrie presents a “textbook model” (p. 20) of a certain genre of female monster movies – that is that the female monster commits acts of violence because of the trauma of earlier abuse at the hands of parents, partners, rapists, and others. The victimization of Carrie is through her mother and her peers. Moreover, Carrie falls neatly into the genre of the female monster movies, as, according to Briefel (2005) is initiated when the monster gets her first period. The woman’s period reflects that women are weak and are susceptible to disease, and this is an idea that has been carried out through literature down through the ages, as well as the idea that menstruation is a punishment for sins (Ahmadivostakolaee, 2012). Briefel (2005) states that, along with the movie Carrie, the movie Ginger Snaps, directed by John Fawcett, shows that menstruating is the precursor to the destructive impulses of the female monster The Exorcist and Audrey Rose show the female monsters becoming possessed as they hit puberty, which implies that menstruation heralds monstrosity. Briefel (2005) further states that menstruation plays a central role in Rosemary's Baby, as Rosemary is shown mapping out her menstrual cycles in an attempt to conceive a child. In other words, Briefel (2005) notes that Carrie exudes the notion that the very act of being female and becoming a woman – menstruating – is treated in the horror genre as the harbinger of monstrosity. This is seen when the mother states that Carrie is “unclean and an abomination” because Carrie got her period. This, too, would imply that Carrie has a misogynistic tone, which is actually in keeping with other movies of the genre. There is a kind of symbiosis between the female monster movies in which the motif of menstrual blood has the same type of meaning for all of them. Ahmadivostakolaee (2012) agrees that, in many films, the act of menstruating is not shown in Hollywood as being a natural part of female puberty. She also puts Carrie squarely into the category of having been influenced by other movies that show menstruation as the harbinger of something bad. Ahmadivostakolaee (2012) explains that Carrie and the genre films like them that portray menstruation as being something unnatural were influenced by historical and religious stories, and the general thought that menstruation is something that is impure, and that menstruation has been seen as both a danger and a power. This view of menstruation as being somehow impure and dangerous is exemplified by Carrie's mother, Margaret, an unbalanced religious fundamentalist who believed that menstruation is evil and the sign that Carrie had committed sin. This sin was something for which Carrie should be punished ( Ahmadivostakolaee 2012). According to these analyses, Carrie would have an influence upon cinema, as well as being influenced by cinema, as it engages in sexism, and films that are similar in nature would be said to be influenced by, or at least similar to, Carrie. Women are either destructive, stupid, selfish, nymphs or all of the above. Citron (1977) further states that Carrie has a counterpart in the film Marathon Man. Where Carrie tells what it is to be a woman in America, Marathon Man does the same for the male experience. The genre of films that show women as being dangerous and powerful, especially the films that show that menstruation is somehow connected to this danger and this power is where Carrie may be situated. In this way, Carrie was profoundly influenced by films that have menstruation and dangerous female power at their core, and, in turn, influenced later films that would use those same themes. Palko (2009) would argue that the film Carrie is what established Stephen King as a bestselling author. This, in turn, established the theme of economic influence on literary credibility. The movie Carrie (1976) was what increased the sales of the book Carrie, and made his position of a writer in popular fiction. King’s books have not been received as cultural touchstone, and they are often not taken particularly seriously, in part because he is a best-selling author, as noted by Palko (2009). Carrie was Stephen King’s first published novel, and, since the novel became enormously successful because of the film, it can be argued that the film is what started Stephen King on the road to becoming the juggernaut that he is today. Carrie's influence can be seen in many different popular films and television programs. Carrie, as discussed in this essay, embodies the themes and motifs that are used to stereotype the female subject. Furthermore, the film made Stephen King popular, so it had a profound influence on this career as well. Even though the movie is almost 40 years old, it is timeless, because it has such an influence and also demonstrated powerful genre influences on it as well. Bibliography Ahmadivostakolaee, M. (2012) Representations of menstruation in Hollywood Films: Carrie, The Blue Lagoon, Slums of Beverly Hills. Available at: http://i- rep.emu.edu.tr:8080/jspui/handle/11129/291[last accessed 29/06/13] Bathrick, S. (1977) Carrie ragtime: The horror of growing up female. Jump Cut, no. 14, pp. 9-10. Briefel, A. (2005) Monster pains: Masochism, menstruation, and identification in horror films. Film Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 16-27. Citron, M. (1977) Carrie Meets Marathon Man. Jump Cut, no. 14, pp. 10-12. Elliott, D. (2007) Queering the cult of Carrie: Appropriations of a horror icon in Charles Lum's Indelible. Available at: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/cultborr/chapter.php?id=12 [last accessed 25/06/13] King, S. (1974) Carrie. New York: Doubleday. Moseley, R. (2002) Glamorous witchcraft: Gender and magic in teen film and television. Screen, Winter, pp. 403-414. Palko, A. (2008) The popularity problem: Stephen King's cultural context. Available at: http://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/king_critical_insights.pdf [last accessed 23/06/13] Woloski, J. (2011) What makes a teen classic? YA Hotline. Available at :http://ojs.library.dal.ca/YAHS/article/view/154 [last accessed 25/06/13] Read More