Bacchic Redemption in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) (Part 2)

What happens when the Godzilla of superegos takes on a libidinal King Kong? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1975 film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Upcoming Episodes: Erin’s book “Avail,” “The Third Man,” “Julius Caesar.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: patreon.com subtextpodcast. 0:31 Wes: Welcome to part two of our discussion of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. We just got done with an extended conversation about Nurse Ratched's personality. And I think I'll start by just adding one more thing about the glass, which I thought of, but I forgot to say, there's a kind of glassy eyed look, I think, to Nurse Ratched's. 0:50 Erin: Oh, that's good. 0:51 Wes: Yeah, the way she looks at things. And it occurred to me that some of the crowd that I roll with, the psychoanalytic crowd, would characterize her as psychotic, as kind of twisted at the point of psychotic being kind of quite out of touch with reality, or at least out of touch with emotional reality, which that glassy eyedness kind of conveys. And it occurred to me that, that, yeah, that little tiny office that she's in with the glass, sliding glass window further reflected that orientation to reality. And again, the kind of thing where she can watch from her perch while the chaos she's creating, a projective identification unfolds around her. And then she can do what she needs with that psychologically. And it's part of what helps keep her calm. That's her medication. The medication is going through the window both ways. She's handing it out, she's taking it in. Yeah. 1:43 Erin: Well, I just wanted to comment on that in relation to this Christ parallel with McMurphy, because really it's a sort of dueling religion binary between the two of them because she also, that's sort of her rectory, if you will. The medication line. I can't not think of a communion line, especially when one of the patients opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to receive the pill on the tongue. And also with this idea which I'm, you know, I keep sort of getting around it because I'm not quite sure ultimately what big picture to draw from it, but her catering to the weaker or the weakest and the most helpless in the Name of a kind of benevolence which seems like a Christian idea. Whereas McMurphy is about say the more militant half or the more active or engaged or proselytizing even part of Christianity, if there's a binary distinction to be made there. You know, it occurs to me that in trying to get Chief to respond to him and come out of a shell or, you know, he makes the. He tries to talk to Chief in his own language, which is a bit, a bit crass, a bit much, right. And then when he's trying to teach him basketball, he says it's an old Indian game called put the ball in the hole or something like that. And, and it occurs to me that that too is, is a. One of the classic methods of the conversion of, you know, non Western, say groups to Christianity when you're sending out missionaries is to put the Christian story or elements of Christian themes in terms of the local culture, that particular culture's terminology. So there's something in his extremely indelicate, granted and sort of brutish way, which is an attempt to be a missionary to reach this person on their level in terms that they will understand, to familiarize something, to make something less foreign to the audience with which you were trying to engage. There are a lot of elements. Of course, I didn't read anything about any secondary literature, so I don't know about McMurphy being a Christ figure. But of course the fishing trip was also something that. I could see it all. As soon as you said that, I started, you know, making the connection. But it occurred to me more that institutional religion was being critiqued on the Nurse Ratched side because of the communion line and keeping everybody sort of dialed docile. And you know, supposedly these are what, just sedatives to keep everybody from getting too rowdy. 4:17 Wes: They're probably antipsychotics, which are highly sedating in general. That's part of how they work. But teach a nut to fish, right, and set free, how would that saying go? But so let's say a little bit about what makes him Christ. Like, although again, I think he's more of a trickster. Satyr. 4:40 Erin: Oh, the Last Supper and the Resurrection, when they give him ect doesn't really work the second time. 4:49 Wes: And he is kind of betrayed by Billy. Billy could be Judas or maybe a combination of Judas and Peter. But I think the most self sacrificing moments involve. Well, there's two at the end, right? He's gonna, he's about to escape. He's given the men the big Party. Candy and Rose are waiting outside and he's got the window open and he's ready to escape. And then Billy is upset so he decides he's going to give Billy this sexual experience with Candy. And then at that point he, you know, he sets that up and then he sits down and you see him go into a state of reverie. And it's hard to say, you know, what is that state of reverie about? That's the calmest we've ever, I think we ever see him in the movie, the most peaceful. And he seems to be fantasizing either about his freedom or either what he's, you know, maybe what he's done for Billy. But that leads to him passing out and not escaping. Then he has a chance to escape again. The next morning he knocks out an orderly, gets the window open again. But then we hear Billy scream