March 28, 2015

"But there's a fundamental problem with the latest Carrie movie and Carrie The Musical..."

"They both try to turn her into a heroine, and her story into one of female empowerment, and it's not."
Carrie does deal with empowerment, but it's something brand new and terrifying...

[T]his is key: Carrie's a victim, and while she may get revenge – on everyone, deserving or not – she never enjoys anything remotely approaching a feminist sense of liberation. She's bullied mercilessly at school and abused at home. The character was a composite of two girls – referred to by the aliases of Tina White and Sandra Irving – King knew during high school, both of whom eventually committed suicide. "There is a goat in every class, the kid who ... stands at the end of the pecking order," King once wrote. "This was Tina. Not because she was stupid (she wasn't), and not because her family was peculiar (it was) but because she wore the same clothes to school every day."

6 comments:

madAsHell said...

It's the new Hillary narrative.

Paddy O said...

There's a fundamental problem with the interpretation:

"she never enjoys anything remotely approaching a feminist sense of liberation"

is contrasted by:

"it erupts as a storm of telekinetic rage and revenge."

A lot of approaches to liberation are precisely about rage and revenge. That's not really the inherent goal of liberation for itself, but liberation doesn't give power and wealth to those who stoke the rage and revenge.

Zach said...

All movies right now are required to be escapist fantasies. You're telling me you want to make a movie about a high schooler with telekinetic powers and she's not even happy? Next you'll want to leave out the spandex and cleavage.

traditionalguy said...

But I thought Carrie was sent to Lufthansa Flight School where she got over all those hurts.

n.n said...

Is Carrie covered with the blood of her aborted baby? I can understand why Femenists would be horrified by the prospect. A progressive moral reincarnation of the "Scarlet Letter" would shame everyone in the libertine cult.

William said...

There was--truly--a musical version of Anne Frank's Diary produced. It was not a hit and folded out of town.......Carrie's big menstruation scene is the subject of grand opera. Maybe Verdi could deliver the moment musically, but it is beyond the ken of musical comedy. "Younger than springtime and fresh into puberty/ Are you/ Fresher than those first red drops of menstrual dew/Are you." It just doesn't work as musical comedy.