Carrie 1976 ... the psycho-sexual analysis

  Blender Dumbass
October 04, 2025

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#Carrie #BrianDePalma #StephenKing #film #review #horror #cinemastodon

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The 1970s are an interesting time when it comes to cinema history. It is the time after the code was changed into the MPAA rating system ( allowing more violence, nudity and harsh language on the screen ) and yet before new blog-baster Hollywood was born. 1976's Carrie by Brian De Palma was already released after the 1974 Steven Spielberg sensation Jaws. But still before George Lucas broke the planet with his Star Wars. Everybody knew the movies were intense at that time. Some of the most depressing shit came out at the 1970s. And with it, there was also Carrie. A psycho-sexual revenge-tale about child-abuse.

It is known that De Palma hanged around the other directors I mentioned here. Based on the Spielberg's biography by Joseph McBride, Spielberg helped him a bit on a set of Scarface when it came to making the final shooting scene. Based on Quentin Tarantino's book Cinema Speculation De Palma almost directed Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. And because all of them were pals with Francis Ford Coppola, it is safe to assume De Palma was a friend of George Lucas too.

This friendship seem to be very visible when it comes to the movie Carrie. Some of the scenes in the film look like they were taken straight out of Lucas's 1973 film American Graffiti. Like the whole car scene with John Travolta and Nancy Allen feels like you could stitch it into American Graffiti and no one will notice anything. Okay... they would maybe notice a change in aspect ratio and a diffuse filter on the camera. But other than that it looks like it would fit perfectly.

But here is some interesting thing about this movie. The movie is about this girl Carrie White played superbly by Sissy Spacek. Like she was perfectly cast. She both can look very intimidating and stupidly cute. And also she acted her ass off, gaining her an Oscar nomination ( for a horror film in the 70s ). So this girl is bullied by pretty much the entire school. Including two other girls Chris ( played by Nancy Allen ) and Sue ( played by Amy Irving ).

We all know that De Palma ended up marring Nancy Allen. But here is an interesting story. In 1976 ( at the same year as this movie got released ) Steven Spielberg started dating Amy Irving. They were married later in 1985, and they have one child together Max, a reference to whom, another pal of them Robert Zemeckis inserted into his film Back to the Future 2. There is a huge holographic shark that attacks Marty ( a promotional thing for a new Jaws film ) and the director's name is shown to be Max Spielberg.

Still I have some weird feeling about the whole thing. Nancy Allen played a role ( of a woman who is sexually turned-on by airplanes ) in the ultimate Steven Spielberg film 1941. That movie, sometimes, makes me uncomfortable. Spielberg is not known to be very horny when it comes to his direction. Yet the camera is obsessing with Nancy Allen's body in the film. And the film was released not too far after Carrie in 1979.

From this rather seemingly unrelated detail I want to compose a bullshit theory. As I'm typing this, I'm in the middle of taking said theory out from the deep pockets of my ass. And so now I will present you with said bullshit.

So Carrie starts rather ballsy. If you are still pissed at Michael Bay for showing Megan Fox ( who supposed to be 17 or something ) in a sexual manner, you utterly unprepared for Carrie. The film starts with a slow-mo shot in the girl's shower-room, and you see multiple butt naked, full frontal nudity, tits bouncing girls, which all supposed to be 17 or something. Of course, like with Megan Fox, these girls are actually not 17, ( De Palma doesn't have the balls of Maïwenn Le Besco to show actual child nudity in the film ). Every single one of them is 20-something, pretending to be 17. This is the scene where Carrie ends up having her first period, which kicks the plot into action.

My theory is that Steven Spielberg somehow ended up on the set of that scene. He saw all the girls. Realized that Sissy Spacek was already married by that point. And saw the other two sexy ass, butt naked, young ladies. Nancy Allen and Amy Irving. He was turned on by both of them, hence the obsessive camera in 1941, but being a shy little Jewish boy, he let the director have Nancy, settling for what looks like the shy girl from the two, Amy.

Okay, my stupid theories aside, let's talk about the film itself. So originally written by King ( who wrote It, which has an orgy between kids ), this movie is about an abusive mother who's abuse is religious. And who's daughter's suffering is psycho-sexual. Basically she so doesn't allow her to think of any boys, that her periods didn't start till she was 17 years old. This begs a psycho-sexual analysis. I mean, I know my brain is kind of on overdose with this theme. I just watched and reviewed like a lot of Luc Besson movies. Which helped me do a rather compelling recreation of his psycho-sexual state. So I suppose I was sort of tuned to that frequency when watching Carrie.

So the message of the film seems to be rather clear. If you over-protect your kids from sexual development. It is child-abuse. But you can probably do a slightly deeper reading into it.

Still not fully recovering from Maïwenn's 2011 masterpiece Polisse, I had a lot of very interesting comparisons on my mind when watching Carrie. First of all, on the surface it could appear that both films are positioned strongly against each other. One is specifically anti-child-sex and the other one is specifically pro-child-sex. But looking a bit deeper, both stories are neither. Maïwenn introduces enough contradiction into her film that you start asking yourself where you would draw the line. And where it is legal lunacy already. The film is specifically not answering shit. And that is the point. That is what makes it stay with you.

If introducing your child to a concept of sex might lead you into trouble, the over-protection, as one shown in Carrie is a natural response. The mother character is absolutely and obviously out of her god damned mind. Her over-protection of Carrie is undeniably abusive. But with sick people out-there in the world... with tired policemen who cannot and do not want to use discretion anymore... with rapists and trauma and other bullshit that there is... what do you want from her?

