Line #17 Headscratchers/Carrie


1	* Why did Carrie torment Sue in the NightmareSequence? Wouldn't she be [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe granted an exception]]?
2	** In the book, Carrie dies right in front of Sue, after probing her mind for any ill intent in getting Carrie to prom. She dies satisfied. However, this is left out in the film. Remember, Sue didn't directly interact with Carrie when she got Tommy to ask her, so for all Carrie knew, Sue was in on the trick.
3	** Carrie was dead at the time and it's not the kind of story that includes vengeful spirits etc. So the nightmare was probably caused by Sue's trauma. Most of her classmates, teachers, and, of course, her boyfriend died that night.
4	** Because it's Sue's nightmare. It's colored by her perception of events and, as far as she's concerned, she had a hand in Carrie's misery. She willingly participated in the locker room prank and her attempts to make amends ended in the worst humiliation that Carrie ever suffered at that school. Sue couldn't stop the prom prank and as a result of that failure, Carrie ended up going on a rampage and died. In Sue's mind, Carrie's suffering is her fault, so she imagines Carrie punishing her for it.
5	* She's still alive in the sequel (which takes place over 20 years later), so it was probably just a normal nightmare, and not Carrie's ghost trying to kill her.
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7	* Just for starters...why didn't [[AdultsAreUseless anybody]] intervene in Carrie's home life before her senior year in high school? Were all of her relatives dead or so distant that they couldn't come and see what sort of grade-A loony was raising her? And didn't the teachers in that school notice that something was really, badly wrong?
8	** No one ever knew just how abusive her home life was. Carrie didn't come forward about it, and they never had guests over, so as far as anyone could tell, she was just a girl being raised by a religious nut case. Which is not illegal by itself.
9	*** Her neighbors in TheRemake knew what Margaret was like. Why didn't THEY do anything?
10	*** One of the neighbors in TheRemake ''did'' make an aborted attempt to help in the flashback. You can see one of the men run to the front door when young Carrie starts screaming, but he's driven back when fire starts raining from the sky. After fireballs fell from the sky, they were probably too afraid to try again.
11	*** The same reason such things happen in RealLife - they "[[BystanderSyndrome don't want to get involved]]" because it [[ApatheticCitizens doesn't directly affect them]].
12	*** Especially true of child abuse. Back in the early 1960s, it often went unreported. "It's none of our business." In the book, the neighbors were part of the reason the rock incident happened in the first place -- and they still ended up concluding "it's none of our business." The "whore of Babylon" wanted to do something, but her mother talked her out of it.
13	** Also, the sensibility towards that sort of thing has dramatically increased over the last few decades. Some forms of domestic violence were probably much more common back when the film was made (in the 70s, I believe?). Were I to start telling you about what we did to each other at my school, you'd have to arrest every last one of us.
14	*** It's also notable in the '76 version that in the early scene where Margaret visits Mrs. Snell, the latter asks if Carrie would like to come over to visit Sue. Margaret interrupts her to talk about God's word. This is a pretty quick way of showing the neighbors think that Margaret is a lunatic and don't want to listen to her, much less get involved.
15	** Even in later remakes, it's quite possible for child abuse to go unreported. People either don't want to get involved, think that's what the authorities are for and if they haven't stepped in there must not be anything too bad going on, or the high-functioning sociopaths are masking the troubles well enough no one notices them. Now, Margaret White is pretty definitely not a ''high-functioning'' sociopath, but she seems to mask the troubles well enough that people think she's just weird, not abusive. The 2013 film {{Lampshades}} this by stating that Carrie is in the public school system because her mother is no longer allowed to home school her, but that could be less due to allegations of abuse and more because Margaret wasn't educating Carrie to the government's satisfaction.
16	** As for other relatives, it's quite possible that someone as mentally unstable and fanatical as Margaret would have cut all ties with her relations before Carrie was even born, particularly if they didn't share her extreme beliefs.
17	** It is implied in the books that Margaret is estranged from her parents precisely for that reason. In the first film, Ralph White ran off with another woman - so that explains why his relatives don't bother about her. Margaret appears to be a bit of a recluse in the 2013 film so it's believable no one would talk to her.
18	** Look to real-life - how many times are there headlines about some poor kid who kills themselves because of bullying and abuse that either nobody knew about, or nobody cared enough to do anything about? The central message of Carrie could be considered to be a warning about exactly how such cruelty can go unnoticed or ignored by both individuals and systems.
19	*** Considering how Margaret was estranged from her family and was reclusive, y'all could figure that they didn't know Carrie existed.
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21	* In one of the in-universe books, they mention that they would have to isolate or even kill those with the TK gene. Um...'' why''? Carrie snapped because of years of torment, it's not as though telekinetics will inherently up and kill everyone.
22	** Will it matter to the potential victims? Nobody can guarantee that it only takes ''years'' of torment to make a PersonOfMassDestruction snap, and that is disregarding those who might actively use the power for malicious purposes.
23	** At the very end of the book, Amelia Jenks' letter shows that she's concerned about Annie's TK only because it seems to be associated with heart trouble in the family. [[HeroOfAnotherStory We'll have to imagine]] what a TK child raised in a small Tennessee town by a loving mother will be like later.
24	** Fear. If one person could snap and cause devastation on that level, why not more? Why not all of them? Ordinary humans are helpless against this kind of power, what's to stop these budding [=TKs=] from taking over the world? ''X-Men'' as written by Stephen King. Not a cheery thought.
25	** [[Literature/TheInstitute Funny you should mention that. . .]]
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27	* Chris Hargensen. Paternal LoveIsBlind, but still...shenanigans like putting a firecracker in another girl's shoe should have tipped Daddy Dearest off that his little girl was growing up to be a very nasty piece of work indeed.
28	** DaddysLittleVillain.
29	** As wrong as it seems, some parents WILL just chalk up something like that to "youthful high spirits" and see nothing wrong with it.
30	*** That scene also shows that he's both a distant/workaholic type of parent and a rich bastard. Chris thinks he can buy her way out of being punished. This, of course, is Chris' FreudianExcuse for her behavior.
31	** Ah, it was just a mistake. She didn't intend to hurt anyone, she thought it would be a harmless prank. We'll talk to her, make sure she understands the consequences. I promise nothing like that will ever happen again. Now, Chris, you could have blown that girl's toes off. You shouldn't do that. Okay? Okay.
32	*** This. Except often it’s more “Now, Chris, let’s treat you to a nice trip to Disney World and act like this never happened, okay? Oh no baby, daddy would never punish his little angel! I just said those things to make the bad lady shut up! Daddy loves you!”
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34	* How come Carrie ends up killing the people who didn't bully her?
35	** As far as she's concerned, they're as bad as the ones who did, most likely.
