Jun 26

Jun 26 [Pride 2022] Growing Up With Carrie

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When I was twelve years old, I got my first period.

As I called my mother to tell her, she enthusiastically proposed “You know, you should watch Carrie, it’s about a girl who also just got her period”.

Anyone who would have actually watched Carrie themselves would probably know in an instant it is a terrible watch for a catholic raised, mid-puberty, baby queer, who is twelve and does not understand the tragedy of Carrie White and how De Palma’s film sympathises with her. While that watch was quite formative for me as a future horror fan, I did not really see the queerness of the film back then. I did not really see how I and Carrie were alike, in bodies considered inherently female, sinful and wrong, and in our coming-of-age years shaped by the expectations of gender performativity.

The brilliance of horror in Carrie is that the main character is the monster and the victim at the same time, forcing views to sympathise with her as well as fear her. The ways in which Carrie presents as a victim and sympathetic character-driven to the edge by her circumstances is tightly tethered to her body. Everyone who has gone through puberty knows how one’s body changes rapidly, becoming a field to judge, shame and assign value, depending on the body’s shape, size, athleticism. Queer people, especially trans people, know well the conflict between themselves and the body that goes against its owner. Then the judgement and expectations of one’s surroundings come also from one’s own rejection, confusion, anger. All of that is so perfectly reflected in Carrie White.

Immediately in the first scene when girls around her hop around skillfully playing volleyball one can see Carrie standing there, awkward in gym clothes and can tell she feels like she does not belong, not among her peers and not in her awkward, teen body. Later, as Carrie’s first period disturbs the dream-like famous shower sequence it also disturbs the slow, sensual and sexual flow of the camera. The brutal, terrifying and violent reality of Carrie’s period breaks the illusion of puberty as beautiful or sexy: instead, it is dangerous and traumatising. While the scene is certainly upsetting, I find it strangely validating: when one is transmasc getting a period is far from an ordinary fact of life, it is a relentless reminder of one’s body’s betrayal. While most of us were thankfully spared the same humiliation Carrie suffered, I think many of us felt as if we were bombarded by similarly mocking cannon fire of tampons and pads.

The story of Carrie, like her incredible power, is something that grows beyond her body. It is about the expectations and pressures to be confined to your body and act in accordance to it and what happens when you do not. Carrie is trapped between her mother’s demand for her to view her body as solely sinful and wrong and the sexually liberated teens of the 70s. This tension can probably be recognised by anyone who has ever been a girl - expectations to adhere to confining norms of being either a virgin or a whore. As Carrie’s powers grow she realises her body is merely a natural part of her, but not one that defines her. When her mother shames her for her prom dress underlining Carrie’s breasts, Carrie’s reaction is calm and matter-of-fact - “they’re called breasts and every woman has them” she says. Carrie refuses to be sexualised: both by her peers and her mother. Her body is a female one, but any sexual meaning that could be ascribed to it comes from the outside and she rejects that.

I found this casual approach so comforting: I am chubby and my chest started growing very early, now achieving huge size. I cannot bind most of the time, and wearing clothes that on a smaller person would look unassuming on me still end up underlining my chest, and I have been dress coded many times as a teenager by adults that assumed some sort of sexual meaning of my chest. I grew up believing my chest is my best, most important feature, without which I could never be considered sexy or desirable. Combined with dysphoria it easily messed with my head: why would I ever hate a part of me that everyone tells me that is the best part of them all? It is this sober approach that helped me unpack what I like about my body and what I only consider valuable for others, and it is this approach I applaud in Carrie, who managed to rise above what her mother or school peers would want her to be.

Unfortunately, even as Carrie is capable of being free of the sexual meanings her surroundings ascribe to her body, she is still unable to escape other expectations. It may seem as Carrie is invited by Tommy to prom and we see her preparing a dress, and experimenting with make up she feels at ease. She is finally accepted, she can finally be part of the group. But becoming part of the crowd does not always mean one is comfortable - it can be a result of conforming to standards one did not set themselves. Carrie gets out of the beige and modest clothes her mother dressed her into, only to put on a dress that matches the tastes of her peers - but is it something she would wear on her own?

This interpretation makes the cruel pig blood scene even more so tragic: as Carrie finally decides to conform and starts believing that if she acts like everyone else she can be like other girls, she is humiliated. Instead of the beautiful reward of becoming a prom queen, she is punished, brought back down to be once again nothing but a bully’s punching bag. And so all of her effort, pain and hopes amount to nothing but humiliation that finally breaks Carrie and brings down the catastrophe. She can never belong, and she dies believing all the terrible things that her mother and her peers bullied into her.

I know that many people found the ending of Carrie tragic, but cathartic: even if Carrie dies she got to have revenge on her bullies. I could never feel that comfort - what’s worth revenge or payback if you kill yourself over it? Recently, however, I found this ease in another adaptation of Steven King’s work about a young, magical girl - Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep. That story about middle-aged Dan Torrence and tween Abra, as he helps her develop her shining powers and protects her from a cult is far from perfect, but it gives a glimpse into what Carrie could have been had she had people around her who would support her.

Abra is like Carrie: on brink of adolescence, her powers bursting out of her. But she finds Dan and she has her father to help her. She knows she is not alone in her abilities and that there are people around her, even if they would not understand them, they would always support her. In Carrie, I saw myself as a teenager: alone, angry, hurt and ready to lash out the moments my buttons are pushed. In Doctor Sleep, I see myself as a young adult, who knows who they can count on, what battles to choose and who knows that once one finds their people things get better. Among them no one can make you go back to your closet, no one will laugh at you, and if you happen to have telekinetic powers, they’ll probably think you’re cool.