One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Difference between revisions

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She has so much power over them that no one dares to stand up to her, until one day when Randle Patrick McMurphy swaggers into the ward, and things are never the same again as he takes everything the Big Nurse stands for and destroys it right before everyone's eyes.

 

 

* [[Adaptational Attractiveness]]:

** Inverted. Harding was described as looking like a film star in the book. In the film, he looks like an average man - [[Your Mileage May Vary|perhaps even slightly unattractive]]. This may have to do with his homosexuality being toned down a lot in the movie as he was a stereotypical pretty boy in the book.

* [[Hospital Hottie]]: Nurse Pilbow, at least in the film. In the book, the inmates comment that Nurse Ratched would be quite attractive if she weren't so emotionless and intimidating.

* [[Insanity Defense]]: That's what got McMurphy onto the wing in the first place. Deconstructs it a lot, since it becomes clear to McMurphy at several points that he's ended up in a worse spot.

* [[The Ishmael]]: Chief Bromden, in the book.

* [[Jail Bait]]: Why McMurphy was incarcerated to begin with.

* [[Karmic Trickster]]: McMurphy again, {{spoiler|though without the usual [[Karmic Protection]]}}

* [[Leave the Camera Running]] on McMurphy for a full minute at the end of the party.

* [[Mad Bomber]]: Scanlon. We're never told whether or not he has ever acted on his urges, but he is the only Acute patient other than McMurphy who is committed involuntarily.

* [[A Man Is Not a Virgin]]: In the novel (though not the film) McMurphy claims to have lost his at the age of TEN. Though he may be lying to impress the others. As for Billy, it's implied, though never outright stated, that he was a virgin {{spoiler|until he slept with Candy.}}

* [[Messianic Archetype]]: McMurphy. Lampshaded when he and 12 other guys all go fishing. In the book, Harding compares the EST victim to Jesus on the cross. McMurphy is also friends with a prostitute called Mary. Bromden describes McMurphy as a "giant sent from the sky to save us." Billy Bibbit commits suicide after betraying him.

** Kesey worked at the Oregon State Hospital's mental ward (then and still notorious for its poor quality) as an orderly and even stated that the Big Nurse is based off an amalgamation of several nurses he worked with.

** He talked a fellow orderly into secretly giving him electroshock as part of the research, and did a ''lot'' of acid. His hallucinations provided the basis of Bromden's schizophrenic narration.

** When Harding describes the origins of electroconvulsive therapy, the bit about two psychiatrists visiting a slaughterhouse is not made up: those were Cerletti and Bini, who visited an abattoir in 1938 and got the idea that an epileptic fit could be induced by electricity. The idea that inducing seizures could have therapeutic effects, however, was proposed a few years earlier. Harding's [[Brief Accent Imitation]] of them, however, as Germans, is false. As is evident by their names, they were Italian.

* [[The Sixties]]

* [[White Male Lead]]: While the original novel is narrated by Bromden, a Native American, the film makes McMurphy into the lead.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]

[[Category:The Sixties]]

[[Category:School Study Media]]