Fridge / Carrie

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As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

General

• Carrie's power is that she can carry things with her mind.
• Margaret gets labeled as Too Dumb to Live for mistreating Carrie when she knew her daughter had access to insanely powerful telekinesis. However, it can be interpreted that she was trying to make Carrie so afraid of her that she would forget that she even had powers — in a sense, trying to "squash it out of her."
• While this might not cross your mind initially, the primary, secondary, and tertiary protagonists and antagonists appear to be the opposite of each other if you think about it.
  • Carrie and Chris (primary protagonist and antagonist) are obvious — they are the outcast and the Alpha Bitch, respectively. Furthermore, in the '13 version, Chris' arc during the finale mirrors Carrie's. Just as Carrie had been driven over the edge by Chris' prank, Chris herself gets her pig blood moment upon witnessing Carrie's reaction to said prank, and especially after Carrie kills her boyfriend Billy. Chris becomes so blinded by rage and/or fear that she presses on with her effort to kill Carrie even though it's clear to anyone with any sense that she's doomed.
  • As for Sue and Margaret (secondary), Sue has been described as the "fairy godmother" to Carrie's Cinderella, while Margaret clearly covers the Wicked Stepmother aspect. While Sue tries to make up for her initial bullying of Carrie, Margaret harbors little to no remorse and even tries to kill Carrie. Also, in the 2013 version, Sue and Carrie apparently make some sort of peace shortly after Carrie kills her mother.
  • Lastly, there are Tommy and Billy (tertiary). Tommy's a Lovable Jock and a nice boyfriend to Sue, while Billy is a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk delinquent who is abusive to Chris. Also, both Sue and Chris respectively ask Tommy and Billy for favors during the prom involving Carrie (highlighted by the song "Do Me A Favor" in the musical, which is a sort-of counterpoint duet between the two couples). Sue asked Tommy to take Carrie to prom and give her a wonderful night, while Chris asked Billy to help with the prank that ruined the night for Carrie and, by extension, the town. Also, if you take Carrie's and Chris's differences into account, Billy and Chris are an Official Couple, while Tommy is essentially a romantic interest for Carrie, but they are hardly a couple.
• The pig blood dumping isn't just a particularly gross and horrible prank. It's also personally insulting to Carrie by mirroring her getting her period and bleeding in the shower at the start of the story (something the other girls in her class would likely be reminded of when they saw her covered in blood).

Books

• Chris is even worse than her film counterparts, and not just to Carrie. She put a firecracker in one girl's shoe! The principal mentions that there have been fourteen others that Chris bullied extensively to get their own file on the records (which he uses to shut down her father's attempted lawsuit). It makes even more sense why the girls would go along with her; if they stood up to her, then what would she do to them in response?
  • There's also the mob mentality as well. The rest of the girls were likely just caught up in the joke of it all. To them, it was just a harmless bit of fun. At their age, they couldn't possibly realize just how horrible it was until afterward. Sue probably wasn't the only one who went My God, What Have I Done?.
  • Sue says as much in her in-universe autobiography. She stresses over and over that "we were kids" and they had no idea the extent of what they were doing. Tommy shut it down when she tried that excuse on him, but then again Tommy made it clear he was also a kid and he didn't see Carrie as a problem.
• Carrie having telekinetic powers actually makes sense when you consider how much Stephen King's works reference each other. And this one is weird because the explanation comes two books later. In The Shining, people who "shine" are typically people who've been abused in some way.
• Carrie destroying the town in the book seems to be Disproportionate Retribution and it is; after all, not everyone knew about Margaret's fanaticism or the bullying until the investigations resolved. Many innocent parents had to host funerals instead of graduation parties, with some away on business trips. On the other hand, Carrie knows some of those people as her sewing customers, and not one person stood up for her or showed that they cared, even when her classmates tried to drown her at camp. Tommy was the exception, and he died next to her. Carrie saw a bunch of people who tried to claim they were good and dressed in pretty clothes, but they were ugly on the inside and wanted to destroy the lie that Chamberlain was a nice town with decent human beings. It's also why Carrie dies when Sue shows her she was innocent of the prank via Mind Rape; Carrie gets a Heel Realization that she killed a bunch of people who didn't deserve it.
• No one except the cops and teachers wants to point out that Carrie was a ticking time bomb that could have been prevented if one person had cared about a scared, abused teenager. Miss Desjardin and the vice-principal seem to agree on that point, but they resign because they feel that they utterly failed Carrie and their students. The investigators refuse to see Sue or Tommy as a scapegoat, unlike the public, pinpointing that Billy and Chris were the real culprits. Ordinary citizens, however, would rather not admit that they are capable of ignoring child abuse and near-murder bullying; it would force you to have an inner Heel Realization that you aren't a good person and are complicit in a broken society. Thus, it's easier to blame the dead and the living than look inward. Sue, for her part, refuses to adopt this notion because she doesn't want anyone vilifying Tommy, even in death.

