Carrie (1976)

Brian De Palma’s 1976 film Carrie was based on Stephen King’s 1974 novel, the film was an American supernatural horror film written by Lawrence D. Cohen. 

The opening scene starts of as a tracking shot using the effect of the male gaze. The male gaze happens when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may linger over the curves of a woman's body, for instance. The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as for the viewer who is watching the film.

Carrie White is the main character in the film, she comes off as being a shy young girl who appears to be lonely and doesn’t make friends easily so she keeps to herself. As the film progresses we begin to pick up on her background and that she's religious and innocent so her character could symbolise purity, also her surname links into that symbolism as its Carrie ‘White’ and that connotes innocence and being pure which is a contrast to the other girls if you compare the two.

This first scene begins in a school playground and we observe a large group of young women, they’re presented in two ways, first from a heterosexual males point of view- as sexual objects and secondly as bestial creatures, acting mean and pack like as they clearly make evident to the viewer that ‘Carrie’ is an outcast in comparison to everyone else around her, we notice this because she had a ball thrown at her head. This scene follows through to a shower scene which has evidently used the male gaze as the camera acts as a voyer, it pans across a girls changing room, the camera then lands on Carrie White washing herself in a sexual manner which is emphasised by the slow romantic soundtrack playing as this scene is going on and each shot of her lasts  seconds and they each dissolve into each other which adds a soft effect, which also feeds into the heterosexual males obsession. There's an over sexualisation of this certain character as she's innocent which then contrasts to when she’s struck with fear from realising her menstrual blood, the scene begins to lack purity because it comes gory from the blood. This scene links to Todorov's theory we can apply it here from when Carrie realising she's bleeding but unaware its her period this stage is known as the ‘disruption’. After her embarrassing incident in the shower her fellow class mates/pupils begin to tease Carrie ruthlessly.

In the ‘Horror Reader’ Barbara Creed states: 

‘In Carrie, the film’s most monstrous act occurs when the couple are drenched in pigs blood, which symbolises menstrual blood in the terms setup by the film. Women are referred to as ‘pigs’, and the pigs blood runs down carries body at a moment of intense pleasure, just as her own menstrual blood ran down her legs during a similar pleasurable moment in the shower. Here, women's blood and pig’s blood flow together signifying horror, shame and humiliation’.

-The use of blood in this film reinforces the genre of horror because its conventional

-'Carrie' doesn't wear make-up which makes her appear more innocent and fragile when comparing her to the other girls which is why shes the outcast

-During the shower scene, the director makes it evident to the viewer that Carrie is taking a long hot shower because she has great pleasure in doing so (sexual connotation)

-A shower suggests something that isn't clean and that indicates washing away sins or evidence and this foreshadows what later unfolds, Washing something off is conventional in horror films as the villain washes away evidence after committing  a crime