King also ensures that Carrie isnt an angel. Its a striking ending that is consistent with both genre tropes and de Palmas specific vision for. Sue decides to meet her as she hears the telepathic message. Bullying Motif. Privacy Policy, https://bookanalysis.com/stephen-king/carrie/themes-analysis/. Carrie gets a measure of peace, dying knowing that at least someone didnt mean to hurt her. In this scenario it does not matter whether Carrie is conventionally "pretty" or "not pretty." , but not the character of Sue Snell or her relationship with Carrie. . After killing her classmates, Carrie heads home and confronts her mother, who believes she got possessed by Satan. Sue isalternately hostile and generous, and conformist and defiant but always acutely self-aware. As Walter Chaw writes, "Peirce's Carrie does something DePalma's doesn't do nearly so well: it describes Carrie's headspace, so that her telekinesis becomes expressionistic.". This is a good impulse, but the movie doesn't properly follow through on it. One thing Carrie wanted was to have revenge on the people who tormented her. version of the de Palma ending with a cut to a graveyard, where Sue and a disguised, bewigged Carrie stand in front of Margarets tombstone. The final paragraph reinforces the connection between Carrie and Sue by mirroring the novels opening trauma, only this time it is Sue who feels blood run down her legs. It is a motif in that you see it quite a bit. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Like any of you. Still, there's a lot to like in this remake. But films have represented and adapted wordless communication in a variety of interesting, effective ways. Spoiler alert: important details of the novel are revealed below. Ironically while the rest of the cut footage was rumoured to me much more consistent with Kings novel, this ending borrows significantly from de Palmas film, with Pierce doing him one better on the shock front after all, whats more horrifying that someone haunting you from beyond the grave? Whoever the author.Discover new and exciting books to dive into with our Book Explorer Tool. The gruesome nature of the novel made Stephen King feel disconnected from the main character as he could not fully indulge in Carrie . He slows the scene down, lingering on Carrie's smiling, oblivious face, and the wide-eyed gazes of the cool kids plotting to take her down as the melodramatic music swells. In screenwriter Bryan Fuller and director David Carsons adaptation, no one gets haunted by Carrie, either literally or figuratively, because Carrie doesnt die. With a harsh and vengeful tone, Stephen King sets the readers mind to become attuned to love the main character and hate everyone that hurt her. RELATED: The Cast Of Carrie (1976): Where Are They Now? This is a form of exposition which shows the bullies plans for Carrie. Chris is the sinning woman that Carries momma should be praying for. Carriemade sure to dive deep into the mind of its main character as it showed everyone a girl who wanted to be loved, respected, and feared. She is not good. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. A loose bucket falls on Tommys head as he bleeds out to death. However, it uses an omniscient narrator for most of its story. In de Palmas version of the story, Sue is locked out of the gymnasium just before the bucket of blood drops and does not appear again on screen until after Carrie is dead. Your email address will not be published. Although Carrie can be seen as a horror film, it is dominantly a "Coming of Age" story due to the conflicts that are presented against Carrie. Carrie cant seem to turn around without stumbling over Chris Hargensen: The catcall came first from Chris Hargensen., Chris Hargensen called up after school from the Kelly Fruit Company downtown and asked her if she knew that pig poop was spelled C-A-R-R-I-E., She cant get away with it! She may have committed the Sin of Lustful Thoughts. She had hopes and she had fears. I will be focusing on the iconic prom scene which serves as the climax of the film, as Carrie takes revenge on her high school bullies after constantly being tormented. Her mother stabs her in the shoulders, and Carrie stops her heart. It's totally mean. Carrie tries to kill sue, but after discovering Sue did not plot with Chris to humiliate her, she freed her. In this dream Sue dressed in a white flowing gown and holding a colourful bouquet of flowers, walks toward the site of the former White house, where Carrie White burns in hell is scrawled in red paint across a For Sale sign. She is good and her goodness is made all the more striking by virtue of the portrait of Carrie which is painted by her mother in her hysterical prayers: "help this sinning woman beside me here see the sin of her days and ways. Blood represented an entity that Carrie knew she was never going to escape. Whoever the author.Discover new and exciting books to dive into with our Book Explorer Tool. America's foremost auteur-prankster, De Palma seems to be teasingly punishing our bloodlust. Interiority is not the provenance of the novel alone. The intention of the editing and sound is to set up tension in the build