36	** EVERYONE LAUGHED AT HER. Except in the film where she thinks EVERYONE IS LAUGHING AT HER. In her mind, nobody was less cruel.
37	** In the book it was clear that she is punishing the town for keeping their nose out of her DomesticAbuse situations. In RealLife it's considered as bad as abusing the child.
38	*** "Keeping their nose out..." Excuse me but, ''what''? Half of the town didn't ''even'' know who Carrie was until Prom Night.
39	*** Didn't matter. When someone goes off the rails like that, everybody within range is guilty by association.
40	*** Carrie lost it. She resented the whole school for ignoring or actively bullying her (I'm sure many a troper can sympathize with that). The bullying she had is worse than shoujo manga and far less optimistic.
41	** And in the 2013 version, she noticeably only targets those who victimized her, sparing the town. Though there probably was also "collateral damage" at the prom.
42	** Even those who did not actively torment knew about it and never did anything to stop it, thus they are guilty of aiding and abetting.
43	** Everyone is aware that Carrie isn't supposed to be a hero right? She's a sympathetic or tragic villain, one of the most heartbreaking examples easily, but still a villain. Her disproportionate retribution against the whole world, or at least as much of it as she could lash out at, vice just those that wronged her is sorta the point.
44	*** King himself, in On Writing, describes Carrie as a sort of fictional precursor of [[{{UsefulNotes/Columbine}} Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold]]. How many of their victims [[DisproportionateRetribution "deserved it"?]]
45	** In that kind of blind rage, there's no logical thought. You can't sort out the difference between "this person was mean and needs to die," "this person was kinda mean and should die," and "this person was okay, they'll get off with just being psychologically scarred for life." And as pointed out, Carrie's RoaringRampageOfRevenge isn't meant to be seen as heroic, even though it's understandable why some viewers might want to see it that way (and just adds to the moral complexity of the story.) She's an abused child who's lashing out a world she perceives as, at best, completely uncaring, at worst intentionally cruel. No one is safe.
46	** First, Carrie has been bullied not by one but by many students since she started attending school, King has her recall several incidents in school and summer camp. By then she would have a very general view of the meanness of other teenagers. Second, ''everyone'' who was present at the scene laughed -even the sympathetic teachers, so Carrie was humiliated to the point of snapping. In her overstressed mind, those who laughed were complicit in the prank.
47	** In the book, Carrie's rampage doesn't start as wanting to kill or hurt anyone - just to humiliate them the way she was. She turns the sprinklers on to get them wet and mess up their outfits, and she only locks the doors to stop them from avoiding this. Then she gets carried away on a power high and starts everything else. Carrie is also much less of TheWoobie in the book than she is in the films - where she's portrayed as just a good girl who wants to be accepted. While she is that too, the book's Carrie is full of hate-filled thoughts and desires to use her powers to hurt people (she at one point wants to smash the windows of a neighbor because she doesn't like Margaret, and is about to use her powers to hurt George Dawson when she thinks he's attacking Tommy). So her snapping to kill everyone in the book isn't that much of a stretch from her usual persona.
48	** The 2002 film takes a different approach, implying that she goes into a trance and is not consciously aware of her actions up until she wakes up in the bathtub with no memory of what went down. This was presumably done to keep her sufficiently sympathetic to become the heroine of the planned series which never eventuated.
49	** In the 1976 version, she's been DrivenToMadness after all she's suffered, as evidenced by her hearing voices and how her [[InterfaceScrew vision is all messed up.]] She also thinks everyone in the room is laughing at her (which De Palma confirmed is mostly in her head), so she may think they were ''all'' in on the plot. This doesn't make much sense, but it's crazy person "logic", so it doesn't have to.
50	*** She was blinded by rage. When one goes into a rage, you're runnin' on instinct.
51	*** The quote at the bottom of page for Film/Carrie2013 describes it best: "...you can only push someone so far before they break." Carrie didn't just break. She ''shattered''. The pieces flew in all directions and took out everything in their path.
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53	* How are the people at the prom not gagging at the smell of the blood?
54	** Do you mean while it's in the bucket above the stage? It's probably too far up to be detected, and IIRC it was partially frozen (I might be sketchy on that last detail). Do you mean after it's dumped on Carrie? Probably because a fire starts soon after and the smell of burning wood, paper, cloth, and flesh is a little more immediate.
55	** In the 2013 version, Sue ''does'' start gagging at the smell of the blood when she's working on the prom decorations. Given that she had to climb a ladder on the stage and get physically close to the bucket before she smelled it, it's likely that it was too far up for anybody else to notice.
56	*** Actually, she started gagging because of a combination of vertigo and morning sickness. Chris and co only snuck the blood in the night before the prom(because otherwise, you have to wonder why nobody noticed the broken glass at the emergency exit for over a day).
57	*** Pregnancy can also increase your sense of smell. So a combination of all three is possible.
58	*** Nope, the blood was put up after Sue was on the ladder decorating. One night - dead pig. The next day - Sue pukes. That night, Carrie works on her dress. Chris and Co. sneak in the bucket o' blood. Probably everyone was just too busy to be around that specific area for long.
59	** In the script for the 2013 film, the other popular girls Heather, Tina, Nicki, and Lizzy were definitely in on the prank. In the film, it's only clear that Tina is. Heather was helping Sue decorate and is the one who's in the area as a DJ - so if she smelled it, she'd know what it was.
60	** And think that this is a room full of teenagers dressed up - so the smells of perfume, cologne, deodorant, hairspray, hair gel, etc will be very overpowering. And once they've been dancing for a while, the smell of sweat would be quite strong too. So there would be lots of powerful smells to overpower the blood if it was starting to stink.
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62	* Why in all the movies did Carrie start her murdering rampage while IN the school building? The book is clear that Carrie first LEFT the school, fell on the grass, thought how her mother was right, and then snapped. Both in 1976, 2002, and (assuming by the trailer) 2013 film version Carrie snapped seconds after getting covered in pig's blood and left the school only after most of the students were dead.
63	** Dramatic convenience and medium constraints. In a book, you can take time out before your big action finale to examine a character's thoughts. In a movie, the scene would end up just having the actress laying on the ground talking to herself to remind the audience of what they saw ten minutes before. Makes more sense to have her snap right at the emotional climax of the scene.
64	*** The book emphasized that Carrie's TK actions sent out a telepathic signal with her presence, her identity. So when she began her revenge from ''outside'' the school, everyone inside immediately knew Carrie White was doing it. As she walked home wreaking destruction all the way, everyone within a two or three miles' radius knew that Carrie White was responsible for the power outages, fires, explosions et al., even if they did not know who Carrie White was. This would be very difficult to convey on film.
65	** Also, if it was like in the book, Carrie's actions would look more premeditated in the films as she would have been shown to think it over before starting the rampage. Having her snap instantaneously keeps her sympathetic.
