Religion, Power, and Matriarchal Rule in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
Miloš Forman’s 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel gets its memorable title from the child’s rhyme, "One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest." The rhyme serves as an epigraph throughout the film and Forman is able to fly in both directions presenting both comic and tragic elements. Forman masterfully stages farce and calamity through Christian symbolism, extensively examining themes of obedience versus defiance, what makes a person “sane”, and the withdrawal of fundamental human needs.
The author of the original text, Ken Kesey, was raised in a religious home, and Forman’s film adaptation emphasizes the biblical allusions from the book. He highlights the New Testament’s teachings that life is either lived in sin or in pursuit of salvation. Christianity preaches that all humans are sinners capable of redemption, and although Randall Patrick McMurphy, brilliantly portrayed by Jack Nicholson, is dirty, rebellious, and sexual, his performance of miraculous acts throughout the film proves him to be a prodigious antihero. The other inmates initially view his acts of rebellion with resentment, but over the course of the film, they begin to worship McMurphy and celebrate his bucking of the system. As the film progresses, we see them latch onto his defiant preachings and become disciples. Throughout the picture, his character becomes a Christ-like martyr.
The film’s consideration of what makes a person legally insane anchors the plot to another of the film’s pivotal themes, obedience versus defiance. Through her portrayal of Nurse Ratched, Louise Fletcher establishes that her ward is a machine that runs on conformity, obedience, and fear. She expects compliance from the inmates, keeping them in a constant state of submission through strict discipline enforced through medication, humiliation, and electric shock therapy. The patients live in absolute fear of Ratched until McMurphy arrives at the ward. McMurphy upsets the regulations of the unit and instills the counter-culture idea that they deserve to be treated like humans by the institution.
The fundamental human needs are safety, autonomy, connection to others, and a sense of purpose. Throughout the film, the inmates feel unsafe in Nurse Ratched's ward. We witness the characters being denied their basic rights of autonomy. The patients have no self-governance, Nurse Rachet decides everything for them from their medication dosage to their bedtimes. Their only sense of purpose is to adhere to Nurse Ratched’s regimine and avoid her cruel punishments. The inmates have become accustomed to having limited rights because they have been labeled as insane, a fact underlined by the revelation that most of the men are there by choice. The inmates have had no connection to the outside world for years, perhaps decades, until McMurphy completely upends the system, breaking them out of the asylum, and taking them on a hilariously madcap fishing trip.
Nurse Ratched maintains control of the men in the ward through shaming and disgracing them for their sexuality and masculinity. This is a major cause of conflict between McMurphy and Ratchet. The culture of emasculation is established early on in the film when she refuses to put on the baseball game for the members of the ward simply because it goes against her ideas of how the ward should be run. McMurphy is the antithesis of Ratchet. He is hypermasculine and inherently sexist in his nature, calling her a c*nt and defending statutory r*pe in his first meeting at the institution. McMurphy is infuriated with Rachet’s matriarchal rule over the ward and hates that a woman has control over him.
We can also identify minor evangelical representations throughout the movie: when McMurphy performs the minor miracles of announcing an imaginary World Series game to the delight of the ward, getting the mute Chief to raise his hand and later speak, and when he turns the men into fishermen. There are 12 others joining McMurphy on the fishing boat, which is the same number of Christ’s disciples. But it is not until the scene where McMurphy has a party, sneaking prostitutes and alcohol to the ward for himself and the other patients, that the strange piety of the film becomes distinguishable; this pivotal scene mimics Christ’s Last Supper while exploring the underlying themes of emasculation and sexuality. There is vodka spiked cough syrup in place of wine, the company of two prostitutes representing Mary Magdalene, and the suicide of Billy Bibbit caricaturing that of Judas. Judas commits suicide after exposing Christ to the Romans, and similarly, Billy betrays McMurphy’s ethos of rebellion by killing himself after Nurse Rachet shames him and threatens to expose him to his mother.
In response to Billy’s suicide, McMurphy attacks Nurse Ratched. This primal reaction from McMurphy clashes with his role as a Christ-figure, but it serves as his sacrifice to ensure his martyrdom. McMurphy is lobotomized and will forever pay the price of his reaction to his dehumanization inside the ward. This was Nurse Rachted’s final throw in a relentless fight to secure control of the institution once again. While his body remains alive, his spirit is trapped. Once McMurphy is crucified by the institution, the film ends on a note of resurrection. The Chief asphyxiates McMurphy to free his spirit and then performs the miracle of escaping the institution himself. The Chief is free to bring McMurphy’s legacy to the world, as did the Apostle Paul for the New Testament. If McMurphy serves as the story’s antihero, the Chief serves as the hero. While McMurphy is driven by self-interest and troublemaking, the Chief strives for true freedom, actually becoming the “one who flew over (and out of) the cuckoo's nest.”