up to the pig's blood being poured on Carrie. Not knowing anything about menstruation, Carrie freaks out. After receiving her first period, she acquires telekinetic powers, which turns her world around; especially since she did not understand what the change meant for her as a new woman. This interpretation is supported by de Palmas comments that the final scene of his film was inspired by the 1972 thriller Deliverance. As Carrie dies Sue is able to offer company and the comfort of knowing at least one person meant her no harm. She is, however, sorely tempted by Chris. Piper Laurie also scored an Oscar nod for her performance as Margaret White, Carrie's abusive and religiously fanatical mother. There is a heavy use of cross cutting between Sue who is getting kicked out of the prom (the gym teacher assumes she is there to sabotage Carrie), Carrie and Tommy who are on the stage receiving praise from the audience. This Carrie White (played by Chlo Grace Moretz of the "Kick-Ass" films) is more conventionally pretty than the scrawny, big-eyed misfit played by Sissy Spacek in DePalma's classic. But at its heartCarrie is a horror story of isolation and abuse about a girl with no safe haven and no one to understand her. When it came to printing the image, the shot was reversed and run in slow-motion to make it appear slightly off-kilter. The use of a spilt scene juxtaposes the characters reactions to the prank; Carrie is clearly distressed and has turned vengeful whereas her classmates find it amusing. The character of Norma (P.J. Brian de Palmas 1976 film is is the first, most famous, and most widely-praised adaptation of Carrie. Sue kneels down to lay the bouquet at the foot of the sign, when suddenly a bloody hand springs up from the earth and locks onto Sues wrist. Frankly, though, it reads less like a thoughtful addition to the rest of the film and more like a half-hearted capitulation to the genre dictate to end on a scare. 40 years ago, Carrie White went to the prom. After refusing to adhere to the strict punishment given to her, the bullies leader, Chris, gets prevented from attending prom. . Carrie locks her classmates inside the school and unleashes terror on them by electrocuting and burning them to death. Home Stephen King Carrie Themes and Analysis. He shows the bucket of blood. This version strands the supporting characters between realism and archetype, an awkward spot. On getting home, Carrie tells her mother about the school prom. Chris is the Something unutterably evil who stinks of parking lots and roadhouses and not only has the power to make Carrie feeble, but constantly tries to use that power. Swearing revenge on Carrie, Chris brings her father to school but gets banned from the school prom. Ellis from "Die Hard." For example, where the girls in the 1976 "Carrie" tormented the menstruating heroine in the shower in a wolf-pack manner, as teenaged boys might attack another teenage boy, the shower attack in this film is a joke that originates in embarrassment and nausea, then snowballs. In the penultimate scene in Carrie, De Palma opted to create an eerie visual effect by filming a shot in reverse. In an interview, Bryan Fuller described his Carrie as edgy but sweet and neither a victim nor a murderer. On prom day, Carrie and Tommy have a good time as she meets his friends and talks with him. Mise-en-scene and Cinematography Analysis of Inglourious Basterds. As far as Carrie knows, this is a normal home life. Soon, the vote for the prom king and queen begins, and because of Chris rigging the vote, Carrie and Tommy get crowned prom king and queen. It's like the horse head in The Godfather or the silhouetted flying bike in E.T. One overlooked theme in Carrieis mental health. Being a gothic horror novel,Carriehas influenced American culture as it made people see the dark side of the mind of those who get bullied. The intention of the editing and sound is to set up tension in the build up to the pigs blood being poured on Carrie. Considering the millions of words devoted to analyzing Stephen Kings novel Carrie in light of the abundance of religious imagery and the seemingly unlikely coincidental naming of a major character, it is actually surprising how rarely one comes across an interpretation that almost begs to be examined. Carrie: Directed by Kimberly Peirce. Short of a Carrie adapters roundtable, wecan never really be sure. Whatever the book. Though Sue tried desperately to atone for her sin and make Carries life better, she ended up making her life worse; this made Sue a passive antagonist in Carries life. Their clapping stops and the score slowly distorts into an empty silence, the only diegetic sound present is the dripping of the blood from the bucket. It comes at night. Peirce's version sometimes makes Chris seem a bit of a victim, too, by implying that she was spoiled rotten by her yuppie dadplayed by a perfectly cast Hart Bochner, a.k.a. When Carrie was released on Blu-Ray, it came with an alternate ending, one of the few pieces of cut footage released to the public. Becoming prom queen was a realization for Carrie, and even after she felt that being crowned would be one of her best memories, it