O, Merciful Heaves!

carrie is almost explicitly about the cycles of abuse. it is almost explicitly about how women and girls are taught to reproduce the patriarchy. it cannot be isolated from either message.

it shows cruel teenagers not as a random whacky plot point but instead to highlight that we are taught to mock other girls for not being fuckable; lest we ourselves be considered not-fuckable. we will eat our own kind to survive. nobody helps her because to help carrie would be to turn against the patriarchy.

carrie's mother has experienced abuse at the hands of her husband and religion not as a "sad backstory" but instead because it lampshades her behavior when she then turns and abuses her daughter while citing that same religion. we are forced to ask the question: what is the difference between the patriarchy and religion? aren't they both systems of control? we often see mothers as being the "ultimate" in innocence and kindness - but this book challenges that narrative. abusive mothers exist, and and always have. abusive women exist and always have. white women, after all, love voting for donald trump.

men are almost absent from the book, but their presence lingers. it feels almost like the red mark made after a slap - the men do not have to be there; the women will continue to abide by the rules without question. it is a devastating, haunting condemnation of the notion of feminine fragility. it accurately asserts that women are cruel, are capable, are power-hungry - and often are hiding behind perceived innocence to mask that cruelty. the abuse carrie experiences rests in a doubled betrayal: it is because of another woman. the supposed "sisterhood" is revealed to be thin, a guise of equanimity that is only offered to the "right" type of girl/woman.

many of us were not the right type of girl.

to go back on these main and obvious themes of the book - to rewrite the mother as some caring and sad creature is... a curious choice. i can't explain it, but it feels almost like censorship to me. it refuses a deeper meaning of the book (and one that questions the patriarchy) in favor of the incredibly thin plot of "what if scary girl had scary powers." i literally don't even know what level of misogyny it is that we have to defang everyone around her in order to tell her story. i'm baffled by it.

in the era of trad wives endlessly posting abusive content of their children online - the adaptation had plenty of meat to modernize her mother. in the era of AI and revenge porn and social media - there's a huge amount of space for a competent writer to play around in. after all, if the abuse is recorded and posted to media - and as the audience we're watching it without interfering - the story is now about us. it asks us who we are comfortable bullying.

it's okay if you feel like you don't have the writing chops to talk about how many religions are abusive and tacitly enable domestic violence. it's okay if you feel like you couldn't write a believable teenage bully. it's okay if you're just interested in "scary girl has scary powers."

Elric