"Carrie": From Sexy to Scary

Carrie: starts out sexy, ends up scary. That’s an appropriate way to sum it up, right? Well, it’s essentially what happens, and that’s where the horror comes from. Brian De Palma was very deliberate in preying upon the male gaze to deliver his scares; or shock, more like. The movie opens with a ~sexy~ shower scene in a girl’s locker room. There are multiple close up shots of Carrie’s nude body, steam fogging up the scene, soap dripping everywhere…but there’s a point to it all. This opening scene draws the viewer in, particularly, the heterosexual male viewer. It lulls him into a false sense of sexy security…then WHAM…period. The whole point being that we are offered this ideal, picturesque representation of the female body; nude and clean. Then, the picturesque is ripped away, the cleanliness tarnished with blood, and the male gaze poked in the eye (I’m sure there’s a phallic joke hidden here somewhere, just look for it). We see an example of this within the film itself, as the feeble school principle shutters at the idea of Carrie getting her period. He’s so disturbed, he can’t even give the happening a proper term. Up to this point, the silver screen had seen its fair share of blood, but menstrual blood…less so. So not only is it a shock to viewers as a whole, but the particular way it’s set up is done so artfully, you can’t help but get chills, or at least feel disgusted. What’s so wrong with menstrual blood, anyway? Nothing, nothing at all. The shock comes from a couple places. 1.) The stark contrast from clean, white skin, to tarnished blood covered skin. 2.) While blood is a totally natural thing, and most everybody is fully aware of menstruation (save Carrie), it is, none the less, a human waste that is typically thought of as being INSIDE the body, not out. This was the part of the film I found so fascinating, partly because it targets a more specific audience (an audience with which I identify). This is similar to how Ridley Scott’s Alien uses phallic imagery and, more or less, male-on-male penetration to shock the viewer…especially straight men. Let’s talk about her mother’s reaction to the incident. Carrie has just been through a traumatic event, she clearly has no clue what a period is, and is horrified to find mysterious blood coming from her body, then is greeted with torment by her peers, as they all mock and jeer at her while she’s terrified and naked, reaching out for help. Which, by the way, might be a good time t point out that we don’t actually see full details of Carrie’s nude body until this part of the scene. Once the blood takes the picturesque to the grotesque, Carrie is seen nude, dirty pillows and all, lunging at her classmates. Anyway, she has just been through a traumatic event, she is in need of some consoling (and some minor therapy), and her mother offers her contempt and damnation; she figuratively hurls a bible at Carrie, saying that she is now closer to sin as she is a woman, and boys will “come sniffing” around. Terrifying. But also, it’s fascinating that the whole plot of this movie, the whole object of the abject, is the misunderstanding of and fear of the female reproductive cycle.