Identify and analyse its importance within the history of the genre (Horror Film Carrie) - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages This essay will examine all of these themes. The focus of this essay will be on how Carrie influenced popular films and was influenced by them, focusing on the possible queer themes, as well as the themes regarding how the feminine heroine/monster is portrayed. Feminist and queer literature theories will be utilize to understand these aspects of the film. Also included will be how Stephen King’s career was affected by the movie. One of the ways that Carrie has influenced the cinema and the theatre, according to Elliott (2007) is through queer appropriations. These queer appropriations run not only through the original film, but through the various parodies and the video art that has been influenced by the film. Elliott (2007) states that Carrie, the main character, has much in common with the experience of the gay male – she is bullied, like many gay males are. Then, when Carrie exacts vengeance upon her tormentors, this plays into many gay males’ fantasies regarding how they, too, would like to make their own tormentors pay. Carrie as a film also echoes the gay male experience, in that the main character is coming out, in a sense, in that she is revealing her sexuality to her mother, and she is shamed and guilted for doing so, which is the experience of many gay males. Therefore, Carrie, as a character, is aligned with the gay male experience, and, according to Elliott (2007), the images and the appropriation in Carrie are the themes which are in the different theatrical, film and video appropriations of the movie. These appropriations are drag versions, which are akin to Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) in their structure and musicality; comic book and horror film references; and satires. Elliott (2007) states that the film is especially ripe for parodying for the gay male audience, because of its lighting, melodramatic score and music, colour-coding, and campy overacting from Piper Laurie and Nancy Allen. Therefore, the drag Carrie parodies capitalize on these elements. Such parodies include Carrie: the Musical, which was a Royal Shakespeare Production and a royal flop; an audience participation Carrie, in which the members of the audience were given tampons and encouraged to shout ‘plug it up!; a drag musical called A Very Special Facts of Life/Carrie, in which men in drag play the parts of the Facts of Life girls and Carrie, who is a new girl in the dormitory; and Scarrie – the Musical, which had a rock ‘70s score. Bathrick (1977) states that Carrie has influence in that it changed the way that the cinema approached the female subjects, particularly with regards to their sexuality. In the case of Carrie, her burgeoning sexuality was the cause of destruction of the community, and the film introduced the possibility of new ways to explain “the rationalization of life and the destruction of community,” by using the nature of women. Since Carrie’s telekinetic abilities are used as a metaphor that are connected to her physiological functions and her emerging sexuality. DePalma has managed manifest and connect fear and self-hate with female sexuality, and the film also implicitly states that there cannot be a community among women because ...Download file to see next pagesRead More