66	** The script for the 2013 version had Carrie running out of the gym first, but ExecutiveMeddling wanted it done like the 1976 version. As for the 2002 version, this Carrie goes into a trance and loses control of her powers almost as soon as she gets the blood poured on her. So there it works better to have her on the stage and lose control instantly.
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68	* I know the 2013 version wouldn't work without it, but it seems like Child Protective Services wasn't doing its job. Seriously, it's bad enough to forbid her mother to homeschool Carrie, but you don't take the child away? Maybe the horrific prayer closet didn't exist then?
69	** They may not have been aware of the full extent of Margaret's abuse. If Carrie is like [[TruthInTelevision most abused children]], she may have feared Margaret's retaliation if she spoke up. Abused children also don't speak up as a way of protecting parents (they're still your folks, you don't want them to go to jail). With no physical signs (the abuse appeared mostly emotional and verbal) and no testimony from the child, it would be very difficult to prove that any abuse had occurred. Even if the prayer closet did exist, Margaret could have easily explained it away as a shrine for religious practice. Again, unless Carrie admitted that she'd been thrown into it, CPS wouldn't have any proof. And all of that is assuming that CPS was even involved; the school district could have easily revoked Margaret's homeschooling privileges without involving CPS since homeschooling has to meet district standards of education.
70	** The 2013 version makes it clearer than the other two adaptations that Margaret did love her daughter in her twisted way. Margaret seems to alternate between self-harm, being cruel to Carrie, and actual affection. So when the authorities came calling, Margaret would seem slightly odd but not overtly abusive. And what with her being a sympathetic single mother raising her daughter after her husband's sudden death, they might not have looked into it too much.
71	*** The state did step in and tell Margaret she couldn't homeschool anymore, so that was close enough, but anythin' beyond that meant their hands was tied.
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73	* Margaret's character doesn't make sense to me. To elaborate, she's such an over-the-top psycho with all the latent horror associated with every religious fanatic stereotype that would make members of WBC cringe! First of all, she's quoting things that ''aren't even in the Bible'' [[hottip:: which Carrie herself lampshades in the 2013 version]], and believes that the normal things in female biology (ie: menstrual cycles, developing breasts) are either punishments or proof that you've sinned. How the hell does a grown woman believe that having breasts is a sign that you 'weren't raised right'? Second, contrary to popular [[ReligiousStereotype "common knowledge"]], Christians don't preach that SexIsEvil.[[note]]Many people, including devotees who ought to know better, really do think the "first sin was intercourse". Not only is that untrue (the first sin was disobedience) but God asked Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply". Sex was not a sin in Eden.[[/note]] Granted, I'll let that slide a bit since ''that'' tenet of hers seems more from a FreudianExcuse than doctrine, but how does she expect the human race to perpetuate itself?! She seems to be more a case of RuleOfScary applied to TheFundamentalist than TheFundamentalist up to eleven [[hottip:: Okay, really she's [[TakeAThirdOption a bit of both]]. Plus, she seems, for the most part, to be trying to do [[WellIntentionedExtremist what's best for Carrie]], but she [[spoiler: pulls a friggin' knife on the girl and tries to murder her!]] I guess it wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for the occasional HollywoodAtheist pointing to Margaret White as a "perfect example" of why ReligionIsWrong.
74	** As weak as it sounds she was seriously nuts even by the TheFundamentalist standards. It's implied in some versions Margaret's father and mother (and especially her ''grandmother'', whose behavior when she was doing TK was right out of a horror movie) hosed her up just as badly as she did to Carrie.
75	** Well, as for how she expected the human race to perpetuate itself, there are two answers there. One is that she probably felt the end times were upon us and that the human race wasn't meant to spread much further. However, and this is specifically addressed in the book, she did say that she and her husband would remain chaste and that "If there is an issue, let it be divine." In other words, she thought that virgin birth, a miracle that happened only once in the Bible, was the only way a pure follower of God would ever have children. See below about Margaret being crazy, and her religious fervor just being an outlet for her insanity.
76	** Did you even read the book? Margaret is considerably ''tamer'' in the films (yes ''even'' the 1976 film) than in the novel. Do you know that when she was pregnant with Carrie, she originally thought it was "cancer affecting her womanly parts"? She wasn't even following Christianity right; Ralph and she used to be Baptists until they left the church because they were convinced "they [the church] was doing the Anti Christ's work". I don't even know what you're trying to say on that last part. Seriously ''what'' are you getting at here?
77	*** I'm no expert but last I checked and have seen a lot of religious fanatics/fundamentalists, Christian or otherwise, have been known to do or quote things that aren't even in their religious texts or teachings or, if not quoting things that aren't in it, then they are usually twisting the meanings, so I'm pretty sure Margaret is like the most I have seen.
78	** Margaret was going on a seriously Flanderized version of a couple of things that fed into her general obsession: The first is that the pain of childbirth is a punishment for Eve's sin and part of being cast out of the Garden of Eden. The other is the attitude a few lines in the Bible seem to take toward menstruation (women aren't allowed in the temple during menstruation, and men have to pray and cleanse themselves if they lie with a menstruating woman).
79	** She's not religious, she's crazy. Her warped view on Christianity is just an outlet for her mental illness. Seriously, her "religion" has all the hallmarks of a psychotic delusion: It's internally consistent, persecutory (she believes God is out to punish everyone and she has to pray for forgiveness), and rationally explains irrational behavior (if God is angry at women for Original Sin, then if I don't let my daughter become a woman, God won't be angry with her.) Even her misquoting/making up Bible verses could be a sign of a thought disorder, where the words on the page and what she reads are two entirely different things. Margaret White is nothing more than a walking psychosis wrapped in the shell of Christianity.
80	** Margaret is crazy indeed: Notice that her parents and stepfather in the book are rather normal people who aren't even described as extremely religious. She gets along very poorly with them and she even antagonizes them with her ways by writing them awful letters and refusing to see them when she has a miscarriage. Her religious views seem to be her very own without subscribing to a particular denomination; notice that, unlike fundamentalist protestants, she uses a lot of conspicuous iconographies. But unlike conservative Catholics, she worships at home with herself (a woman) as a celebrant.
81	*** What drove her insane was terror. She'd witnessed her grandmother, already "senile to the point of idiocy", lighting the fireplace or doing TK stunts at the dinner table with an [[LaughingMad Insane Laugh]] while drooling and panting like a dog, making the Evil Eye gesture[[note]]this is a ward ''against'' evil, but maybe Margaret didn't know this[[/note]] and even seeming to have GlowingEyesOfDoom which Margaret described as a "witch's light". It must have seemed like Gram had sold herself to Satan. Margaret knows this runs in the family. Her parents' reaction to Gram's antics is never described, but Margaret's intense devotion and her insanity seem to have started there.
