YMMV / Carrie

• Adaptation Displacement: Most people have only heard of the book as a result of the De Palma film despite Stephen King being one of the most popular and prolific authors in modern pop culture. The other adaptations have taken a few cues from the first one, such as Carrie wearing a pink dress to the prom (it's actually red in the book), causing her destruction from the stage (she runs out of the gym first in the book), Chris having a Beta Bitch who rigs the prom ballots (Tommy and Carrie legitimately win in a tie-breaker), and Margaret being killed after Billy and Chris instead of before. Many fans also mistake adaptation changes the film made for actual book canon, such as Carrie only imagining the students laughing at her, and the gym teacher slapping Chris. King himself doesn't seem to mind, having stated that he regards the book as one of his lesser works and De Palma's film as an all-around improvement on it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In nearly every adaptation, everyone laughing at Carrie once the prank occurs. The book mentions that at least some people laughed purely out of shock, while others were legitimately amused by it. The film versions can be more ambiguous, to the point that one might wonder if some are laughing at all. Miss Collins in the 1976 version is nothing but motherly to Carrie throughout the film, so her busting out laughing when she's humiliated (coupled with the kaleidoscope camera effect and the echoes) seems more like a result of Carrie's state of mind. It's worth noting that in the book, we get an excerpt from Tina and Norma's account where they confirm most people were laughing.
  • People can't seem to figure out what Sue's real motivations were, and Sue doesn't even seem sure herself. Of particular note is that in the book, she tells one of her friends about her motives "to make sure the story stays straight." Even Stephen King himself doubts that Sue was 100% sympathetic in her role as The Atoner. Many viewers of the first film thought she was in on the prank. The 2013 film really plays up the notion that she wants to punish herself rather than give Carrie a Pet the Dog moment.
  • Sue's memoir seems to paint her in the best possible light, saying that she only wanted to help Carrie and simply didn't think through the consequences of her actions. This can be seen as either an honest confession of her role in the disaster or as her trying to absolve herself of all blame.
  • How intentional was Carrie's rampage? There is evidence that she was a genuinely good girl who snapped after one too many humiliations and evidence that she was always a vengeful person whose actions were premeditated.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: There really was (and still, just barely, is) a Christian sect opposed to all forms of sexual intercourse founded by a woman who went through a traumatic miscarriage. They were called the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, more commonly known as "The Shakers" because of their sacred dancing. The sect came to prominence in the 1780s and still exists today. Some might think that they would have quickly disappeared for obvious reasons, but they supplemented their non-replicating members through adoption and converts, and (unlike Margaret White) gave young adults they had raised a choice between staying and making a vow of celibacy or leaving with a donkey and some money to get a start in life. This is just one aspect in which the Shakers are/were unlike the character they may have inspired: since they were founded by a woman who believed herself the second coming of Christ, and all property is held communally, their founding principles insist that all believers are completely equal, not only in terms of gender equality but racially, at all levels of Church hierarchy. Besides these surprisingly progressive views, they are also responsible for a slew of technological innovations (including many we take for granted), because their simple communal lifestyle demanded they manufacture and sell competitive goods to survive — and because while they believe in hard work, they also think work should be easy, a gift and a joy. Hands to Work, Hearts to God.
• Angst? What Angst?: Sue's admission in her memoir that she no longer feels sorry for Tommy's death is more than a little shocking. The only justification is that she wasn't there when it happened, and Carrie's Mind Rape may have had something to do with it. Carrie actually seems more upset by it than she does, even though Sue knew him a lot longer.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The notorious 1988 musical adaptation was brought down most of all by how the story simply wasn't suited to the format, a downer tale of high school bullying that ends in mass slaughter with only a single character left alive for a limp final note. This especially affected the central set-piece of Carrie destroying the prom; the pig's blood prank that sets it off was done by Billy simply pouring a bucket of raspberry jam onto her head, followed by the actors all writhing around and desperately trying to give the impression of a level of destruction that is not possible to stage in live theater. The show was also noted for doing a terrible job of establishing Carrie's telekinetic powers for anyone not familiar with the novel or film, with her only breaking a light bulb in the opening scene and pinning her mother into a chair while opening up a portal to hell (no, really). Even an attempt to revamp the show in 2012 with a greatly revised script and several song changes didn't get much of anywhere, though it was at least seen as better use of the story's potential, and got the creators willing to license it out, unlike the original version.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: In the book, Carrie's prom dress was red. In the 1976 version and every other adaptation after that, it's pale pink. Justified, as it makes the blood she is doused in stand out more.