became the sole memory she dreaded. Killed a bunch of people. She isnt smart. The slow motion returns as the pace of the editing slows down, this creates a crescendo in the scene as the scene started off with slow motion, then the editing became so fast it was reminiscent of subliminal images, and now the editing has returned to its original pace. A man patronizingly tells Sue that she was under an enormous amount of stress and asks if its possible that what she witnessed was a natural act? In contrast to DePalma's version, Carrie's mom seems less a standard-issue, frothing-at-the-mouth "religious nut" movie character than a mentally ill single mom, eking out a living as a seamstress and dry cleaner. As Sissy Spacek's unlikely prom queen takes the stage to be crowned, De Palma toys with us to the point of cruelty. Not affiliated with Harvard College. Her haunting you from. Chris is so beyond redemption that she actually believes she is the victim. Trying to overrun her, Carrie sends Chriss car flying through a wall, killing them. Carries mind was far from innocent; this made her feel like a terrible sinner as part of her mothers fanatism was present in her. When the Stephen King book was first optioned, it was set up with producer Paul Monash at 20th Century Fox, and Monash hired writer Lawrence D. Cohen to pen a first . Whatever the genre. She never cranked the volume up when the Ramones blared through the radio speakers. The scene then shifts to a rainy graveyard, where a black-clad Sue is walking with a single white rose in her hand. I'm not sure that blood is an actual theme in the book. Its a relatively faithful adaptation of Kings story (at least for the first two-thirds) that focuses entirely on Carries story as it unfolds, eschewing the epistolary aspect of the novel the interviews, textbook excerpts and reports that provide meta-commentary on the events of prom night. All of Carrie's pent up emotions from the malevolent bullying she had faced throughout the film were finally released. Stephen King also pushes the storys narrative with the gruesome explanation of terrible events; this employs Hyperbole. A weekly newsletter focusing on literature by and about people of color! (Stephen King's source novel sold one million copies when released in paperback in 1975.) It's been referenced and indexed and parodied (and soon, remade) so exhaustively that it no longer seems like a part of the movie. Carries mother is also there, of course, always whispering into her ear (or shouting into her terrified face) with the reminder that the powers which lay mostly dormant and mostly untapped are the work of her father: "You spawn of the devil. It becomes a motif, a recurring refrain Carries hears throughout her life: it's you devilspawn witch imp of the devil it's you doing it. And after enough time of hearing the same thing over and over, who wouldnt start to believe it. A state of emergency is declared in Chamberlain as the death toll reaches four hundred. Bad dream? Sue asks, before her face is transformed into that of Chris Hargensen. She may have been listening to rock n roll music on the radio. Watch, Momma said. Show her that if she had remained sinless the Curse of Blood never would have come on her. Sue convinces Carrie to fake her own death and, as the audience learns via intercut interviews with the police, lies for her. I will be focusing on the iconic prom scene which serves as the climax of the film, as Carrie takes revenge on her high school bullies after constantly being tormented. Sneaking into the prom hall, Chris and her boyfriend set the buckets of blood above the stage. Three adaptations. Corn syrup was used for the gallons of pig's blood the bullying teens dump on Carrie during the climax of the movie. Pino Donaggio filled the role, composing a four-note string arrangement that is nearly identical to an overage in Herrmann's Psycho score. This adaptation ofCarrie maintains Sues prominence and the connection between the two, but makes both more palatable, comfortable characters. There is a difference, though. Carrie finds Chris and Billy on the road and drives their car through a wall, killing them. It's on this last point, though, that "Carrie" falters most conspicuouslyand ironically, its failure is a product of its decision to depart from the novel and the first film, but without going far enough. The script has Chris be exaggeratedly "evil" when it serves the plot, but life-sized elsewhere. Long before the blood arrived. Its after this point that things take a turn for the nonsensical. It could make you Feeble. This kind of horror story suits a spooky or bloody twist ending; it may even demand one. The most literal, clumsy interpretation would be that Sue is now wedded to her trauma of that night. All rights reserved. And totally memorable. Carrie is not the monster; she is Carrie the good Christian girl. He would have scored Carrie as well but passed away in 1975. Then the string running along it. Director Brian De Palma's mastery here isn't in satisfying our expectation for teenage-psychic carnage. lake havasu floating homes for sale,
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