Sissey Spacek and Chloe Moretz versions

• The 1976 film ends with a Jump Scare that seems like typical horror fare. With the context, however (Sue guilt-ridden over not being able to stop the prank and save Carrie, or to stop Carrie's resulting rampage, or to stop Tommy from getting killed as a result of said prank/rampage), it seems like the film is subtly implying that Sue is suffering from PTSD. The sequel gives a stronger implication of such with the revelation that Sue spent time in a psychiatric ward.
• After the release of the 2013 version, there has been a lot of debates around whether or not Chloe Grace Moretz was the right actress to play the role; many had as an argument that she was too pretty for the role. However, keep in mind that the 2013 film is a modern rewrite of the original Carrie story. In fact, this becomes a plot point, as Chris records the event where the group of girls bully Carrie in the girls' showers. Later, that video is put on YouTube. There was video proof that Chris bullied Carrie. Plus, the video is played during the big prank, after the pig blood is dropped on Carrie. Cyberbullying IS an aspect of today's bullying. What else? Well, bullying has become a big topic in schools, and we've had many examples of otherwise pretty teenage girls getting bullied. It doesn't just hit girls who are below the standards of beauty, now it can make any girl suffer, regardless of their appearance. In a way, this modernized remake also modernized that aspect: Any girl could fall victim to bullying, and so Carrie could be played by a good-looking actress, exactly because those things aren't unheard of anymore.
  • Moreover, the 2013 version strongly implies that it was Carrie's social awkwardness, lack of knowledge of things everyone takes for granted (such as menstruation) and being branded a religious fundamentalist because of her mother that led to her bullying, rather than her appearance. These in turn were very much the result of being raised by Margaret. Also, some students are shown to treat her well, such as the male student in the library who showed her how to use the computer when she was researching on telekinesis.
  • As stunningly beautiful as Chloe Moretz is, she plays Carrie's painful shyness and social awkwardness so well it's easy to believe kids would pick on her, for no other reason than that she doesn't conform to their ideas of how a person should behave. There's also a very subtle implication that Chris' main problem with Carrie in the remake is that Chris is jealous of Carrie's looks, since she could be stunningly beautiful if she put minimal effort into it (and if her mother would let her), while Chris looks more like a Snookie wannabe. (A behind the scenes feature on the DVD mentions that Chris's hair, makeup and costumes were deliberately designed to make her look as artificial and processed as possible)
• The film does a pretty good job of illustrating that Chris is the only one who really has anything against Carrie personally. (Notice how the other students all clap for her and are genuinely happy when she is voted Prom Queen. Also, no one other than Chris objects to being given detention for hurting her with the locker room prank, not even Chris' own followers.) So why does everyone in the girls locker room participate in the locker room prank? Because Chris was doing it. This is the Alpha Bitch we're talking about, de facto head of the student body and social queen, capable of destroying your good name with a single word. They didn't want to hurt Carrie, but no one wanted to be the one who didn't go along with Chris. This kind of peer pressure is also how Real Life bullies gain followers too.
• In the 2013 film, Carrie actively spares those who were nice to her (aside from the guy who helped her in the library - but that's because he's still filming her, on autopilot, and triggering Carrie's memories of the shower room since the YouTube recording has just been played). Note how before she kills Tina, she throws a half-moon decoration in her direction. This separates her from the guy beside her (who is notably not her date, who was seen laughing and gets squashed by the bleachers), allowing Carrie to give her a cruel and drawn out death without another person suffering it as well (or worse - attempting to save Tina).