• Broken Base: The Scrapbook Story parts of the book are fairly divisive, with some readers liking them for adding a lot of information and a sense of realism, while others feel they aren't necessary and distract from the main story, especially toward the end where they keep interrupting Carrie's rampage.
• Cargo Ship: Billy seems more attached to his car than anything else. Given who the author is, it can easily bring Christine to mind.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • For many, Carrie's rampage is less nightmarish and more a satisfying comeuppance scene for some of fiction's most loathsome abusers and bullies. Others have even said that they wished the bullies were punished more. This may have been part of the appeal in writing it, as King was thinking of two former classmates who were bullied. It didn't help that one girl died during an epileptic seizure and the other was Driven to Suicide.
  • In addition, Carrie killing Chris and Billy. Chris is a Dirty Coward in all versions for running after she killed Tommy, and not helping is that in a few she actively encourages Billy to run Carrie down. Cue one Death Glare from Carrie, the car stopping in the middle of going 80 MPH, and KABOOM! Carrie either knocks it into a wall or a gas station, causing it to explode. Some icing on the cake is Chris maybe having a Heel–Face Door-Slam as she begs Billy not to murder Carrie and is helpless for what follows.
  • No matter the version, Chris is pegged as the primary instigator for the prank, with Billy also investigated posthumously. The police always determine that Billy slaughtered a pig, and helped Chris set up the buckets. They also clear Sue and Tommy after finding evidence that they're innocent, even if the public still vilifies them. There's some justice that Chris's memory and reputation are forever tarnished, especially since she killed Tommy and was indirectly responsible for Carrie's breakdown.
• Common Knowledge: Carrie is often misremembered as an ugly or average looking character who receives egregious mounts of Adaptational Attractiveness in the films. While she is described as chubby, Tommy's narration from when he asks her to the prom states that is actually pretty in an unconventional way, with even Carrie herself noting that if she simply stopped eating as much chocolate, that would take care of her acne problems. She very much gets a She Cleans Up Nicely moment at the prom.
• Creepy Awesome: Carrie herself. She's messed up, has very imaginative vengeful fantasies (such as imagining her bullies being torn apart by rats), and she's terrifying when she snaps, but many readers like her for exactly these reasons.
• Crossover Ship: Kurt Wagner (X-Men's Nightcrawler)/Carrie White is surprisingly popular. There's even a fanmade franchise where they're the main pairing.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Carrie gets this a lot. While she is the victim of abuse that would make anyone snap, she crossed the Moral Event Horizon when she happily murdered most of her school over a prank that two people pulled. She then sought to destroy her entire town, tactically even rigging things so that the fire hydrants would first go dry and prevent her fire from being put out. Carrie is a Tragic Villain with sympathetic motives, but she is first and foremost the Villain Protagonist. It helps that the film adaptations make her even more sympathetic, omitting her internal violent revenge fantasies and portraying her as a good girl who's desperate to fit in while implying that she's snapped and lost control of her powers. The 2013 film, which depicts Carrie's revenge as premeditated, is closest to how it was in the book.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Principal Henry Grayle in the book, due to being a Reasonable Authority Figure who stands up for Carrie and puts Chris's father in his place.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Carrie living at the end is a popular plot in fanfiction, usually with Sue helping her through her trauma post prom. Some even take it a step further and make it so she never kills anyone and instead turns to Sue for comfort.