82	** It's noteworthy that, at one point mid-book, she prays to either [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Nyarlathotep or Azathoth ]] (depending on who "sendeth the Three-Lobed Burning Eye") so she has taken A Turn from even the most fundamentalist form of Christianity--and depending on how you interpret the book's universe, may have made contact with Something that she interprets as God/Jesus and is actually anything but. (Carrie's time in the church mid-rampage mentions POWERS and an ABYSS but does not, creepily, elaborate.)
83	*** All of those.
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85	* What was the point of the teen pregnancy plotline in the '13 version? Seem unnecessary.
86	** If you had paid attention, or at least read the book, it's implied that Sue was pregnant. There's a sentence that mentions she's late on her period. Hell, did you not see the freaking sex scene in the beginning?
87	*** As someone that both read the book and paid attention I also noticed that after Carrie died it specifically stated that Sue finally got her late period and was "not" pregnant.
88	*** It could also be interpreted as a way to tie the theme of menstrual blood to both girls. Carrie gets her period and thinks she's dying, Sue knows more about biology but her period is late. The book begins and ends with a girl getting her period. It's a unifying theme. Remember, it's a first-time novel by a guy with an English degree, which was too short, to begin with, so it had to have some stuff added to make it a novel instead of a novella. The movie just added a dimension by making Sue pregnant, which then raises fears: how is she going to raise a kid and NOT screw her up the way Carrie was screwed up?
89	** It's a small cruel twist in the book but this is the first adaptation to leave it in. It was pretty subtle and I missed it on my first few readings (I was fourteen and dumb). Sue worries about being late for her period on the night of the prom. After she witnesses Carrie dying, she gets her period - and it's left open whether or not she was just late or she'd miscarried a baby. It's cruel because she knew Tommy was dead and for a moment probably thought she'd have some part left of him.
90	** Wasn't the pregnancy in the 2013 version one of the only reasons Carrie let Sue live in the end?
91	*** Indeed. Also, as mentioned, it means that Sue still has some connection to her loving boyfriend, who died ''as a direct result of her actions.'' While Sue didn't actively participate in Carrie's ultimate humiliation, she sure as hell set the stage for it (even inadvertently.)
92	*** Carrie identifies the unborn child as a girl. Those who have telekinesis are always girls. It could foreshadow that Sue's child has the same power and that is why Carrie can "connect" with her, even though the fetus cannot be that far developed.
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94	* Is it just me or is the 2013 version of Sue Snell a little unsettling? She has very little personal interaction with Carrie which makes her obsession with Carrie seem... well more obsessional than empathetic. Then there was her ordering Tommy to ask Carrie out ''again'' after Carrie said no, which implied she was more interested in turning Carrie into an ersatz version of herself than the girl's actual desires ("I want to go to prom so ''of course'' Carrie should go to prom"). Not that Sue's intentions aren't good but she does come across as a little creepy.
95	** At that point, Sue giving Carrie a happy night at the prom was equal parts assuaging her guilt and having the last word over Chris, who accused her of accepting their detention to preserve her prom night rather than punishing herself for hurting Carrie.
96	** That motivation seems plausible... but it doesn't account for her strangely emotionally detached manipulative actions. Again this version of Sue has very little personal contact with Carrie and seems happy to pull strings from a distance (and force her boyfriend to warm up to Carrie.) It does seem kind of creepy.
97	*** WordOfGod (in On Writing, IIRC) says that even Stephen King didn't entirely trust Sue's motives in getting Tommy to take Carrie to the prom. Was Sue trying to atone for what she'd done, or was it, deep down, a means of trying to humiliate Carrie further? He also notes that the Carrie character is based on the most "reviled" girls he knew in high school, both as a student and a teacher and that when one of them tried to feel better about herself, the pack mentality kicked her back down to where she belonged.
98	** The 2013 film does change around the order of things. Sue suggests Tommy take Carrie a little earlier in the book - the same way she does in the other two films. This one has her consider it after Chris calls her out. The film changes things so that Sue considers the detention her 'atonement' initially but then gives up her prom ticket so Carrie can have a good night instead. I think Sue had good intentions but being essentially a quasi-AlphaBitch beforehand, she had no idea how to exactly do a good thing like this. Most kids at that age are still grasping the concept of right and wrong - so atoning for big mistakes is very much a learning process of trial and error.
99	** There's also the idea that she believed (probably rightly) that anything she tried to do for Carrie in person would be misinterpreted. She couldn't just walk up to Carrie in the lunchroom and say "Hey, sorry about the shower thing, that was out of line. We cool?" because there'd be no way to demonstrate sincerity, and Carrie was meek enough to accept the apology whether she believed it genuine or not. Trying to get to know Carrie and be friends with her would have been seen as just another manipulation. And even so, her roundabout plot to have her boyfriend give Carrie that one perfect high school moment was still seen as manipulative by Miss Dejardin, right up to the point where Sue crashes the prom to try and stop Chris' prank. Any number of ideas were probably considered and rejected by the character because she believed the only act of contrition that would matter was the one that involved her the least. As well, the film makes it pretty clear that she considers giving up her perfect prom night with her perfect boyfriend to be her real atonement, sacrificing something that matters a great deal to her. It is still a bit manipulative since she believes that Tommy will come right back to her after the prom, and they'll live out whatever post-high-school fantasy they already had. The story is practically a study in moral ambiguity, this version of Sue just adds another twist to it (doing a potentially good thing for potentially bad reasons.)
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101	* Where did Carrie get the money to purchase her dress supplies, makeup, etc.? I can't see Margaret allowing her to have an after-school job, and it seems even less likely that she gives Carrie an allowance.
102	** This is more WMG than anything, but maybe Carrie just... took it. She wasn't really afraid of Margaret at that point, was she? Or they could have some sort of emergency fund or, seeing as Margaret seems to make all their clothes, maybe there is a jar with "Clothing Money" on it and Carrie talked herself into taking from that.
103	** I think in the book it's said that Carrie sews most of her clothes - she's working on a new dress at one point. So she must either have money given to her to buy fabric anyway, or else there is a kitty or something they used to buy fabric.
104	*** Carrie "takes in sewing" for customers/neighbors in the book, so she has a little money put away. The rocking chair she sits in while practicing TK was "bought and paid for with her own money".
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106	* Back in the 1960s and the early 1970s, it was conceivable, though unlikely, for a girl in her late teens who'd never experienced it to have no idea what was happening when she got her period. But this Carrie was born in 1996. How could she possibly be completely unaware of basic female biology in today's developed world?
107	** She was that sheltered. In the movie, a point is made that until very recently she was homeschooled by her mother, and it's shown that she had problems doing something as normal to any teen as browsing the internet and watching videos on Youtube.