Fridge Horror

• Even if she gets over her trauma, Sue will have to live with the fact that she inadvertently caused the deaths of her teachers, her friends, and her boyfriend. Sure, she meant well, but if it wasn't for her, Carrie wouldn't have been at the prom where she goes on her murderous breakdown. She's going to need many, many years of therapy.
  • This is more explicit in the book. After looking through Sue's mind and finding that she really meant well, Carrie's response is, "Why didn't you just leave me alone?" Again, at Sue's testimony before the White Commission. Given what happened, it's doubtful therapy would do her much good...
  • In the 2013 version, Sue's decision to go after Carrie in her home could very well have been a half-hearted suicide attempt out of guilt and a desperation to make things right for Carrie. Even more alarming is that if Sue hadn't been pregnant at the time, it may have worked.
  • It's also confirmed in the sequel that she spent time in a psychiatric ward after what had happened.
• If this book were to be taken into account, because of Carrie's actions, science at the setting of the story's timeline is taking telekinesis seriously. Therefore, there is a possibility that, since the events of Stephen King's books exist in a continuity (take a look at It, for example), then it might have been linked to the events in Firestarter as well.
  • But if so, then the government would have had to have known about Psychic Powers long before the "Carrie White incident" in 1979, given that the shop was operating back in the late '60s/early '70s... which means that the government was actively trying to cover up the existence of Psychic Powers for at least a decade. Before Carrie White's rampage finally made the existence of such abilities impossible to deny, just how many smaller incidents happened and got dismissed as "gas leak explosions" or whatnot?
    • Five of Stephen King's first six published novels have to do with psychic phenomena (Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone and Firestarter), it seems like it's just a not-too-uncommon ability in King's world.
    • This segues into Fridge Brilliance, as there were experiments during the Cold War on psychic abilities/phenomena. So the late 40s-50s would have been the period.
• Even if the prank hadn't happened, Carrie's situation wouldn't be good after the prom. There are only two possibilities for what could have happened afterwards.
  • First, Tommy breaks up with Sue and stays with Carrie. Sue's reaction is not likely to be pleasant; she may have been genuinely remorseful over the shower prank, but the fact that she took part in it in the first place shows that she's not exactly a golden child. If she sees Carrie as having "stolen" her boyfriend, then she could well turn into another Chris.
  • Second, Tommy breaks up with Carrie after the prom and goes back to Sue. Considering that Carrie was already skeptical about Tommy's intentions, this could quite possibly make her think he was leading her on and that this was all a prank. Carrie is left heartbroken and feeling like she'd been stabbed in the back, and her Roaring Rampage of Revenge is merely delayed.
  • There's also the third issue of what might have happened if Tommy went back to Sue, only for her to learn about Tommy's implied attraction to Carrie. This combines the worst of both worlds, with both Carrie and Sue pissed off.
    • A solution (as unlikely as it seems) to this: Carrie and Sue work shit out, and they end up in a polyamorous relationship with Tommy.
    • Considering that Carrie's a devout Christian, I really don't think she'd cotton to that kind of arrangement.
  • Actually, she already knows (or otherwise implied) that Tommy went out with her because Sue asked him to be kind to her. She could have simply thanked him for being nice to her, and they could have been friends afterwards.
  • Sue and Tommy may have been able to sit down and talk to Carrie, explain that they both wanted her to have a nice time, that Sue wanted to meaningfully apologize for the shower incident, and they both want to be her friends and help her out. If not for the ill-placed bucket of blood, it could have actually turned into a Heartwarming Moment.
  • Tommy had promised to take Carrie to get a soda after the dance. That's an opportunity for Carrie to tell him what's going on with her mother and for them to clear the air. If the dance had gone all right, she might have been able to get help.
  • It's possible that, since it was her idea to begin with, if Tommy did decide he'd rather be with Carrie, Sue would just accept it since she's already "punishing" herself over what she did in the shower scene.
  • Not to mention that no matter what else occurred, Carrie's mother was waiting to murder her when she returned home. An angry, betrayed Carrie, who had already slaughtered a whole town, defended herself from her mother without hesitation; a happy, starry-eyed Carrie who came home from the most wonderful night of her life might have been blindsided by Margaret with a knife.