  • Sue taking Carrie to prom instead of Tommy is very popular in fanfiction, especially Sue/Carrie romance stories.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • If this was set in the Marvel Universe, either Magneto would find out about Carrie White and approach her as a prime candidate for The Brotherhood, or Professor Xavier would detect her burgeoning telekinetic power as she goes berserk at the prom and scramble The X-Men to get her under control before things get out of hand.
  • Some fics have set the story in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Phil Coulson becoming a mentor to Carrie.
    • Really, most fanfics that cross Carrie over with another property have the basic plot "(insert character here) helps Carrie with her problems and becomes her mentor/friend/love interest."
  • The book ends with a woman writing a letter to her sister about her young daughter who also has telekinetic powers. What would her life be like in comparison to Carrie's, especially since her mother seems to be loving rather than abusive? How would other people treat her in the years after the prom disaster, knowing she had the same powers as Carrie? The 2002 adaptation ended with Carrie surviving and moving to Florida, and by all indications, the plot would've been about precisely this.
• Fanon: Sue is often imagined as being a straight-A student and hard worker, since she became a writer later in life and dated Tommy, who was a straight-A student. This might be partly due to the film, where she's shown helping him with his homework. The book only says that she's well behaved as opposed to an overachiever.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: There is not a lot of shipping in the fandom for the book or its three film adaptations, but what little there is seems to be focused on Carrie/Sue rather than Sue/Tommy. This is mainly due to Sue being The Atoner for her part in bullying Carrie, to the point of turning in herself and her friends, as well as having Tommy take Carrie to the Prom. This only increased following the release of the 2002 and 2013 film adaptations, which both up the Les Yay aspect between the two. As well as the former seeing Sue reviving Carrie and the two heading to Florida together after the prom massacre.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Carrie deconstructs the Bully Hunter revenge story by showing one victim lashing out at the end, destroying nearly everyone with her at her high school and creating a Dying Town. Stephen King in his autobiography On Writing called Carrie a female version of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine killers. ^note  Though this is incorrect, as despite the widespread belief at the time that Harris and Klebold were social outcasts, they actually had a healthy social circle and their stated motives had nothing to do with bullying, and they were even reported to have been bullies themselves.
  • It's a passing thought of Carrie's expressed with one line in the novel, but it carries weight:
  "(please let it be a happy ending)"
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Sue complaining about the bad biopic of Carrie (see below), considering the book itself got three very faithful adaptations that were all quite well received.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The book is set in Maine, there's a character named Susan, and there's another character who, in the 1976 film, had her name changed to Miss Collins. In 1996, Maine would elect a Senator named Susan Collins.
  • The book has Sue complaining about a movie being made about the events of the Black Prom that turned it into The Theme Park Version of the story, where Carrie is a one-dimensional villain. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie got Oscar nominations for the eventual film adaptation of this, despite the horror genre rarely getting love from the Academy. What's more, the film adaptations, if anything, give Carrie some Adaptational Heroism, scrubbing down her more murderous and antisocial thoughts from the book and portraying her as a put-upon loner who was pushed too far.
  • Sissy Spacek actually was crowned the homecoming queen when she was in high school.
  • After you've heard Austin Powers use the slang word "dirtypillows," you'll never be able to take it seriously (if indeed you ever did), even in the chilling tone used by Piper Laurie as Margaret White when she says it.
  • Christine Hargensen would not be the only Stephen King villain with that first name, or even the most famous. Not to mention she dies in a car.