or no, someone scream. Nurse Pilbow screams because she finds Billy. And then he's going to have to go see what happened and strangle Nurse Ratched because that's what Jesus would do, obviously. What would Jesus do? Anyway, so the two self sacrificing moments are the two times he gives up escaping and then he's doing a lot of things that are helpful and therapeutic in the sense he's getting people out of their shells. The motive though, the conscious motive is, seems to be virtually entirely selfish and being subversive. Right. So why does he take the men fishing? He gets chief to help him get over the fence. He gets into the bus. I mean he could drive off and escape at that point he could go be with Candy without having any interference with his sexual shenanigans. Instead he's going to take all these guys on a field trip, steal the bus, take them. That's a lot of work. I don't know that I would have ever done that even if it were a legit version of that. It's a lot of work. He puts in all the work to take these guys on a field trip. But it's difficult to distinguish between the transgressive motive, the fuck you to the law and order motive, and the motive that involves being helpful to these guys. Or maybe it's just wanting to see some vitality in these men, these men who are closed off. But you can see the conflict directly, right? Because he's one minute he's showing the men how to fish, the next minute he's trying to go underneath with Candy. But then the boat ends up going in a circle and then someone's catching a fish and Then he's immediately helping them catch the fish. So he is a creature of impulse, jumping from one thing to another. But it's somehow that impulsiveness, that closer relationship to his own instinctual side, to his own sexual side, has a kind of altruistic effect, which it need not, as we know. Right. The guy is a criminal and is convicted of statutory rape and is in prison and, as I've speculated, is probably pretty strong sociopathic character traits. But it's this part of him that they lack, which he can give them and which delights him to give them. 8:12 Erin: Yeah, I think his. For me, his motives are a little bit murkier in that I think he's. I think he feels sorry for these guys quite early on. This is later explicitly said in the scene, actually after the fishing trip, I believe, where he learns that the men are voluntarily committed. And he says, you're no crazier than the average guy out on the street. Something like that. And that's when Nurse Ratched says, those are very challenging observations, which I would love to unpack. I have. I have no idea why that sticks out so much to me. But by this time, I believe they've already gone on the fishing trip. Cause this is rather. This is in the last third of the film. And this is going to be the scene where the fist fight happens when he punches through the window and then he gets ect. So I think that's after the fishing trip. But this idea of fishing is set up early in the film because in Dr. Spivey's office, there's the picture of Dr. Spivey with his first Chinook that he caught, holding the fish up proudly in the picture. And also the doctor in the present moment is expressing Chinooker. Okay. 9:18 Wes: Is that the way it is in the script? I have. 9:19 Erin: Okay. 9:21 Wes: He's like, you didn't weigh the chain. 9:24 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Right. You're supposed to be. Doctor, you're supposed to be in the business of weighing people's chains. Right. And yet they. He didn't think to weigh the chain, and it was extremely heavy. And again, we have the sense of the idea of strength and overcoming through physical strength, relating both to fighting and also overcoming one's sort of chains that hold one down or whatever the case may be. So all this stuff is sort of wrapped up in that moment. But I think he sees this doctor express pride in this fishing trip. And I think the seed is planted for him to later take these guys out so that they could have a little fun day of doing a guy Thing, you know, because all these guys really need to do is be guys. Come on, let's go fishing. Let's just get laid. And that occupational therapy is one which he seems to be consciously invoking. You know, we could make the connection back to, okay, we'll have these guys feel some pride in themselves if they go out and catch a fish. And he's encouraging them, you know, when Christopher Lloyd is putting the hook through the fish's eyes, which they're a little grossed out by, he eggs them on and is, you know, encourages them to keep going. And then they. They're sort of proud of themselves, too. And he says, you're not a lunatic now. You're a fisherman. So now I've given you a new occupation. I've given you a sense of purpose. You have a new noun to attach to yourself. I think his benevolence is about seeing that these men are not actually so badly off that they need to be committed and just wanting to give them a little bit of a push into something, some sort of liveliness or sense of fun, you know. And I think that McMurphy has this idea that if they just go out and have a good time, if they just walk, wet their whistle and watch the ball game, if they just get laid, then they will be better. And in fact, he's right every time. I mean, he. You know, he's right about the fishing trip. Billy loses his stutter because he gets laid. You know, he gets it back again immediately because Nurse Ratched emasculates him in a horrific scene. But that. That part of McMurphy's benevolence to me is actually a little. I mean, one doesn't look at it too closely, but that good part of him seems to me to be a little bit exaggerated. I think it's not accidental what he's doing. I think he takes an interest in these guys immediately and pities them and wants to see them feel confident. 