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 NEWLETTER
BECOMES POLITICAL FILM REVIEW
The continuing effort to professionalize the Political Film
Society has turned up yet another innovation: From now on,
the newsletter will be known as the Political Film Review.
A
FEMINIST CARRIE REMINDS FILMVIEWERS THAT MACHO MEN STILL RAPE
WITH INPUNITY
The Rage: Carrie II, directed by Katt Shea,
is a sequel to Brian De Palma’s 1976 film Carrie.
Now in 1999, with a female as director, the plot changes cleverly,
though the tagline "Looks can kill" sounds similar. Amy Irving,
who appeared in the first Carrie, now plays
a school counselor named Sue Snell who is aware of the dangers
of telekinesis. The new Carrie, named Rachel (played by Emily
Bergl), is a much more brainy, streetwise girl who lives with
strict working-class parents and wants to be independent.
Her best girlfriend, however, plunges to suicide because of
a loss of virginity, though Rachel does not know why her girlfriend
took the loss so hard. We learn that high school jocks have
an ongoing competitive macho game in which all girls in the
school are assigned points; when an athlete lays the girl,
he gets the points, as entered into a notebook. Rachel does
not realize that her friend leaped to her death because the
boys told her about the game after she was laid, but she knows
about the loss of virginity and tries to stay away from the
boys. The school authorities, meanwhile, find out about the
culpability of the jock who date-raped her friend (Eric, played
by Zachary Ty Bryan) and turn the matter over to the police.
Since the jocks are sons of the best families in the town,
the mayor of the town lets them off, so they are eager for
more and have a score to settle with Rachel, who has a high
point count in part because she claims to be a Lesbian. However,
the most intelligent of the jocks (Jesse, played by Jason
London) opts out of the game that he can no longer tolerate
and befriends Rachel, whom he finds to be his intellectual
equal. Angered that Rachel has stolen her erstwhile boyfriend,
one of the girls at school hatches a plot to have Rachel invited
to a party after a football game while delaying the arrival
of Rachel’s new boyfriend at the party. While at the party
without her date, the boys show Rachel the scorekeeping book
and a videotape of her own date-rape with her boyfriend, who
thus is not around to explain that he was out of the game
and did not know about the videotaping. Rachel’s rage erupts,
the house where the party is held burns, many die, and then
her boyfriend arrives.
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Hoping
to rescue Rachel from death, in the role of a true Romeo he
goes into the house, but Rachel (now Juliet) dies when part
of the roof falls on her. Fast forward two years, and her
boyfriend is at college with a picture of Rachel alongside
the desk in his dorm. Rachel appears to him, almost in the
manner of the film Ghost, and then the image shatters. He
is haunted by her love. What the movie demonstrates is the
cruelty of adolescent machismo, conformity imposed by macho
leaders, and the willingness of even girls to ape the cruelty
of machismo. The idea for the film came from Lakewood High
School in Southern California where such a game was actually
played in recent years. A subplot in the film is that telekinesis
is a disease, and the counselor tries but fails to help the
second Carrie "before it is too late." Although horror films
are escapist and any lessons contained therein are immediately
forgotten by most who leave the theatre, a more serious analysis
should ask whether the power structure in narcissistic America
has become so callous that romantic love and justice have
become passé. Certainly the fact that the meek shall inherit
the earth is a theme in both films, but that is not soon enough;
justice delayed is certainly justice denied. The films apparently
say that those who are powerless now will have God on their
side when judgment comes, but it is a sad commentary that
so many lives will be ruined in the meantime, and perhaps
telekinesis powers are not a malady but a gift. If the cruel
macho men of the world, including Hitler and others, thought
that they would have to pay in this life from a Carrie or
Rachel, it would be a very different world. For those who
remember Carrie I, this sequel has less violence, more character
development, portrays machismo at its worst, and is one of
the best feminist films in years. MH
NOMINATED
FILMS FOR 1998
DEMOCRACY:
Enemy of the State, Four
Days in September, Primary Colors,
The Siege, Wag
the Dog
EXPOSÉ:
Bulworth, A
Civil Action, Four Days in September,
Regeneration
HUMAN RIGHTS:
A Civil Action, Enemy
of the State, The Siege, Wilde
PEACE: The
Boxer, Regeneration, Saving
Private Ryan, Savior
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