• Hollywood Homely: The book averts this describing Carrie as looking the part of the loser being chunky and covered in acne. She's said to have been a cute child by a former neighbor who — when seeing a picture of her as a teenager — remarks "what did that woman do to her?" But then again Carrie herself notes that if she stopped eating as much chocolate and took a little better care of herself, she would look prettier. Tommy also finds her pretty in an unusual sort of way, suggesting she isn't as ugly as you'd expect. The De Palma film avoids this as never once is Carrie suggested as ugly just incredibly socially inept and shy. The TV film goes out of its way to make Bettis's Carrie looking freakish thereby avoiding this trope. The 2013 film plays this trope dead straight however.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The climax of the story is known to everyone at this point. It should be noted that it's not really a spoiler in the book — which has a non-linear structure and the reader knows from the start that something bad happened at the prom.
  • To a lesser extent, the De Palma film is notorious for The Stinger being especially terrifying, meaning that many first-time viewers will be on guard for the Jump Scare.
• Les Yay: After the shower incident, Sue becomes completely fixated on Carrie, despite barely knowing her, to the point that she thinks of her while having sex with Tommy. Carrie also mentions that she thinks Sue's legs are pretty.
• Love to Hate: Chris and Billy are two of the most vile bullies in fiction, but their scenes are fascinating to read as a result. It's been argued that the modern Alpha Bitch trope as we know it has been heavily influenced by Chris; especially Nancy Allen's portrayal in the 1976 film.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The term "dirty pillows" has become a satirical euphemism for breasts, used primarily to make fun of prudish Moral Guardians.
  • Carrie is such a memetic woobie that someone made a shirt saying "Carrie White deserved better".
• Misaimed Fandom: Downplayed. Many people will describe Carrie as the hero of the book and completely morally pure, and it can be easy to root for her revenge due to the sheer level of abuse in her life, despite her rampage being portrayed in-universe as a tragedy. This was at least partly intentional as Stephen King stated that he saw her revenge as justified, saying the society around her is the real evil in the story, while the films portray her as being Too Good for This Sinful Earth until she's pushed too far. That said, she's still a dark character as the book shows her to have had violent revenge fantasies for years, and she enjoys killing her classmates and most of her town over a prank that only a few people pulled (with Sue implying that even the bullies were still kids who didn't necessarily deserve their fates) with this review noting that her rampage seems just as horrifying as it is cathartic.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Chris and Billy cross it with the pig's blood prank, which not only ruins the happiest moment of Carrie's life but ends up killing Tommy as well. Chris may have even crossed it before the story started, when she stuffed a firework into another girl's shoe and almost blew two of her toes off... because the girl had a harelip.
  • The prank is a personal crossing for Chris and Billy, but the rest of Carrie's tormentors were probably over the line long before that. The book mentions that a group of them subjected her to such vicious harassment at a summer camp (at one point nearly drowning her) that she had to go home in tears a week early. By the time of the prank, it's stated that no one was even capable of sympathizing with Carrie after so many years of tormenting her. And not only does everyone laugh at the prank, but one of the bullies even trips Carrie as she tries to exit the gym in tears, which only makes everyone laugh harder. You can see why Carrie snaps.
  • Margaret probably crossed it long before the story begins (probably the second she first locked Carrie in a prayer closet, actually), but when she decides to murder her daughter, you know there's absolutely no hope of her ever being redeemed. In the novel and the 2013 version, it's made clear that she almost murdered her when she was a baby — the moment she first showed signs of her powers.
  • Carrie may have crossed it in the book by not just murdering her classmates, but burning down most of the town with her powers. While killing Chris and Billy was justified since Billy tried to run her down, many of her victims who had nothing to do with the prank either died, got permanently maimed, or lost their children. This may have been unintentional, as King stated that he saw the town as corrupt and that Carrie wasn't in full control of her actions, but the book doesn't fully convey this.
• Narm:
  • Miss Desjardin still slapping Carrie in the 2002 and 2013 films, which is clearly just a carryover from a time period where it wasn't an audaciously fireable offense. Sure, there was no one else around, and she does at least apologize in the 2013 film, but she still comes across as particularly out-of-date for even considering using violence on a student in the 21st century, and yet isn't depicted as particularly abnormal for it.