108	*** RuleOfDrama. And there's a slight lack of continuity because one of the girls mentions knowing Carrie at least since "the sixth grade," so she wasn't home-schooled into high school. Agreed, this lack of awareness and ignorance of biology is much more believable in the early 1970s in the novel. It ''might'' be believable if Margaret had grown up in/escaped from some kind of crazy "Quiverfull" type cult where she'd had no access to the outside world, but the movie doesn't explore Margaret's character enough.
109	** Maybe it was just how I read it but in the original novel, I got more of the impression that Carrie had just repressed all knowledge of menstruation rather than just flat out had never even encountered the concept, which as noted was pushing it a bit in the mid-70s and pretty close to flat out impossible today.
110	** How does the American high school system work? In Ireland in my school, Biology was an optional subject. We did science in general for the first three years and touched on the basics of reproduction (pregnancy etc.) but the ins and outs weren't explored until the senior classes - which were optional. If Carrie didn't take Biology, then she simply might not have understood the concept. Most girls learn from their mothers and sisters rather than in school. Or alternately, Carrie may have learned about it but wondered why it didn't happen to her - and if she'd asked Margaret why it didn't happen, she'd probably have been told it only happens to sinful girls.
111	** In my experience, Biology doesn't cover menstruation. That's covered in Sex Ed, which parents sometimes have to permit for. That happens in the 2002 TV version, I believe.
112	*** Also to add to that, if you have no media besides maybe religious media, you have no friends, and your only female relative never tells you about it, how do you know what a period is? Maybe you overhear the occasional girl talking about "my period", but what if you only ever hear things like "little visitor" or "Aunt Flo"?
113	*** In the book that's exactly it. At home, Carrie begins to remember that she's heard expressions like "time of the month".
114	** Sex Education in American schools is a huge hot-button issue. Some people (mostly religious groups) are dead-set against anyone even mentioning sex to anyone else, especially kids. Others think that sex ed should start in kindergarten. While the majority opinion is somewhere in the middle (let kids know what's happening to their bodies, and educate them so they can make good decisions), it's still a rough topic, and there are still many public schools that have substandard or nonexistent sex-ed programs because the public opinion is just that contentious. It's certainly possible, however unlikely, that Carrie's school in 2013 either didn't have a sex-ed program or made it optional/require parental permission, which Margaret obviously wouldn't have given. And even if the school has a sex-ed program, a class is only as good as its teacher. Imagine if the principal (the same one who got queasy whenever someone said "tampon") was the only staff member deemed qualified to teach the class. He may well have completely glossed over certain aspects because he just wasn't comfortable talking about them (something which, ironically, would have been prevented if his school had a decent sex-ed program. . .) There was also a time not long ago (and it may still be, I haven't done the research) where sexual knowledge among teens was at an all-time low, because parents weren't comfortable talking to their kids about it, assuming they'd learn about it in school. But schools weren't comfortable teaching kids about sex, assuming they'd learn about it from their parents, creating a situation where no one was talking to anyone about anything.
115	** There is a fan theory out there that Carrie suffered from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), given her belly fat and acne as described in the book. This disorder can sometimes bring on late periods, which Margaret would have chalked up to "purity" and "God's will."
116	** It's unlikely, but not impossible, even in this day and age and to someone who's not as sheltered as Carrie was. Through personal experience, this troper can testify to that.
117	** Or maybe in the modern adaptations, she had some kind of anxiety disorder brought on by years of bullying at school and abuse at home? So when she starts bleeding for the first time in the middle of the school shower room, she freaks out not because she doesn't know what's happening but because it's just that shocking for her.
118	** Actually in the 2002 version, she doesn't seem ignorant of what's happening; she just panics because it's so sudden and happens at the worst possible time. All she says to Miss Desjardin is "am I dying?", which is after she's gone near catatonic in the shower and she might have just jumped to a conclusion and assumed that's what was happening rather than a period (since she made it to seventeen-eighteen without having one, she's obviously not used to it).
119	** This trope can also vouch for American sex-ed being EXTREMELY patchwork, sometimes from district to district--it isn't uncommon at all for high-profile cities to be far more open-minded/liberal than a smaller town like Chamberlain.
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121	* Not that it wasn't [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments sweet]], because it was, but isn't Sue setting up Carrie on a date with Tommy a strange thing to do, even under these circumstances? There are less extreme ways to make amends with someone you've victimized, so this can't be the only idea that occurred to Sue. A simple apology and an offer of friendship probably would have been more than sufficient (especially since Carrie [[NiceGirl is the type to wholeheartedly accept both]]), not to mention that Sue's idea won't necessarily solve anything: One date isn't going to make the other students accept Carrie or stop Chris from having it out for her, especially not if that date is with someone else's boyfriend (whether the someone else in question gave it the green light or not). Sue being friends with her probably wouldn't stop anything either, but it would at least ensure that there was someone there to have her back in future bullying situations. I guess the question here is, how did Sue go from "I need to make this right" to "I should set Carrie up with my boyfriend" without considering any other options?
122	** I think she cares more about making herself feel better than helping Carrie, when she started feeling regret for her actions Chris told her she was only acting that way to gain her Prom privileges back so most likely she decided to give that experience to Carrie instead as a Take That. Also, she wasn't setting her up with her boyfriend, she just wanted to give Carrie her place, she didn't think it through
123	** In addition, keep in mind that Sue's been friends with [[AlphaBitch Chris]] for most of her life and probably wouldn't know the best and most appropriate way to handle the situation. She just figured an apology wouldn't cut it and wanted to give Carrie the best night of her life to make up for all her shitty years in school. Additionally, since it's Prom and very close to the ''end'' of high school, this plan was to let her go out on a high note rather than win her friends with the other students.
124	** Well Sue's not pimping her boyfriend out for Carrie. She's just become aware of how awful Carrie's high school life has been - being excluded and constantly mocked, etc. She intends to atone for her bullying by giving Carrie the opposite - a chance to be accepted by everyone. She's sort of working with what she's got. No boy would have asked Carrie so Tommy is the only guy she can get to take her. And by giving up her date, she views this as adequate punishment for what she did.
125	** Sue also probably believed (not without reason) that a simple apology and offer of friendship wouldn't have been sufficient, since Carrie was meek enough to accept both whether she believed they were genuine or not, and Sue would have had no real way to demonstrate sincerity. Sure, if she wanted to make a meaningful act of contrition it might have been better to talk to Carrie with Tommy, explain that she felt horrible about what happened, and wanted to make it up to her by having Tommy take Carrie to prom, show her a good time, and let her have one nice memory of high school. But let's face it, Sue's an eighteen-year-old. . . they're not exactly known for carefully weighing and thinking through all their options (especially in horror movies.)
