I enjoy that film a lot, but I find it has a thread of deep misogyny. There’s something very Vlad about a hyper-macho guy feeling emasculated by an overbearing woman — which is basically the plot of that movie.
The way to think about Cuckoo’s Nest is to picture it with all the genders reversed. The story would have been completely different if it had been a ward full of women being mistreated by a man. Part of the energy of the story is the inversion of the more usual gender power structure of modern life in America. Men mistreating women under their authority is not different enough from ordinary reality to shed light on the dynamic. It’s like the role of the American Indian in the story, would it have meant as much as it did had a white man rescued an Indian from a life of powerless, enforced imbecility?
I did a report on the book, and in part of the report, we had to give our reader reaction. In mine, I said how I thought Nurse Ratched was the hero of the story and the patients were whiny little misogynistic villains.
I enjoyed Cuckoo’s nest for the psychology side of it. I would have preferred that there have been some more positive female roles in the movie, that I agree on.
I recall actually watching that in Abnormal Psychology. We used to do that – watch a movie that had some psychological element or other and deconstruct it. We did it for The Good Son, a Beautiful Mind, American Beauty, and Cuckoo’s Nest, among others. It was an amazing approach, because our teacher would point out the scientific inaccuracies but also get us thinking about disorders that otherwise hide in plain sight (such as depression and bipolar disorder).
When it came to Cuckoo’s Nest, we decided Nurse Ratched has authoratarian… issues, but aside from that there’s nothing “wrong” with her. The main character though… ADHD, Narcissism, you name it.
Also, he told us the book was from the Native American character’s POV. Which seriously makes me want to read the book.
Damn, now I have to go reread the book, to see if it carried that thread too…I hope not, Kesey is kind of a hero to me, and I loved “Sometimes a Great Notion” (the book, never seen the whole movie)
I just hate Nurse Ratched/Ratchet…(I always thought it was Ratchet oh well) I hate her for what she did to…I think his name was Billy, the one who was there cause of all the nervous problems with women or something like that, he spoke with a stutter. Anyway he ends up sleeping with the main guy’s girlfriend, and it CURES HIM…and then in one sentence she sends him back to square one *SPOILER ALERT* I mean the guy ended up killing himself…seriously hate that Nurse for that.
Hmm, I think it’s acceptable to spoil books/movies that have been out for 35+ years. And yes, I always thought it was Ratchet but apparently it’s Ratched. She’s one of the more hate-able characters in movie history, although the more I watch it, the more I feel sorry for her. She’s genuinely trying to help people. She just doesn’t understand.
Exactly! Her problem is that she’s too authoritarian and too convinced she’s right. Hubris, in other words… she’s not evil, she’s just not good at seeing other perspectives. She does nasty things (especially that spiteful little bit at the end), but she think she’s doing them for the “good” of her patients. She’s arrogant enough to believe in what she’s doing, but she THINKS she’s helping. She just doesn’t realize that not only is she not helping, she doesn’t know HOW to help, and is just making it all worse at that point.
On the other hand, the Jack Nicholson character, though charming, is a lot more unbalanced than a lot of people realize. His behavior has all the hallmarks of a combination of NPD and ADHD, and he has impulse control issues… which is why he was in jail to begin with. We sympathize with him, even empathize when it comes to his violent reaction to the poor stuttering guy’s suicide because we KNOW it was Nurse Ratched’s comment that set him off and want to blame her for it…
…but the dude was exactly where he belonged: not in the general population. Unfortunately, he was too much for a system that was already pretty hard to get decent help in at the time. That’s part of what makes it truly tragic; he had destructive and self-destructive tendencies that should have been addressed and treated, but that particular asylum wasn’t the right place and Ratched wasn’t the right person to address it, even if he had been willing (which, being narcissistic as he was, he wasn’t).
It’s an amazing movie, but it’s certainly not a happy one.
You gain a different perspective on men and women like Nurse Ratched when they nearly kill you with the medicine they make you take because they can’t admit they got the diagnosis wrong. And the classic brand of sexual shaming was the last thing I needed while struggling with PTSD and a sex phobia…
Sometimes good intentions aren’t enough.
I can’t watch that movie without nightmares…
Please don’t let the author trick you with his gender war, or his idiotic “freedom is all anyone needs to cure their serious medical conditions” theme. People like Nurse Ratched still exist, and whether or not their good intentions outweigh their need for power, they’re still destroying lives.
For the most part, she’s trying to help people, but then she lobotomizes the main character, knowing he doesn’t really need it, but just because he questions her authority. Bear in mind, this is after Russia, Communist Russia, decided that Lobotomies were too inhumane for them to use. That’s like the friggin’ Emporer going, “Dudes, yeah, I’m down with the Darkside, but y’all are just being douches.”
Technically speaking, Nicholson’s character DID violently attack her, fully intended to kill her, and had shown severe impulse control issues even before then. At the end of the film, when they show her again, she’s wearing a neck brace, implying he not only damn near strangled her to death, he also broke her neck in the process. So doing SOMETHING wasn’t unreasonable.
It’s just, you know, the “treatment” they went with was barbaric and unjust.
I like the lip bite/guilt in panel two.
I like how that one panel is the only guilt she will have over lobotomizing someone.
Agreed. You are a way better drawer than me! Wait. I mean artist. Yeah. You are definitely not a sliding, wooden container for socks.
Aren’t I, William? How sure are you of that?
http://www.explosm.net/comics/2669/
Socks are just sausage casings for feet.