  • Billy's car is described as having a "pink fuzz-covered steering wheel." Due to the lack of punctuation, it's possible to imagine the steering wheel itself being pink, which creates a hilarious mental image.
  • One of the Scrapbook Story excerpts describes, in a completely professional and serious tone, how Tommy's classmates referred to him as "a hell of a good shit."
• Narm Charm: The 2002 blood spill is a little narmy considering how much of it there is. But it still did its job and audiences were scared regardless.
• One-Scene Wonder: Chris's father only appears in one scene, but it sure is memorable.
• One True Threesome: There is a large fandom for shipping Carrie/Sue/Tommy together, due to Sue and Tommy being the Official Couple while a lot of fans ship both with Carrie individually. It helps that Sue spends most of the story trying to make up for bullying Carrie and actually convinces Tommy to take Carrie to the prom.
• Padding: According to Stephen King, the book's Scrapbook Story elements were put in at the insistence of his publisher to pad the story to novel length.
• Realism-Induced Horror: While the telekinesis aspects of Carrie are firmly grounded in fantasy, the school bullying aspects are very much not. People like Chris Hargensen and Billy Nolan exist in real life, and their behavior was based on things that Stephen King saw as a high school teacher. If anything, with the attention on bullying in recent years, this aspect of the story has become scarier as time goes on.
• Rooting for the Empire: Carrie gets this a lot. Between the horrific abuse she puts up with, her powers, and her Creepy Awesome personality, this is pretty much inevitable. It helps that most of her victims are either not fleshed out all that much, or completely and utterly loathsome. The film adaptations take it further by limiting the scope of her rampage and making her overall more sympathetic in her portrayal.
• Self-Fanservice: A lot of fanartists do this to Carrie with many giving her a much larger bust and figure and removing the acne she has in the book. However, this is usually a reaction to the Adaptational Attractiveness she receives in the movies and how she's treated In-Universe.
• Signature Scene: The prom rampage, to the degree that all posters for adaptations will have Carrie in her blood-stained prom dress featured on there.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • A number of Carrie's bullies are mentioned by name after the shower scene, but get little focus or development after that. A notable example is Rhonda Simard, as the line describing her death is the first time she's ever mentioned.
  • The townspeople in general get little focus until Carrie snaps, where they suddenly become viewpoint characters. Had they gotten more focus throughout the story, it could either have made them more rounded characters or, if they were shown mistreating Carrie, made her rampage more understandable.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Due to how well known the story is, reading the book/watching the film can be a pretty sour experience. You know something terrible is coming (and it's really the main selling point of the story), so the few scenes where Carrie genuinely appears happy will always have a sense of dread over them. Even if you're not familiar with the story, being well-read enough to know what direction it's going in can dampen the mood. It doesn't help that almost every character is some degree of severely flawed, well-meaning but ineffectual, or flat-out evil. This extends to Stephen King himself admitting that he didn't like either Carrie or Sue Snell as characters, feeling that Carrie wasn't developed enough and that Sue's motives didn't make sense.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Sue has an inner narration that refers to her future as "fighting with desperate decorum to keep the niggers out of Kleen Korners". This refers to the integration and Fair Housing act of 1968 and the resulting "white flight" (ie, white people moving out of neighborhoods which were becoming more integrated) which continued into the early 1970s. From a more meta perspective, the way the school bullying and Carrie's abusive home life are handled in the story also counts as this. If it were set closer to the present day, Carrie would have been taken away from her abusive mother by social services, and the teachers wouldn't have turned nearly as much of a blind eye towards the rampant bullying.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While she isn't meant to be liked, Chris's death seems to be aiming for Alas, Poor Villain when her last thoughts are that she didn't want Carrie dead, but after everything she did to torture Carrie, it's doubtful that the reader will have any sympathy for her.
• Values Dissonance: The novel reflects the fact that it was written in the '70s. While the 1976 film does carry over some of that, things are updated in the more modern films.
