Since the origins of the horror genre, the concept of the ‘Other’ has often been an important thematic exploration, catalyzing a fascinating legacy, from classic media such as The Invisible Man and Dracula, to more contemporary explorations such as Jordan Peele’s body of work. Traditionally, characters who embody ‘Otherness’ are typified as flawed, different, and threatening to traditional realms of Identity. Originally, the Other was different in appearance in comparison to those around them, but more recently, the Other blends into their surroundings, and it's their actions, reactions, and behavior that categorize them as the Other. Two such characters are the Creature from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein and Carrie White from Brian De Palma's 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie. Cast out by their societies, they are forced to adapt into monstrous versions of themselves. Frankenstein and Carrie are novels which I have resonated with and grown up with — they epitomize Otherness, explore the extremities of isolation, strip down to the anatomy of autonomy, and feed into the modern concept of Female Rage.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the earliest examples of body horror, and Shelley is considered to be the woman who pioneered the science-fiction genre (although Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World controversially innovated the genre, without giving it the name it has today, and predates the novel by almost two centuries). Frankenstein is deeply ingrained in the hereditament of the Other. Influenced by her own Christian faith, her mother's novel A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and her husband's Atheism, at nineteen Shelley wrote one of the most well-known stories, under the challenge of Lord Byron. The novel ostensibly should give filmmakers a wealth of material to work with. Yet, each adaptation of Frankenstein so far lacks the sensitivity of the novel, especially in the satirization and sense of grandiose superiority Victor Frankenstein has. Being written from a woman’s perspective, this recurrence is possibly because each adaptation has been helmed by male filmmakers. Since 1931, Victor has been presented as a mad scientist, despite being a university drop out, and the Creature has been depicted as evil from birth, when in reality it was his surroundings and upbringing, or more likely lack thereof that caused his murderous, vengeful rampage. The 2004 Hallmark miniseries is the closest to book accuracy so far, but it is not without its faults in the change and ambiguity of the ending and slight rom-com-ification of Victor and Elizabeth. At its heart, the story is of the dichotomy of obsession and isolation and what the creation of life should not become.

Similarly to Frankenstein, Stephen King's Carrie centers around body horror and was one of the earliest horror films to depict a coming-of-(r)age story. First periods, alienation of religion, and ostracization from peers are often explored in varying degrees within the horror genre to connect the pathway between girlhood and womanhood. The exploration of menstruation in the realms of horror is interesting, because despite how natural of a process it is, it lends itself to Otherness, and sustains the perceived horror versus the naturality of life. Carrie explores a woman from the male perspective, and with King’s source material, allows female audiences to explore anger and suppression, which has become increasingly popular through the genre of Female Rage. Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation, with its haunting visuals and performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, has been scaring audiences for almost fifty years. Despite being presented through the male gaze, De Palma allows his female leads the space to improvise, creating their own choices with minimal input from him, making the women their own, and presenting the audience with messy women: an unhinged mother and her wallflower daughter who begs to be seen and to be heard.

While Frankenstein begins with the birth of a new creation, Carrie begins with the birth of womanhood — forming the ‘Othering.’ Victor, disgusted by the weight of what he has achieved, abhors his Creature, his illegitimate child of sorts, casting him out. This initial abandonment opens the floodgates for the rest of the world's rejection of him. Similarly, in the girls locker room, Carrie has her first period and having no sense of what's going on, she panics, causing the other girls to tease her. When her mother finds out, she shuns her, forces her to repent for perceived sexual immorality, rather than teach her and tell her that she has nothing to be ashamed of.

The Creature and Carrie are punished for circumstances that they have no control over. Their creators ostracize them, rather than take responsibility for that which they created — forming the ‘Monstering.’ As their stories progress, both Carrie and the Creature yearn for a friend, a companion. While the Creature finds this in the prospect of Victor making him a Bride, constructed of parts, a partner just as monstrous as he, Carrie finds this in Tommy, her date to the Prom. The Creature believes that a Bride just as grotesque as he is will love him, and he convinces Victor to make her. He believes that the bride will be his companion and that they'll live in peace and acceptance with just the two of them. He refuses initially, but he gives in. Just as he's about to reanimate her, he fears that they could create a new civilization. Panicked, he destroys her, breaking the Creature's trust yet again, causing him to spiral further into his murderous rampage.