• There's an element of Fridge Horror, or at least sadness, to the possibility that things might have actually turned out well if not for the "prank." Carrie seems to understand that Tommy is trying to make things right and probably wouldn't accept his advances unless he and Sue were no longer together, which would be sad but hardly a tragedy. While she might not be willing to kill her mother under better circumstances, it's likely that she would have defended herself in a non-lethal way, and her mother really wasn't subtle enough to blindside her had she been more alert and clear-headed. Her abilities would have become known eventually, and she would have been a minor celebrity, with access to the help that she obviously needed. There's horror in the idea that hundreds of people died because an elitist teenager and her burnout wannabe-greaser boyfriend bumbled their way into both victory and perdition.
• One thing that a lot of people ask is why nobody stepped in to seriously help Carrie and end her bullying. The answer is Values Dissonance. Stephen King (a former high school teacher) was writing from experience; adults just did not care about bullying back then, even when it got so out of hand, seeing it as just child's play.
  • Even then, that still happens a lot nowadays. Some adults don't call on abusive parents, and some kids won't say anything about bullies. Also, victims of parental abuse will often keep silent about it; like, she's still my mom, after all; I don't want her to go to jail. And a surprising number of high-school-age victims tell themselves that if only they can survive to age eighteen, they'll be free. Carrie herself has thoughts along those lines in the novel, where she imagines saving up her sewing money and buying a bus ticket.
  • The only reason bullying continues is because things fall through the cracks. Very few people know the full extent of what's going on, and most of those who do think it's someone else's problem. A teacher or student here or there might witness one incident, but they don't see the daily, constant pattern. They don't see every incident, every day, and assume that if it were that bad, someone would tell them. And if someone does put together the pattern, they probably think, "Well, if I've noticed it, someone with actual authority must have, and they'll take care of it."
  • Or they know what's going on but are too scared of the bullies to help out the victim because they're scared that the Alpha Bitch is going to turn on them. So they either go along with the bullying to keep on the Alpha Bitch's good side, or they turn a blind eye so as not to become a target.
  • King, as a high school teacher, would have known about this dirty little secret too: For decades, teachers were advised to permit and even encourage bullying because it instilled conformity. The NEA Journal even had articles enshrining bullies as "Normalcy Police". Part of the reason was to prevent kids from growing up to think they could leave the area to seek employment outside the community.
    • Even worse, his memoir On Writing reveals that the two real girls on whom Carrie was based had died in real life in their twenties. One went as far as shooting herself in the abdomen after she had a second child. Yet no one cared." King admitted he felt sorry for them, but also that he was a voyeur who did nothing to defend them. That may have had something to do with the fact that he'' was also bullied, according to some biographies.
• Even if Carrie had no powers, Chris still killed Tommy. Not even Carrie's telepathy could bring him back. This happens regardless of the adaptation, and in some of the films, Chris is horrified because she just wanted to humiliate him. In fact, if not for Carrie's rampage, Chris and Billy would have been charged with manslaughter, if not murder. Not to mention his parents would have the grounds to file a civil lawsuit against Mr. Hargensen, with about a hundred eyewitnesses. For all we know, this might have happened off-screen once the investigators identified Chris and Billy as the main instigators, explaining why Mr. Hargensen never shows up to give his side of the story.
  • In the 2013 film you can see Tina and Jackie reacting to Tommy's death. That's not just shock at a person dying, but Oh, Crap! as if they've realized what trouble they're going to be in—especially since Chris outright texted Sue that she was going to do something, and Tina had access to the laptop.
• There are so many things that could have prevented the prom massacre. Even ignoring stopping the pig blood prank, if Margaret White had been arrested for child abuse long ago and Carrie had been taken in by someone who's actually nurturing and kind instead of abusive, she probably would have grown up with a lot more self-esteem and not been a Bully Magnet in the first place. And even if people did still bully her, she could use her psychic powers in non-lethal ways to "encourage" them to stop.
• Some people have said Carrie getting her first period at 16 is unrealistic. In reality, severe prolonged stress can indeed cause this, due to a build-up of androgens. And considering how stressful her life is...
• In the book, Ms. Desjardin wishes she'd been nicer to Carrie and made more of an attempt to reach out to her, as maybe the whole disaster wouldn't have happened if she had. In all of the adaptations, she's much nicer, and does try to reach out to Carrie, yet the prom massacre still happens, which strongly implies it wouldn't have made any difference if she had.
• Chris was an utter, unambiguous monster for years before she targeted Carrie, with one instance in particular involving her nearly mutilating another girl with a firecracker for having a cleft lip—and she isn't even an adult yet. Imagine what horrible stuff she could've gone on to do to other people had she survived Prom Night.