126	** First, in the book, Sue seems to be half-expecting that Tommy won't lend himself to her plan, and even if he says yes that Carrie will possibly say no to Tommy's invitation. Later Sue writes that they were 17-18 yr old teenagers, so their decisions and plans, although perhaps well-meaning, weren't so well thought. And as for the results of Tommy taking Carrie to the prom, Sue doesn't need to have the students accept Carrie since, after that night, they will all soon graduate and stop seeing each other regularly, making any acceptance scenario moot.
127	** In the 2002 film, Sue wants Carrie to have one good high school moment. When she tells Tommy to ask her, she says "take her and hold her hand" and some other stuff. A big part of Sue's conflict in the book is the fear of how her life will turn out after high school. She has loved high school and is afraid that it'll be the best years of her life, and she'll end up a lonely Stepford Wife who hasn't experienced anything. This fear is mitigated by Tommy and her friends Jessica, Helen, Frieda, and a few others with who she plans to keep in contact - and later in life Sue becomes an author. But she realizes that for Carrie, such an existence is much more of a possibility. And Carrie won't have the nostalgic memories of high school - and Sue suddenly realizes that for fourteen years, this girl has had no friends and no good memories. So she just wants her to have one good memory. If Carrie goes with Tommy - who's something of a big man on campus - she won't get taunted by bullies, so she's bound to have a better time.
128	** And at the point Sue asks Tommy, Chris has been banned from the prom. So Carrie is guaranteed to have a good night without Chris there to taunt her. Sue isn't expecting Chris to pull such an awful prank, is she?
129	** Old query but: Sue might have just figured Carrie would tell her to fuck off if she offered to be her friend after what she did. In the 1976 version, she never talks to Carrie face-to-face about what happened, and, when Carrie asks Tommy why he took her to the prom, he gives vague answers rather than just saying Sue wanted him to go.
130	* In the play she ''does'' try apologizing, but Carrie thinks it's just another trick, which is what convinces Sue to have Tommy taker her out. She would presumably act the same way in the book/movies.
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132	* In the 2013 film, Sue received an ominous text from Chris. Couldn't she have texted Tommy to warn him and Carrie immediately that something was up?
133	** She may have not wanted them to worry. When Chris texts her, she probably assumes that the girl is just planning to storm in and say some mean things or whatever. Her plan seemed to be to go there, find out if Chris is about to do anything, and stop it before Tommy or Carrie find out and have their night ruined.
134	** Alternatively, maybe Tommy turned his phone off. If you're dancing with Chloe Moretz, it seems the sensible thing to do. Or the school had a rigorously enforced "no cell phones" policy at the dance, which would also be a sensible thing to do.
135	** Well Tommy's seen texting Sue during the prom so presumably phones were allowed. Him turning it off for the dance is possible though.
136	** Or she did text and he just didn't hear because of the music. And he didn't check it because he was legitimately talking to Carrie.
137	** The answer lies in a deleted scene: she tries to call him and he rejects it.
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139	* What do people think happened to Chris' dad, Mr. Hargensen? He, like any of the parents who survived, had to bury his child, and in at least one version of the film it comes out that Chris was the instigator of the DeadlyPrank. This was after he was in denial that she was a bully. Does anyone think he lived with the guilt of outliving his daughter or worked to keep her memory pristine?
140	** It's implied that Carrie was seen as a monster in the years after the tragedy. Sue in her book has to go out of her way to point out what a victim Carrie was. No one knew Carrie really or knew how awful her home life was. So it would have been very easy for propaganda to turn Carrie into the villain of the story, and Chris into another tragic victim. I could honestly see people claiming Chris just wanted to have her prom night and Carrie 'overreacted' to the prank. Whether Mr. Hargensen bought into that or realized just how rotten his daughter was is completely up in the air.
141	** It might have been a while before they worked out that Chris was behind the prank. With such a wide-scale incident that involved the whole town burning up, there was bound to be several weeks of making sure people were accounted for (Chris and Billy were at a motel for the evening, and both had said they were planning to leave town). Then once they know who's alive or not, they can get into the hows and whys. So Mr. Hargensen may have only known that his daughter was suspended from the prom and chose to go out with her boyfriend that night instead. Remember that unlike in the films, Chris and Billy acted completely on their own (except for Billy's friends who helped kill the pigs, not knowing what it was for). No plants in the gym, no forged ballots, just themselves and they're both dead by the time the investigation starts. They have to interview Jackie Talbot to find out about the murdered pigs, Tina Blake to find out that Chris asked to see the king and queen nominations (and that's easily a question they might not have asked), Miss Desjardin and the other teachers to form a character sketch of Chris and other little things that take time. So maybe Mr. Hargensen left town like so many others and wasn't even aware of the stories about Chris, or chose to ignore them. Or maybe he had a HeelRealization and tried to make amends whatever way he could?
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143	* Why did the Crimson King's "Finders" never recruit Carrie as a Breaker? I mean sure, I can see why they stayed the hell away from Charlie [=McGee=], but Carrie White would be a perfect candidate. Extremely powerful, outsider, used to being under her mother's thumb. She'd be taken away from her insane mother and mean classmates to a safe place where she felt useful and was praised for what she could do.
144	** Carrie's powers didn't awaken until she was seventeen. The incident with the stones raining on the house happened when she was three, and there was nothing to connect it with her. All the neighbors know is that Margaret was disciplining her daughter, and a freak shower of rocks happened. It could have been a force of nature or something else, and nothing to do with Carrie. They only investigate into that when the prom incident has already happened, and at this point, they know Carrie had powers - so retroactively realize that the stones were caused by her. Until the prom, Carrie's uses of her powers were subtle and low-key, so no one could pick up on them. She dies only a couple of hours after the prom, so they wouldn't have time to figure out it was her or track her down quickly. Especially with late 70s technology.
145	** It's Estelle Horan's testimony well after Carrie's death that confirms she caused the stones. Estelle gives them the story that when Margaret dragged Carrie inside the house, bits of furniture suddenly started smashing - and a table flew through the window into the garden. Now they know that was Carrie's powers going overboard, but they had no way to connect the incidents back when they happened.
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147	* For the 2013 film, why does the wiki's page refer to Chris being portrayed more sympathetically? In what way is she sympathetic in that version? She's the eviler of her and Billy - even demanding Billy run Carrie down when they come across her after the prom - and is as psychotic as she is in the book. In the 2002 film, you could argue she's a little more sympathetic (Billy threatens to kill her, she tries to make him stop when he tries to run Carrie over). And why are they saying Mr. Hargenson is implied to be abusive? Because he raises his voice slightly when Chris is refusing to hand over her phone and thus dispute vital evidence they'll need if he's going to sue the school? Honestly, he seems to be perfectly reasonable - considering Chris lied to him that she didn't take part in the shower incident and he didn't know she'd filmed a video and uploaded it to [=YouTube=]. Looks more like perfectly reasonable anger to realizing she's just wasted his time. Chris doesn't even seem to be afraid of him at all (she just got up and walked out of the room instead of handing over the phone).
