Oppression and turning against it - Based on adaptation of Stephen King's novel Carrie (2013)

The aim of this BA thesis is to analyse the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Carrie and highlight the factors that help to clearly define that Carrie is a victim or an oppressor. Throughout the paper, I will examine the female-centred horror movies in the aspects of their evaluation throughout history and the reason for the change. Classical roles in the horror genre changed and women play other roles than victims. Statistics also proves that women are more likely to watch horror movies since there are more females in the focus and movies circle the negative and positive attributes of womanhood. The representation of body images in connection with females and horror genre is one of those characteristics that create the “body genre”. As the movie is a body genre, therefore, I will draw attention to the importance of Carrie’s change introduced by her menstruation, the messages and metaphors that her womanhood carries and the significance of being innocence in sexual conception. This paper also provides an insight into how Carrie and her mother’s relationship shapes the changes that Carrie goes through and what transformation processes are triggered by their relationship. The terms “final girl” and “female victim-hero” refer to a certain kind of behaviour of women in horror movies and these two terms are elaborated in the paper using Carrie as an example.