Nurse Ratched was bad, but Mcmurphy wasn't a hero either.
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Funky12345 — 10 years ago(September 13, 2015 09:06 AM)
I agree with Sam. McMurphy helped these men find their voice. Nurse Ratched was a passive-aggressive, subtle, manipulative woman; no one said it was supposed to be "summer camp" - that's a ridiculous argument. Ratched threw these patients under the bus by way of glance and insinuation instead of bluntness and words and
this needs to be recognized
.
"Jesus is coming. Look busy." -
Katiedidd — 10 years ago(November 14, 2015 11:49 PM)
Very well said. I still can't believe this eludes people who defend her. Pay attention to her nuances and framing, people. She's pure evil.
McMurphy can be a hero and still be falwed too. Why does it have to be all black and white? Rached carried out her diabolical control through seemingly benign actions. However,
she
was pure evil. -
cartesianthought — 9 years ago(May 13, 2016 03:51 AM)
Most of the patients were there on a voluntary basis until McMurphy incited violence and they were held involuntarily.
Had McMurphy not intervened, most of them would have just completed their voluntary program and then had gone home. -
CeroneSicario — 10 years ago(March 05, 2016 09:22 PM)
Not to mention she kind of saves McMurphy from being sent back to prison. Wasn't the whole reason McMurphy ended up the looney bin so he could avoid prison time? From a technical standpoint, she's actually his hero.
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Kawada_Kira — 9 years ago(April 14, 2016 03:44 AM)
She had the responsibility of bringing her charges back to some degree of psychiatric normalcy
Oh yeah, she was just a well-intentioned saint, wasn't she? Can anyone explain how shaming and threatening Billy Bibbit, knowing how vulnerable he was, was intended to bring him to psychiatric normalcy? She knew full well what she was doing to him. She wasn't helping people; she was a tyrant on a power trip. -
SamGGD — 10 years ago(September 12, 2015 04:13 AM)
He wasn't perfect, but he showed empathy and encouragement to the patients they had certainly never seen before. They loved him, he breathed some life into their dismal existence.
See you at the party, Richter! -
mountaindewslave — 10 years ago(November 21, 2015 01:34 PM)
so just because Mcmurphy doesn't live by perfect morals makes you feel as if he can't be the hero of the film?
he constantly pushes the patients to have their own voice and direction. he breaks the rules, sure, but arguably a lot of them DON'T help the patients.
hell, the main nurses seem to enjoy antagonizing and screwing around with the patients. they repeatedly make them talk about their insecurities, but not in a helpful supportive way, but in a 'make them feel terrible about it' way
and Mcmurphy is no saint, but a willing 15 or 16 year old girl having sex with him (especially when he claims she said she was 18) is hardly that big of a deal next to serious criminals
you try to spin it against Mcmurphy regarding the possibility that he was going to abandon the inmmates after the night party but the reality is that a vast majority of them were SELF admitted. and the reality is that the one individual crazy night Murphy presented to them was probably one of the only good ones they had had in a very long time
Mcmurphy is not a character that is intended to come off as honorable but the whole point is he's a lot more sane and reasonable than Nurse Ratched. and when it's a film regarding mental sanity that certainly makes Mcmurphy the hero
If i go crazy will you still call me Superman? -
neutralneutrals — 10 years ago(February 28, 2016 11:09 PM)
He's an anti-hero, I like the character without condoning everything that he did. Yes, he's violent, rude, sexist, racist(moreso in the novel) and gasp gambles. I like the character without necessarily sharing his moral judgment.
If he had an alignment it would be Chaotic Neutral.
MacMurphy is chaos and Ratched is order, but which is the most similar to reality? Life itself is a collection of incidences that appear random at times.
Mac is selfish, but he does possess heroic qualities, he experiences empathy for other people (he's visibly affected by their suffering) and he risks punishment in order to help them. He does care about other people, sometimesultimately he encourages everyone to pursue their own liberty, whereas Ratched is only interested in preserving the status quo at all costs.
The novel includes the guards raping patients, I'd side with Mac over Ratched and everybody who thought that was acceptable who didn't care about that. -
Kawada_Kira — 9 years ago(April 14, 2016 03:38 AM)
Having sex with the under age girl was one of those things.
Wasn't he unaware that she was underage?
Also, encouraging the men to engage in an orgy with hookers knowing full well that they would all get in trouble.
He wanted them to have the chance to live a little for once in their lives. He wanted to bring some fun and happiness to that joyless dungeon. Who can blame him?
And he was going to leave, after putting them in the position to get busted by the nurse.
Yeah, but most of those people weren't committed there, remember? So any of them could have left at any time. They weren't all prisoners there like him. -
cartesianthought — 9 years ago(May 13, 2016 03:43 AM)
I don't get the comments on here that try to defend either of them. Both were quite selfish jerk. Both had part in Billy's death.
McMurphy was anarchy and Ratched was totalitarianism. Ratched was about keeping society stable, insofar as she has control over other people. McMurphy was about shaking up the establishment, though he used people too. -
themidgarzolom — 9 years ago(June 07, 2016 07:30 PM)
No argument regarding the actual end result, but I do think it's a significant point that McMurphy did have positive intentions regarding Billy. Knowing Billy's backstory and remembering what McMurphy said about Billy's voluntary status there (Get out of here! Go live your life!) and his relative youth, it would seem that McMurphy believed that by getting Billy to hook up with Candy that he would get the confidence to leave the prison of anxiety and fear that he's trapped himself in, literally and figuratively. This was also a sacrifice for McMurphy, since he clearly viewed Candy as his girl, despite his assurance to Billy that he wouldn't "marry her." It only took Ratched about 5 minutes of needless fear, manipulative threats and intimidation the next morning to not only back Billy right back into his cage, but drive him all the way to suicide.
So yes, McMurphy's action played a role in the end result, but there's a substantial difference in how it could have played out if Ratched wasn't the far more evil character. After all, Billy wasn't an inmate now, was he?