148	** In her initial incarnations and the novel, Chris was just an anus for no real reason, while in the 2013 vers, she's given something of a FreudianExcuse. In this case, seeing bits n' pieces about her home life makes her a bit sympathetic, as her situation with her parents wasn't much better than Carrie's situation with Margaret, but she's a still a bitch.
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150	* Why didn’t Sue go to the prom in the 2013 film? I don’t know how high school worked in the 70s (in the first film I recall Miss Collins tells Sue she can’t go without a date) or early 2000s but in 2013 it makes no sense. Yeah, she can’t go with her boyfriend, but there’s no reason she can’t go with her friends right? Her giving up her entire prom (which Chris says in the same film she’s been DREAMING ABOUT FOR YEARS) just because Tommy isn’t taking her in the modern age didn’t age well. I’ve never heard of a high school in 2013+ that won’t allow you to go without a date.
151	** If I remember correctly, Sue was pregnant and wasn't feeling well and, when she tried to intervene, she was kicked out.
152	** Because Sue is punishing herself. She's dealing with the guilt of how she treated Carrie and initially considered the detentions a good enough atonement. But Chris pushed some buttons and made her feel guilty for wanting to go to the prom - insinuating that Sue only did the detentions so she could go and not because she felt bad about Carrie. So Sue gives up the thing she has been "dreaming about" to make that her atonement. You seem to be confusing the order of events - Sue already agreed to go with Tommy, decides that she shouldn't go as her atonement, and asks Tommy to take Carrie to make it up to her (and because Tommy is the only boy she can guarantee will do what she says and treat Carrie nicely). It's not that she wasn't allowed to go - she chose not to. Miss Desjardin only throws her out because she assumes Sue is trying to cause trouble for Carrie.
153	** Minor detail about Sue going to prom without a date in 2013: my little sister went to a private Catholic school for girls and graduated in 2011. The school had a strict rule even then in 2007-2011 that girls who went to school dances had to have a date to go. Most of the time that was a boy from their "brother school", a private Catholic school for boys across town, but any teenage boy from another school was allowed to attend. This wasn't a small-town backwater setting either, this was a fairly large community in Southern California. So while it's highly unlikely, there is still the possibility there was some holdover rule from older times that would have prevented Sue from attending in any capacity.
154	** It could be a way to make sure it remains ''Carrie's night''. After all, even if Tommy took Carrie and not Sue, if Tommy and Sue are both there, well, there's no rule saying they can't have ''one'' dance together, right? Then maybe a second... a third... a fifth... and Carrie's left alone in the corner, feeling miserable and reminded no one actually likes her.
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156	* Why would people's first response be to laugh when Carrie gets covered in blood, to begin with? You'd think most people would be scared or disgusted if something like that occurred.
157	** The book says it was the kind of laughing that comes from shock. A lot of people do laugh when they're nervous so it was probably a mixture of that and the mean kids who did find it funny (Chris mentions she "set it up" with her friends, suggesting some of them knew it was going to happen).
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159	* In the book Norma said the reason people laughed is that "who would ever cry for Carrie" why would no one feel any compassion for a [[TheWoobie innocent girl who got completely humiliated in front of everyone]]? Is the town she lives in just [[WretchedHive that shitty?]]
160	** Everyone hates Carrie because they think she's weird. Stephen King took this directly from a girl he knew in his school who was bullied simply because she wore the same outfit all the time - and when she showed up wearing a new one, they bullied her even more. People also have no idea just how awful her home life is since Margaret and Carrie are recluses. The reader and the viewer feel sorry for Carrie because we know what she's been through, whereas the teens and faculty don't know or don't care.
161	** It wasn't that "no one ''would''" it was that "no one '''COULD'''" because they were so shocked.
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163	* In the 1976 version why didn't Sue just yell "Carrie, look out!" or something when she noticed the bucket? There are several minutes between her noticing and Chris pulling the cord, and even though Sue didn't know the bucket was full of pig blood, you'd think if she saw a bucket right above Carrie with a string attached, she'd realize ''something'' bad was going to happen.
164	** Well possibly she might have thought it was a bucket of glitter and confetti to be pulled showering the winners. It's only until she checks that Billy and Chris are hiding under the stage that she realizes something bad is about to happen - and at that point, Miss Collins is already pulling her away and thinking she's causing trouble. Sue can be seen protesting and trying to explain, but Miss Collins doesn't want to listen to her and is already throwing her out (she's also a hardy adult who teaches PE versus a dainty teenager who isn't particularly fit, so a struggle is harder for Sue to win). And in that situation, there's a whole gym full of people either clapping or speaking, so it might have been hard for Sue to make herself heard. Sue was also caught off guard and flustered, so she might not have been able to think on her feet in the shock of the moment.
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166	* Right after the prom scene in the 1976 version we see a firetruck drive past Carrie (who's still covered in blood) without [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight even slowing down.]] Why? They don't know exactly what happened yet, so for all, they know she could be badly hurt and it's her blood she's covered in.
167	** That would be a judgment call on the part of the driver. They're dispatched to put out a fire in a high school gym at a prom, with potentially hundreds of kids burning to death. If they stop for one girl walking fine on her own, that could be another dozen lives lost (it only takes three minutes for the fire to spread through a small room). Or in the darkness of the night, they might not have seen the blood.
168	** There are two remnants from what happens in the book as well - the first is that Carrie drained all the water from every fire hydrant in the town, so if she did so here then that truck is from another town and therefore it's even more urgent. The second is that when Carrie's powers activate at the prom, everyone suddenly knows she's behind it. Everyone in town has a psychic link with her of some kind. So the driver may well have known Carrie was responsible. This may apply in this version too since Chris and Billy seem to know that Carrie is behind it.
169	** They're firefighters, not paramedics. Their job and main priority is to put out fires, not tend to the injured. The (apparently) injured girl on the road can be tended to by the ambulances who are almost certainly racing to the disaster as well.
170	** Paramedic cross-training between firefighters and medical services didn't become U.S. common practice outside of California until the end of the '70s, and most small-town fire departments before then were miniscule and/or mostly part-time volunteers. Unless she'd been visibly on fire, the firetruck's crew probably wouldn't have a clue how to help her.
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172	* Why exactly does Sue sneak into the Prom in the 1976 version? It's been made clear she wasn't in on the plot, but this bit doesn't make much sense otherwise. Was it just to see if Carrie and Tommy were ok? And why did she sneak out at exactly 8? Why is that time important?