This whole duality between the two films kind of reminding me one of the scenes in Polisse where two girls ( about 13 or 14 or so ) are being arrested by the "child protection unit" for making and publishing sexually suggestive images of themselves. Maïwenn specifically inter-cuts between the two scenes, probably to show that both of them have a sort of connected meaning to one another. The "child protection unit" officers just doing their job, trying to argue with both girls, to make them stop their child pornography. One girl is revealed to be manipulated into making those images. And she feels sorry an embarrassed now. While the other girl is a rebel with a "fuck the police" attitude. She argues that it should be her freedom to post whatever she wants of her self. And that in 21st century, this religious over-protection is over, baby.

In a way the argument of Maïwenn, by inter-cutting those two together, is that both of them are to some extent true. A lot of it could be just child-sexual-abuse-material ( CSAM ). Or in other words, the child didn't actually want to produce those images, but was forced or coerced or manipulated into making those. But there are the other cases where the same material ( totally, on the surface, indistinguishable from the first type ) is a properly consensual act of self-expression.

When it comes to Carrie then, the film shows two slightly, at first, unrelated sides of the same coin. We have the mother character, against who the whole auditorium is requested, by the filmmakers, to rebel. And we have the iconic ball scene. Where there are multiple levels of deception. Which could be read as other forms of abuse.

We have the poet guy, who Carrie has a crush on. Amy Irving's character asks him to go with Carrie as his date to the ball, because she feels sorry for her earlier behavior toward Carrie. She laughed at her in the beginning of the film. And now she feels like she is a terrible person for it. And knowing that Carrie has a crush on her boyfriend, she asks her boyfriend to go with Carrie as a sort of apology.

Now, while this could be read as a kindness of sorts. And her character does seem more of a good person than Nancy Allen's character. This gesture of hers is questionable at best. Carrie at some point should find out that this guy didn't actually love her or anything. And that would break Carrie's heart. And the guy cannot tell her anything about the fact that he was asked to do that, just because it might also break her heart. She even suspects him as somebody who just makes a stupid joke against her in the beginning. And only through his intensive persuasion ( or lies ), she finally opens up to him.

There is also this rather uncomfortable fact that Carrie is literally sexually immature. Like her first period started a few days ago. Her puberty literally just started. She never been with a guy before and never apparently had any real friends. Even her mother is an abusive bitch. So to some extent this slight sudden affection from this guy is in itself a manipulation technique. She never thought anybody would like her. And then this guy apparently does. Of course she goes nuts about him. Which just makes this lie of his even more disturbing.

This whole situation, in a way, proves her fucked up mom, to be right. And after the fiasco, which was the ball scene, Carrie seems to be somewhat agreeing with her. But yet in the same time, we know that she is an abusive bitch. And her religious over-protection is in fact the reason she was so utterly hopeless against him in the first place.

It is rather obvious that the reason everybody in school dislikes Carrie ( which is the reason she has no friends ), and the reason she is so sexually immature, is her mother. Her mother, being religious to the point of no return and to the point she is fucked up in the head, made Carrie into an insecure weirdo of a girl. This religious over-protection is what made Carrie so utterly immature. This is why Carrie had her first period at age 17.

If her mother was normal, Carrie would have been normal. If Carrie was not over-protected, Carrie would have had some resilience in her against abuse. She would have had enough self-confidence to not fall for the first and only guy that payed some attention to her. She would not have been abused.

That brings me back to the two girls in Polisse. One with the "fuck the police" attitude and the other who was manipulated rather quickly into shooting herself naked. The rebel type seems like a person with experience. Seems like a person who knows a thing or two about boys. And who chooses to produce that shit. She isn't the one abused. Her being detained in the "child protection unit" is in itself the closest thing to abuse there is. While that other girl seems to have so little life-experience that her being detained is in a way a useful lesson for her, for the future. She might feel a bit embarrassed about it now, but she will have the framework, to think about it later.

In a way, Carrie is directly addressing the Catch 22 of the 18+ laws. They are designed to protect people from abuse. They are there to say who has experience and who doesn't. But these laws don't work. And even worse, if they'd worked, everybody would have been like Carrie. Everybody would have been an insecure, stupid, horny person, with their first period at age 18, and with unsustainable hard-on for anything that moves.

Experience doesn't come from the air. It comes from doing stuff. You can't just wait for 18 years and then claim that you know shit about life. Look at most adults around you today. They've waited their asses, playing video-games and watching Tik Tok videos. And what are they now? They are dumb-asses who take any abuse what-so-ever. They work jobs that abuse them. For money that is abuse to be paying for those jobs. They sign contracts with every single company, who just wants to make them a slave, without even reading. They are stupid inexperienced motherfuckers.

The only reason people in the world aren't as pathetic as Carrie is just because those same people, being kids, ignored the law, somewhat. They did watch the shit that was illegal for them to watch. They did had girlfriends and boyfriends. And some of them even got laid, way before they were 18. Which actually gave them some experience.

You can even argue that this stupid girl from Polisse that had no experience and that got lectured by the police, now has more experience on the matter than most adult women out there. Just because of that one little "mistake".

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Troler c:0


If I understood correctly, not allowing children to safely understand life, only prolongs their immaturity.

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:1



@Troler Remove the word "safely". The life isn't safe. To understand it, you need to experience danger.

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:1

... c:0

  Troler c:0


If I understood correctly, not allowing children to safely understand life, only prolongs their immaturity.

@Troler Remove the word "safely". The life isn't safe. To understand it, you need to experience danger.

Reply