Cuckoo’s nest! Yes!
I enjoy that film a lot, but I find it has a thread of deep misogyny. There’s something very Vlad about a hyper-macho guy feeling emasculated by an overbearing woman — which is basically the plot of that movie.
The way to think about Cuckoo’s Nest is to picture it with all the genders reversed. The story would have been completely different if it had been a ward full of women being mistreated by a man. Part of the energy of the story is the inversion of the more usual gender power structure of modern life in America. Men mistreating women under their authority is not different enough from ordinary reality to shed light on the dynamic. It’s like the role of the American Indian in the story, would it have meant as much as it did had a white man rescued an Indian from a life of powerless, enforced imbecility?
I did a report on the book, and in part of the report, we had to give our reader reaction. In mine, I said how I thought Nurse Ratched was the hero of the story and the patients were whiny little misogynistic villains.
I enjoyed Cuckoo’s nest for the psychology side of it. I would have preferred that there have been some more positive female roles in the movie, that I agree on.
I recall actually watching that in Abnormal Psychology. We used to do that – watch a movie that had some psychological element or other and deconstruct it. We did it for The Good Son, a Beautiful Mind, American Beauty, and Cuckoo’s Nest, among others. It was an amazing approach, because our teacher would point out the scientific inaccuracies but also get us thinking about disorders that otherwise hide in plain sight (such as depression and bipolar disorder).
When it came to Cuckoo’s Nest, we decided Nurse Ratched has authoratarian… issues, but aside from that there’s nothing “wrong” with her. The main character though… ADHD, Narcissism, you name it.
Also, he told us the book was from the Native American character’s POV. Which seriously makes me want to read the book.
I’m wondering if this isn’t a way for Vlad to ‘disarm’ Gyno-Star via emotional manipulation…
Damn, now I have to go reread the book, to see if it carried that thread too…I hope not, Kesey is kind of a hero to me, and I loved “Sometimes a Great Notion” (the book, never seen the whole movie)
I just hate Nurse Ratched/Ratchet…(I always thought it was Ratchet oh well) I hate her for what she did to…I think his name was Billy, the one who was there cause of all the nervous problems with women or something like that, he spoke with a stutter. Anyway he ends up sleeping with the main guy’s girlfriend, and it CURES HIM…and then in one sentence she sends him back to square one *SPOILER ALERT* I mean the guy ended up killing himself…seriously hate that Nurse for that.
Hmm, I think it’s acceptable to spoil books/movies that have been out for 35+ years. And yes, I always thought it was Ratchet but apparently it’s Ratched. She’s one of the more hate-able characters in movie history, although the more I watch it, the more I feel sorry for her. She’s genuinely trying to help people. She just doesn’t understand.
Exactly! Her problem is that she’s too authoritarian and too convinced she’s right. Hubris, in other words… she’s not evil, she’s just not good at seeing other perspectives. She does nasty things (especially that spiteful little bit at the end), but she think she’s doing them for the “good” of her patients. She’s arrogant enough to believe in what she’s doing, but she THINKS she’s helping. She just doesn’t realize that not only is she not helping, she doesn’t know HOW to help, and is just making it all worse at that point.
On the other hand, the Jack Nicholson character, though charming, is a lot more unbalanced than a lot of people realize. His behavior has all the hallmarks of a combination of NPD and ADHD, and he has impulse control issues… which is why he was in jail to begin with. We sympathize with him, even empathize when it comes to his violent reaction to the poor stuttering guy’s suicide because we KNOW it was Nurse Ratched’s comment that set him off and want to blame her for it…
…but the dude was exactly where he belonged: not in the general population. Unfortunately, he was too much for a system that was already pretty hard to get decent help in at the time. That’s part of what makes it truly tragic; he had destructive and self-destructive tendencies that should have been addressed and treated, but that particular asylum wasn’t the right place and Ratched wasn’t the right person to address it, even if he had been willing (which, being narcissistic as he was, he wasn’t).
It’s an amazing movie, but it’s certainly not a happy one.
That’s not a character, that’s just Jack Nicholson
You gain a different perspective on men and women like Nurse Ratched when they nearly kill you with the medicine they make you take because they can’t admit they got the diagnosis wrong. And the classic brand of sexual shaming was the last thing I needed while struggling with PTSD and a sex phobia…
Sometimes good intentions aren’t enough.
I can’t watch that movie without nightmares…
Please don’t let the author trick you with his gender war, or his idiotic “freedom is all anyone needs to cure their serious medical conditions” theme. People like Nurse Ratched still exist, and whether or not their good intentions outweigh their need for power, they’re still destroying lives.
For the most part, she’s trying to help people, but then she lobotomizes the main character, knowing he doesn’t really need it, but just because he questions her authority. Bear in mind, this is after Russia, Communist Russia, decided that Lobotomies were too inhumane for them to use. That’s like the friggin’ Emporer going, “Dudes, yeah, I’m down with the Darkside, but y’all are just being douches.”
To be fair to Gyno-Star, the lobotomy was completely unintentional.
I think Jesse was talking about Nurse Ratched?
Technically speaking, Nicholson’s character DID violently attack her, fully intended to kill her, and had shown severe impulse control issues even before then. At the end of the film, when they show her again, she’s wearing a neck brace, implying he not only damn near strangled her to death, he also broke her neck in the process. So doing SOMETHING wasn’t unreasonable.
It’s just, you know, the “treatment” they went with was barbaric and unjust.