How Evil Nurse Ratched Became Little Miss Perfect
Jul 23, 2021 23:23:18 GMT -5
Post by Berean on Jul 23, 2021 23:23:18 GMT -5
July 23, 2021
How Evil Nurse Ratched Became Little Miss Perfect
By Bruce Deitrick Price
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, both as book (1962) and movie (1975), was a huge commercial and cultural success. The central dramatic conflict pitted Randall McMurphy, a heroic rebel played in the movie by Jack Nicholson, against his nemesis, the cold-hearted bureaucrat Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher.
Not even the most marijuana-marinated hippie could miss the simple-minded duality presented in Ken Kesey's work. Randall McMurphy is a charming, near-perfect free spirit who deserves our love and support. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched is a mean, vicious, horrible person who should be hated by the entire human race.
Clearly, Nurse Ratched was intended to be the ultimate bad guy. Sparknotes concluded, "If McMurphy serves as a Christ figure, Nurse Ratched is the Antichrist. She represents authority, conformity, bureaucracy, repression, evil, and death. ... Hoping to turn the men against McMurphy, she blames him for taking away the patients' privileges and cigarettes." What a witch!
This kind of certainty does not permit subtleties. Netflix in 1975 wants to know: "Is Nurse Ratched a sociopath? The Netflix show perpetuates the original assumptions as it brings back one of cinema's most hated villains to our screens."
Nurse Ratched is a psychopath because she allows her aides to do anything they please but shows no remorse when patients are damaged by this indulgence. Mainly, she torments McMurphy, everyone's favorite hero.
Only a few years later, however, everything changed abruptly. Hardly a word was spoken, but the world turned upside down. Liberals enthusiastically embraced a new reality. The Nurse Ratched personality is — are you ready? — not just good, but perfect.
In the 1960s the American left still celebrated independent thinking, freedom, and nonconformity — i.e., people like Randall McMurphy. By the late 1970s, however, the left consolidated its power and no longer welcomed misfits and outsiders. Such people were now a threat to a monolithic leftist culture, where everyone must be politically correct and interchangeable.
Ponder this. Every sort of behavior the left endlessly criticized the decade before quickly became the ideal personality.
Continued at link
How Evil Nurse Ratched Became Little Miss Perfect
By Bruce Deitrick Price
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, both as book (1962) and movie (1975), was a huge commercial and cultural success. The central dramatic conflict pitted Randall McMurphy, a heroic rebel played in the movie by Jack Nicholson, against his nemesis, the cold-hearted bureaucrat Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher.
Not even the most marijuana-marinated hippie could miss the simple-minded duality presented in Ken Kesey's work. Randall McMurphy is a charming, near-perfect free spirit who deserves our love and support. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched is a mean, vicious, horrible person who should be hated by the entire human race.
Clearly, Nurse Ratched was intended to be the ultimate bad guy. Sparknotes concluded, "If McMurphy serves as a Christ figure, Nurse Ratched is the Antichrist. She represents authority, conformity, bureaucracy, repression, evil, and death. ... Hoping to turn the men against McMurphy, she blames him for taking away the patients' privileges and cigarettes." What a witch!
This kind of certainty does not permit subtleties. Netflix in 1975 wants to know: "Is Nurse Ratched a sociopath? The Netflix show perpetuates the original assumptions as it brings back one of cinema's most hated villains to our screens."
Nurse Ratched is a psychopath because she allows her aides to do anything they please but shows no remorse when patients are damaged by this indulgence. Mainly, she torments McMurphy, everyone's favorite hero.
Only a few years later, however, everything changed abruptly. Hardly a word was spoken, but the world turned upside down. Liberals enthusiastically embraced a new reality. The Nurse Ratched personality is — are you ready? — not just good, but perfect.
In the 1960s the American left still celebrated independent thinking, freedom, and nonconformity — i.e., people like Randall McMurphy. By the late 1970s, however, the left consolidated its power and no longer welcomed misfits and outsiders. Such people were now a threat to a monolithic leftist culture, where everyone must be politically correct and interchangeable.
Ponder this. Every sort of behavior the left endlessly criticized the decade before quickly became the ideal personality.
Continued at link