  • While Carrie is meant to be sympathetic, the book also treats her as a danger to society and acts like being bullied turned her into a monster, as it's shown that she had violent revenge fantasies long before the prom, with Stephen King dubiously comparing her to the Columbine shooters (who were in fact bullies themselves). As bullying is taken much more seriously these days, portraying her as a budding mass murderer would not fly as well and would likely be seen as reinforcing negative stereotypes about real-life bullying victims. The films are better about this as they treat her more sensitively, portraying her as an innocent girl who just wants to fit in, and downplay how premeditated her rampage was.
  • In more modern remakes, Miss Desjardin doesn't slap Chris as she did in the 1976 film — these days, a teacher seen hitting a student like that would be fired on the spot. She gets away with slapping Carrie because the latter and her mother would be unlikely to complain.
  • The principal advises Chris's father that it's "about time for a trip to the woodshed" indicating that he's suggesting corporal punishment.
  • A teacher smoking in the principal's office (or anywhere on campus) would never be allowed at a modern school.
• Values Resonance: School bullying (particularly cyber-bullying) is now seen as a far greater issue than it was in The '70s, something that director Kimberly Peirce has repeatedly brought up in interviews.
• Wangst: Sue's inner monologue in the book makes it clear she's terrified of having an empty, meaningless life after high school and how utterly awful it will be.... which in her mind apparently means marrying her high school sweetheart and settling down to have a stable, normal, middle-class life. The shock! The horror! It comes off especially dissonant in comparison to Carrie's life which is shown to be a living hell every day and the bleak life spent living with her mother she imagines will happen after she graduates. Sue finally wises up at the end of the book and realizes all her worries about being a good little sheep living a bland life as "Suzie Cupcake, Head Cupcake of the Cupcake Brigade" is pretty meaningless in the face of her boyfriend and classmates being massacred while more people die as the town burns around her.
• The Woobie: A whole story full of them.
  • Carrie becomes a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, and the fact that she murders all her classmates and levels her entire town prevents her from being 100% sympathetic — but the sheer level of bullying and abuse she's had to put up with at school and home makes her such a tragic figure. It doesn't help that she makes an effort to fit in and no matter what she does, her classmates won't accept her. They can't even show sympathy when she's pranked again.
  • Sue spends most of her inner thoughts grappling with fears of what her future will be like — terrified of turning into a Stepford Smiler and having an empty life, in addition to the remorse she feels for having bullied Carrie. She tries to do something nice, and it blows up in her face. Then there's the Mind Rape Carrie performs on her at the end (although Sue allows this to make sure Carrie knows there was no malicious intent) and the implication she miscarried Tommy's baby. The 1976 film shows her being haunted by nightmares after the incident, and The Rage: Carrie 2 states that she spent some time in an asylum.
  • Tommy was a Nice Guy who loved Sue sincerely (Sue even states in her autobiography she believes it to be true) and showed Carrie the only good night of her life — only to end up humiliated in public thanks to petty bullying he had no part in (in the book, he's splashed with blood too) and dies carelessly when the bucket falls. If it hadn't, it's implied he would have told everyone off for laughing at Carrie again. To add insult to injury, he's then vilified.
  • Cora Simard, the mother of one of Carrie's classmates. The night of the prom, her daughter Rhonda burns to death and she discovers this while the town is exploding around her. She also has to witness Georgette Shyres burn right in front of her. In the transcript of her testimony, it's said they have to take a short recess because Cora is too distressed.
  • Miss Desjardin by the end. She's so guilt-stricken by not being able to help Carrie that she resigns from Ewen High School in disgrace. In the 2002 film, she gets an interview with the police where she talks about the losses — "half of them were kids I saw every day" while tearing up a donut they offered her; it doesn't help that Carrie left her hanging from a vent as the floor was electrified, and only sheer adrenaline kept Miss Desjardin hanging on until help arrived. And in the 2013 film, we see her in tears after she makes it out of the gym.

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