Nicholson’s Nihilism
Partly because I’m a Batman enthusiast, I noticed, from early on in this film, that a nexus existed between Nicholson’s role as J.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and his later casting as the joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. In this film’s early development, we learned of McMurphy’s past: five arrests for assault and his most recent arrest for statutory rape – how joker-esque! And only an upstanding joker would find a mental institution more appealing than prison. Nevertheless, as the film ran its course, I saw more and more of this anarchy. From showing a deck of cards fraught with pornography to the lead psychiatrist, Dr. Spivey, to stealing a fishing vessel, and to hosing down fellow patients with water, …show more content…
However, from the start, we saw paradoxes in different patients and at what stage of mortification they showed. For example, in McMurphy’s first group meeting with Ms. Ratched, we quickly realized that Mr. Harding maintained his sense of self, as he was quick to criticize but uneasy about taking insults. Throughout the film, Harding maintained his personality – pompous, no doubt, but idiosyncratic nevertheless. Notwithstanding Mr. Harding’s sense of self, the same cannot be said for the remaining characters. Of the remaining sixteen, excluding McMurphy, most of them fell victim to the total institution, in which they lost their personality and adopted one – a more docile one – for institutional life. For example, patients like Mr. Martini and some of the less-developed characters, namely Fredrickson, were hesitant to resist the established order. Martini and Cheswick were the most docile of the bunch, but as the movie progressed, we saw these characters revert, possibly, to their pre-institutionalized selves. In a later scene, Chezwick demanded that Ms. Ratched give back his taken cigarettes, for which he followed with “piss on your f-ing rules.” As docile as Chezwick was throughout the movie, we saw how dramatic McMurphy had on the patient population. As another example, the three-patient (Chief, McMurphy, and Chezwick) revolt over the cigarettes ended in electric shock to the …show more content…
McMurphy adhered to this idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the initial part of his admittance into the institution, it was evident that McMurphy was not mentally ill, but rather finding an escape to the monotony of prison life. However, like most of my analyses, as the movie progressed, McMurphy became what some labeled him as: mentally ill. We know, from our readings, that the labeling theory can be extremely inefficacious in that those given labels can react in three potential ways: the behavior/condition can actually worsen, the label may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or the label can act as a stigma. Particular to McMurphy’s case, I believe he would fall into one of (or both of) the first two aspects. Either, one, he had a sliver of mental illness and institutionalizing him merely exacerbated this illness. Or, two, the label of being mentally ill ended as a self-fulfilling prophecy, where mental illness was the underlying etiology of his death. For example, in the most dramatic scene of the film, after discovering Billy Bibbit slit his throat, McMurphy attacked Ms. Ratched via chocking, for which he almost killed her. The argument can be made that he did so because he identified her as the sole causative factor in Billy’s suicide. In turn, we perceive this act of assault an embodiment of mental illness. As a result of this act, we saw the use of a prefrontal lobotomy which left McMurphy
Partly because I’m a Batman enthusiast, I noticed, from early on in this film, that a nexus existed between Nicholson’s role as J.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and his later casting as the joker in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. In this film’s early development, we learned of McMurphy’s past: five arrests for assault and his most recent arrest for statutory rape – how joker-esque! And only an upstanding joker would find a mental institution more appealing than prison. Nevertheless, as the film ran its course, I saw more and more of this anarchy. From showing a deck of cards fraught with pornography to the lead psychiatrist, Dr. Spivey, to stealing a fishing vessel, and to hosing down fellow patients with water, …show more content…
However, from the start, we saw paradoxes in different patients and at what stage of mortification they showed. For example, in McMurphy’s first group meeting with Ms. Ratched, we quickly realized that Mr. Harding maintained his sense of self, as he was quick to criticize but uneasy about taking insults. Throughout the film, Harding maintained his personality – pompous, no doubt, but idiosyncratic nevertheless. Notwithstanding Mr. Harding’s sense of self, the same cannot be said for the remaining characters. Of the remaining sixteen, excluding McMurphy, most of them fell victim to the total institution, in which they lost their personality and adopted one – a more docile one – for institutional life. For example, patients like Mr. Martini and some of the less-developed characters, namely Fredrickson, were hesitant to resist the established order. Martini and Cheswick were the most docile of the bunch, but as the movie progressed, we saw these characters revert, possibly, to their pre-institutionalized selves. In a later scene, Chezwick demanded that Ms. Ratched give back his taken cigarettes, for which he followed with “piss on your f-ing rules.” As docile as Chezwick was throughout the movie, we saw how dramatic McMurphy had on the patient population. As another example, the three-patient (Chief, McMurphy, and Chezwick) revolt over the cigarettes ended in electric shock to the …show more content…
McMurphy adhered to this idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the initial part of his admittance into the institution, it was evident that McMurphy was not mentally ill, but rather finding an escape to the monotony of prison life. However, like most of my analyses, as the movie progressed, McMurphy became what some labeled him as: mentally ill. We know, from our readings, that the labeling theory can be extremely inefficacious in that those given labels can react in three potential ways: the behavior/condition can actually worsen, the label may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or the label can act as a stigma. Particular to McMurphy’s case, I believe he would fall into one of (or both of) the first two aspects. Either, one, he had a sliver of mental illness and institutionalizing him merely exacerbated this illness. Or, two, the label of being mentally ill ended as a self-fulfilling prophecy, where mental illness was the underlying etiology of his death. For example, in the most dramatic scene of the film, after discovering Billy Bibbit slit his throat, McMurphy attacked Ms. Ratched via chocking, for which he almost killed her. The argument can be made that he did so because he identified her as the sole causative factor in Billy’s suicide. In turn, we perceive this act of assault an embodiment of mental illness. As a result of this act, we saw the use of a prefrontal lobotomy which left McMurphy