At the time of writing the novel, Shelley was influenced by the Industrial Revolution and exploring the fears of rapid societal changes. Themes of carelessness towards humanity and nature are present— she warned that it could lead to the exploitation of humans and nature and that it could create a lack of a sense of self. Influential to the creation of the Other, the creation of the Bride is pivotal in the exploration of the anxieties of human exploitation and the loss of identity, because the Bride was destroyed before she could be given life. The lack of a woman’s voice in this moment is important, emphasizing the satirization of man’s egotistical nature. However, adaptations of Frankenstein have usually explored the choice of the Bride. Shelley’s concept of the annexation of womanhood is handed back to the woman. By removing the fears of the Industrial Revolution, it detracts from the intended exploration of the effects on the rights of women, as influenced by the writings of Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstoncraft. It misdirects the focus from the fact that she's critiquing technological advancements and the fears over what could happen if our God-given right of reproduction was commandeered by men for their personal, ego-driven crusade. In James Whale’s 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, when the Bride sees the Creature, she is horrified by him and chooses Victor instead. In Kenneth Brannagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, he attaches his dead wife Elizabeth’s head onto her maid Justine, and the Creature claims her as his own. Horrified by what Victor has done to her and recoiling from the Creature, she commits suicide. Rather than sticking to the harrowing reality of the voiceless woman, both adaptations explore the choice the Bride could never make, theorizing that given the chance, she would pick either Victor or death over the Creature. Hallmark's 2004 miniseries finally brings to the screen the lack of life the Bride has, making it even more disturbing to see the further destruction Victor causes by burning her in a Promethean manner— fitting considering Shelley's alternative title, The Modern Prometheus. In committing this act, Victor is destroying his Creature’s trust, and honing his will for making Victor's life a misery. The audience understands Victor has no one else to blame but himself, highlighting the recurring motif of fire consistently razing his handiwork.

In Carrie, to ease her guilt over tormenting her, Sue, Carrie's former bully, has Tommy, her boyfriend, take Carrie to the Prom. Originally reluctant, Carrie accepts his invitation and falls in love with him. She finally feels accepted, like she fits in. In De Palma's film, there's a shot of Carrie standing, staring into a cracked mirror (damaged by her telekinesis) applying her makeup. A newspaper cutting of Tommy is pinned to the wall beside it, and this is the calmest Carrie has ever looked. This shot embodies first crushes, the idea of feeling beautiful for the first time and standing in defiance of everything, even when the cracks show.. It is further emphasized when she tells her mother as she leaves to be picked up by Tommy, “Just sit there, Mama, and don't say a word until I'm gone. I'll be home early. I love you, Mama.” Despite everything, she believes it will be okay and for once she decides she's going to take control of her life and not have it dictated by another person. When she's crowned Prom Queen on what should be one of the happiest moments of her life, the night sours when the pigs blood prank is unveiled and Tommy is killed. Unleashing her anger, her powers are revealed, killing the entire student body and anyone who stands in her way. She is more alone than she ever has been. This moment encapsulates Female Rage and the fictionalization of the external manifestation of suppressed emotions. Sadness and rage go hand-in-hand and are often unleashed in undesirable ways on-screen.

Rejected by the people that surround them, both Carrie and the Creature become socially incompatible. Both are explorations of the perversions of womanhood; they critique the misunderstandings and underdeveloped research in menstruation and reproduction (however society today is slowly improving in this). They also explore autonomy of actions and self-actualisation and how the Creature and Carrie's understanding of self and the world around them threatens others and casts them out to be viewed as Other. Inspired by her Christianity and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, she combined the belief systems and considered what humanity could look like should someone’s hubris compel them to become and believe themself to be just as powerful and all-knowing as God. Had the characters been born out of love and stability, rather than morbid curiosity and violence, they may have had a better chance of survival and upbringing.They are driven to kill as they believe it's the only way to ensure survival. De Palma masterfully handles this, while many Frankenstein adaptations tend to either solely condemn one or the other, typically the monster, or sometimes both of them. However, I view Hallmark as an outlier in this theory.

At the climax of their stories, Carrie and the Creature die in a heartbreaking turn of events. The Creature decides he has nothing to live for after the death of his creator and burns himself beside Victor on the funeral pyre — in Whale's 1931 adaptation, he is chased and trapped in a burning windmill, and in Brannagh's 1994 adaptation, he burns himself to death beside Victor’s corpse on a funeral pyre in the Arctic. However, in Hallmark, Victor’s corpse is carried off through the Arctic by the Creature. We never see the Creature’s death, but his lack of a will to live is inferred and it could be interpreted that he set out to carry his creator to the home he created earlier, giving them the privacy and humility to be buried together despite everything they put each other through. De Palma depicts Carrie’s death to be just as fiery as her anger, setting her house ablaze, causing it to collapse on her and her mother's crucified corpse. He depicts her death to be just as isolating as her life, despite her dying in Sue’s arms on the road after setting a burning path of casualties behind her in the novel. Just as their lives were similar, so are their deaths. Fire typically symbolizes sustainability, so it is ironic that both characters are consistently ruined by it.Carrie dies from what perpetuated the death of her classmates: what primitively sustained them and their knowledge turned on and killed them, ending their Monstering, and ultimately their Othering.

The pair embody the Creature's line, “I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred.” The line expresses the concept of the Other, threatening traditional views of identity, opting to focus on the sole will of a singular character, subverting expectation and convention. However, while Carrie can blend in by modern standards, appearing as the all-American shy girl-next-door with a secret, the Creature cannot blend in with his pastiched eight-foot corpse-body with inhuman strength and accelerated learning.

The Creature and Carrie's second “births” and concluding deaths mimic discovery and destruction, shaping the overall trajectory of their stories. Mary Shelley constructed the origins and shaped the landscape of horror and science-fiction, which Stephen King has helped to reimagine for a modern landscape. They often have focused on characters that exist beyond traditional realms of characterisation that usually threaten to destabilize the norm. Within the history of the horror genre, despite being over 150 years apart, their stories parallel each other — this is the legacy of the Other.

Creature Carrie

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