PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

At the moment, I am listening to my favorite song from the soundtrack of Carrie (1976):  "I Never Dreamed Someone Like You . .  ."  I have it on looping, right now, and it will continue to play until I finish this essay.  The song is an emotional kick in the gut to me, and has been since I first saw the film in July, 1977.  This song accompanies the beautiful dance scene in which Carrie (Sissy Spacek) dances with Tommy Ross (William Katt).  The violins, seeming to strive for the high register to celebrate Carrie's shortlived triumph over bullying, and her frustrated mother's fanaticism, always make me misty.

I will digress to share just one instance of how moving this song, and its scene, and the entire prom sequence, can be.  I was watching, on cable, and out of state Shock Theater, hosted by a gentleman who was usually fairly tough in his remarks about films; unlike most Shock Theaters, he was not dressed in a costome, nor took on some ghoulish persona.  He was simply himself, and I had read that he was considered unpleasant company.  The Shock Theater he hosted actually broadcasted his parts live in real time.  At the commercial break, this man (whose name, or broadcasting details I have forgotten), who could be quite ferocious and was considered unpleasant company, announced that he would be leaving the studio for the remainder of the film, and would return only when the second feature had commenced.  He explained---and I have never forgotten the candor of his sudden sadness---that he could not bear to watch Carrie's demise; and having seen it once, in years past, he could not bring himself to watch it again, under any circumstance.  And he did go off camera; or other commerical breaks led right back into the movie without an intervening comment or joke from him.  And I do not believe he was acting:  his voice, at that point, sounded to raw as he anticipated what she must, again, go through, and could not bear to watch it.  At that moment, there was a humanity in the man that I had never seen before or since.  He let his guard down, took off the "business as usual" mask, and showed the cards in his hand.  And I have never ceased to cherish the memory of that broadcast.  I, too, have some difficulty with the Prom scene:  I think my, and others', very visceral reaction to that particular part goes to the tremendous artistry of DePalma, Spacelk, and Katt---the latter two creating a perfectly intimate, but thoroughly chaste, moment for their characters, both of whom were doomed.  And, I shall admit this, too---I cannot get that kind of emotional response out of the novel.  No disrespect meant to King; but I just cannot get worked up over it.

I first read the novel during my first collegiate break, that beautiful conclusion to the Summer of 1976 that I spent with Cerulean as often as I could.  On one of the few nights we were not together, due to holiday celebrations in Cerulean's extended family, I read King's novel in one sitting.  

Although marketed as horror, I do not believe that either the novel or the film qualifies for that, not in the way that King's other novels---like Salem's Lot (which terrified me for two nights after Labor Day, 1977) and The Shining.  (I recently read a reviewer'suggestion, very astute I think, that the undescribed play that Jack is trying to write in The Shining is King's novella, Apt Pupil in King's collection, Different Seasons.  They tell me he wrote the novella shortly after the novel.)  Anyhow, I do not believe Carrie, either novel or film, constitutes horror; it is transcendent of that genre and enters into a more rare genre called Marvelous (some say, Magic) Realism.  Like Marvelous Realism calls for, no explanation is really given for Carrie's telekinetic power.  It is not demonic or supernatural, despite the belief of her unhinged mother.  It is simply part of her nature; and, if King were in any way theological, he might have said that is how God made her.  It is implied, in two places in the novel, that it is genetic; her nutcase mother's grandmother could spin the sugar bowl while laughing hysterically (due to senility) through her toothless mouth.  I will not provide a spoiler for the novel's end, but in the epilogue we are given another genetic implication of the source of telekinesis.  Salem's Lot features a vampire; The Shining, a possessed resort hotel; and Christine, a haunted car.  These have supernatural explanations, which, after several readings, can seem trite (no disrespect to King intended).  Carrie towers above them in its refusal to bother with an explanation, especially a supernatural one.  The supernatural, in that novel and in the film, is the province of the fanatic mother.  (I might add that, in 1977, I dated someone who came from a family whose parents were a lot like Carrie's mom; my sweetheart tried desperately to escape their clutches, and failed miserably---and that killed the relationship, slowly, like torture, over a course of weeks.  Then to add insult to injury, my sweetheart announced, openly, during lunch in the campus dining hall, January 9th, 1978, that we were no longer a couple; a statement made so casually and conversationally, but which brought the others at the table to shocked silence.  For the rest of that afternoon, and for weeks, even months, after, I felt like I was trapped in an endlessly looping nightmare that was far too much like Carrie's tragic prom experience.)

I think the greatest compliment I can offer to Sissy Spacek is that her performance as Carrie, from the first time that I saw it until now, reminds me very much of Boris Karloff's interpretation of the Monster in Universal's first two entries in their Frankenstein series.  Those, too, are described as horror films; but if the films contain horror, the horrors are those who bully Karloff's Monster and Spacek's Carrie.  I do not believe that anyone is ever really frightened by Carrie herself:  they are, rightly, frightened by the bullying (classmates, and madcap mother), and the indifference or downright hostility of the school staff; all leading to the violence of Carrie's reaction to the horrific bullying at the prom, during which her mind, I think, is shown to snap. and never fully recovers the brief but stable equilibrium she was given in Tommy's arms.

Not horror, but Marvelous Realism; and the film---not a flash in the pan, but artistic, enduring, and as timely now as it was, perhaps even more so now, in 1977.  

Starward