THIS ADAPTATION IS UNFORGIVABLE // Carrie Book vs Miniseries

Overview

LavenderTowne argues that the Carrie miniseries strips away much of what makes Stephen King’s novel disturbing and meaningful. The video’s central complaint is that the book’s Carrie is a bullied, visibly unkempt, “chunky” outsider, while the adaptation presents her as a tiny, conventionally pretty girl—sarcastically compared to Rapunzel from Tangled.

For LavenderTowne, this change weakens the story’s point about how appearance shapes who receives sympathy and who is treated as less than human.

Carrie’s Humiliation and Home Life

The recap follows Carrie’s humiliation in the school showers, where classmates throw tampons and pads at her after she gets her first period. They do not realize that she has never been told what menstruation is. Her mother, Margaret White, has taught her that puberty and sexuality are sinful, and Carrie’s home life includes frightening punishment and abuse.

LavenderTowne sees religious repression and cruelty as essential to the tragedy. She criticizes the miniseries for softening Margaret into an overprotective mother and replacing the novel’s terrifying closet scenes with much tamer imagery.

Sue Snell’s Moral Struggle

A major focus is Sue Snell. In the novel, Sue joins in the shower-room bullying before reflecting on her actions. Her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, challenges her when she starts making excuses, helping her choose to do better.

LavenderTowne praises this as an uncomfortable but realistic portrayal of how ordinary people can participate in cruelty—and how they respond to shame matters. She argues that the miniseries makes Tommy too reassuring and Sue’s moral struggle less compelling.

Animal Imagery and the Prom

Carrie is repeatedly compared to farm animals, especially pigs. LavenderTowne therefore reads the pig’s blood poured on Carrie at prom as more than a gross prank: it echoes the way the crowd has already treated her as an animal. She argues that casting Carrie as conventionally attractive blunts this symbolism.

During the character-drawing segment, LavenderTowne also sketches Tommy in his white dinner jacket, drawing on the novel’s description of him as a handsome, athletic prom-king type.

LavenderTowne’s Verdict

LavenderTowne’s broader verdict is that the nearly eight-hour miniseries has less to say than the 245-page novel. She criticizes its focus on school-shooter drills and social-media bullying while sidelining the book’s themes of religious abuse, sexual repression, beauty standards, class, privilege, racism, and bystander behavior.

She also mocks the adaptation’s expanded supernatural elements, comparing the wealthy house of powered girls and the added characters to X-Men.

The video closes on a line from the novel’s aftermath: Carrie should be remembered as a human being with hopes and pain, not merely turned into a symbol.

Personalities Discussed

• LavenderTowne
• Carrie White
• Margaret White
• Sue Snell
• Tommy Ross
• Chris Hargensen
• Stephen King