173	** Out of the universe, it's a way to keep Sue involved in the third act since the town's destruction is AdaptedOut. In-universe, she possibly wanted to see Carrie have her moment. She goes out at 8 I think because the prom starts at 7 and the king and queen voting would happen after an hour or so.
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175	* What's the deal with the weird orgasm-like moans Margaret makes as she dies in the 1976 version? Is the implication supposed to be she's some kind of CombatSadomasochist or the like?
176	** Piper Laurie felt that Margaret was glad to die because she was hopefully finally meeting God or Jesus.
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178	* Minor question, but in the book, it mentions that Margaret [[PokeThePoodle won't let Carrie have a pillow, so she has to just sleep with her head on the bed.]] What exactly is the point of this detail? Is it just another reminder that Margaret is an abusive nutjob?
179	** Yep pretty much. Margaret thinks menstruation only happens to bad girls, so she's cherry-picking her religious instructions. Perhaps a pillow is seen as an unnecessary luxury or comfort.
180	** There's also mention made of Margaret once finding a picture of a boy under Carrie's pillow, which was tied into why Carrie was no longer allowed one.
181	** Not to mention [[UnusualEuphemism dirtypillows]].
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183	* Can anyone make out what it says on the cover of the weird book (the "Eve was weak" one Maragaret is reading to Carrie at the beginning.) The back seems to say "Leather book as a way of cooperating with you(?)" which makes no sense.
184
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186	* In every version except the book, Carrie takes a bath to wash the blood off. Why not just take a shower instead? Taking a bath just means she has to stay in contact with the blood longer.
187	** She might just be exhausted from having to walk all the way home from the gym. While obviously not a huge distance, since she walked home from school at the start, the fact that she spent the night on her feet even before using her powers (which the book says burns up a lot of calories) would mean she might just want to sit and soak.
188	** After everything that's happened, all the humiliation and rage and destruction and death, a long, warm, relaxing bath may be exactly what Carrie feels she needs. May also be a kind of anti-BookEnds. The film begins with Carrie taking a shower, ends with her taking a bath. After everything that's happened in between, she's in a different place and is a different person. Also, given what happens in that shower scene, she may be low-key phobic of showers now.
189	----
190	* In the 2013 version of the shower scene, why does Chris initially [[PetTheDog helpfully give Carrie a tampon]] and helpfully tell her it's just her period, and only get mean when Carrie accidentally gets blood on her hand. Considering Chris is a [[{{Jerkass}} complete asshole]] throughout the rest of the film. this seems really out of character.
191	** That's Chris being passive aggressive. She was still mocking her.
192	** EvenEvilHasStandards. Chris was an opportunistic bully but she had no interest in targeting Carrie until Carrie gave her an opening. Chris only ever escalates her behaviour in retaliation for (perceived) wrongs. Carrie gets period blood on her, so she films a humiliating video of her. Carrie’s video gets her banned from prom, so she pranks her with pig’s blood on prom night. Carries’s ensuing rampage kills her friends, so she tries to run her down. In a way, this is what makes Chris more fascinating than your standard bully who torments victims for fun. Her ugly side only comes out when opportunity strikes, after which she doubles down with progressively worse acts until she’s a complete sadist.
193	*** Some part of it was prolly so she could pick on her later, while the other part of it, might have been something to do with unspoken "girl code", that is, if you have anyone needing a tampon or pad, you provide them one if you have any on you.
194	----
195	* Given ''Carrie'' takes place before Memorial Day (the last Monday of May), I have a lot of questions about the versions where English is the class being featured in the medium. Since ''Carrie'' is set for the last weeks of Senior year, wouldn't the English classes be on Senior Presentations? Knowing my experiences as a Senior, the 12th grade English classes spend the last semester working on a research project which is required for Graduation. Plus, since the book and movies are set in the last weeks of May, wouldn't some of the students be presenting their topics on the day and time of their choice?
196	** That school may well not have had "Senior Presentations" to begin with. I attended a small high school in the mid-80s and there was no such thing there. Hardly universal.
197	----
198	* In the 2013 version Carrie is visibly terrified when the Principal mentions they will have to tell her mother about the shower incident. Why do neither he nor Ms.Desjardin (who are portrayed as the [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure reasonable authority figures]] in all the different versions) do anything? It makes some sense in the original book/movie (made during TheSeventies), but in 2013 most states (including Maine) have mandatory reporting laws if teachers think a child is being abused, so it's kind of hard to swallow.
199	** Actually in that film, when Margaret is leading Carrie to the car, you can see Miss Desjardin watching them. So she did notice something, and maybe was planning to keep a closer eye on Carrie in case that's what was happening. If her backstory is the same as in the book here, she's still on her first year at this school, so she doesn't know Carrie well enough.
200
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202	* In the 2002 film, would Tommy's parents have grounds to sue Mr. Hargensen in civil court considering his daughter killed their son? Unlike in the books where it takes a while for the investigation to put together the timeline of events and confirm Chris was the instigator, Jackie Talbot and the boys involved with the pig slaughtering immediately confess when it turns out a security camera caught them. Not helping their case is the detectives make it clear that their initial lies saying that they didn't know a punk named Billy wouldn't look good to a judge. They point fingers at Chris and Billy while clearing Sue's name, saying Sue wasn't involved. Given the survivors recount that they saw Tommy collapse when the bucket hit him, and that Chris was responsible, that sounds like a civil lawsuit for manslaughter. Would a judge agree to hear the case?
203	** They would indeed have grounds to sue. Possibly that's ground that would have been covered in the series.
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205	* Why does Chris want revenge on Carrie if Ms.Collins/Desjardin was the one who banned her from the prom (indeed, Carrie didn't even tell on her or anything)? Is she just '''that''' petty?
206	** Yes. Chris repeatedly blames Carrie for all the trouble she's got herself into, because she's such a narcissist that she can't see the reality. And really, what happens in the book and latter two adaptations is first Chris does try to get revenge on Miss Desjardin - she tries to get her father to threaten a lawsuit if she isn't allowed to go to prom and Miss Desjardin isn't fired immediately. That blows up in her face because the principal threatens to counter sue on behalf of all the other students Chris has bullied. It possibly wasn't just about Carrie at this point, but rather Chris herself. Her ego had been damaged massively and she had to have the last word, so she likely thought that Carrie would be easier to get back and possibly less likely to get revenge on her.
207	** VillainByProxyFallacy. Ms Desjardin was in a position of power to Chris and Carrie (seemingly) wasn’t. So it was far easier for Chris to project her resentment onto her instead, especially once she saw Carrie looking at prom dresses for a prom Chris couldn’t attend.
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209	* In the 1976 version, why does Margaret have like 100 candles lit when Carrie comes home? Is it some kind of weird religious ritual or something?

Context Headscratchers / Carrie