11:50 Wes: Yeah, I still think there's a good helping of selfishness there and all that. And then we could think about his motives for wanting to manipulate these guys into doing these various things. Right. He's going to be doing something similar to Nurse Ratched. He's trying to get certain elements of his own psychological dynamics to unfold outside of him. So it might feel helpful without actually being helpful. But, yeah, the question. I mean, it's a good question. You ask whether he would consciously have any subjective desire to be helpful given the kind of character he is. He is otherwise. And then we can ask about the more realistic consequences of his actions. Because I want to say these men need structure. We had something in my house called day structure, which is actually very good for people. They had to be out of the house in the morning at 10am they had to have a job or some other way to spend 20 hours a week. Structure actually is good for people. I don't know about pacifying music or something like that, but this principle that he introduces, the more vital, instinctual sexual principle, is only good up to a point. This is the other thing that I see when people talk about dating. If they're not emotionally stable enough, I think, okay, right. They tell me a resident of my house would tell me started dating someone. I'm like, okay, here we go. This is going to be a hospital visit soon. So I just want to introduce the idea that this is. I mean, realistically, these men are having. They're shut down and they're having some vitality introduced into their life. And Ratched represents too much superego, too little instinct, too much repression. But we don't want them turning into McMurphys. And also, they couldn't handle it. Like the way you can't handle the truth. You can't handle being McMurphy. They couldn't handle would be destabilizing. So I don't think. I think the movie is. Or maybe I'm just viewing it this way, but I think the Nurse Ratched, as horrible as she is, the principle that she represents isn't all wrong. Exactly. Do you know what I mean? We don't see what can go wrong with the McMurphy principle, but it can be very, very destructive. 14:13 Erin: Yes, I agree with you that I personally think that Nurse Ratched is. I am sympathetic to her to a point. I think the problem that I'm finding in the film's message is I think that the film seems to be advancing the idea that these men are not sick, that Jack Nicholson is all too sane, and that we all need to take Jack Nicholson lessons like that is. And I think that's one of the reasons why I feel like this. The film lands. It's a little bit hard to believe at times, or it's a little bit hard to be on board with fully because it seems to be holding him up as this kind of paragon and therefore stepping on the wrong side of the misogyny divide. If this is really what it means to be a man, as the film seems to be saying, that's the impression that I got from the film, is that he's this life force that he is sane. You know, he knows more than the doctors. He, you know, can identify two cliches in a row. When the other doctor can't, he knows to weigh the chain. Yeah. And I think that's what the film is trying to say. Like look at this great guy who's wiser than the system. It's too bad that he then becomes a martyr to the system, a victim of the system. But he's inspired one person to make themselves free and perhaps the others. I know in the book that the other guys are all inspired by his example and they, you know, they're like Lazarus, they all get up and walk. 15:36 Wes: Yeah, I think to the extent that the film is saying that, that, yeah, that's not very realistic. Right. So it's one thing to say that we have to be in, we have to have more of the Dionysian principle. Right. But it's another to say that we simply go all the way to the Dionysian. So we want to offset that. And this is, by the way, this is one of Nietzsche's points. It's not that we get rid of the Apollonian or the scientific. We have a gay science, which is to say we have a Dionysian science. We have this fabulous fusion of the rational and the irrational. We get the optimum balance between the two. And the same thing I think with romantics like Wordsworth. Right. Didn't he explicitly say something similar? So it's not just to go to the opposite extreme. So yeah, hopefully I might be too charitably reading the movie, but I think we learn in the end that we don't just learn it in the end. We know that McMurphy is quite self destructive. That's how he ended up in prison and that's how he's getting into trouble with all these shenanigans. It's just that his self destructiveness can be helpful to others in this kind of accidental way, I think. And that becomes sacrifice for him. It becomes sacrifice because he ends up lobotomized and then ultimately dead because of it. And it's not that everyone needs this. Some people, they don't need more instinct, they need more superego and ego. They need to be repressed more. A lot of people could use a bit more repression. 17:11 Erin: That's right. 17:12 Wes: You're not just trying to liberate them from their and then let the ID run wild. But some people, yeah, they can use more life drive, they can use more vitality, they can use more instinct as long as it's Harnessed correctly and integrated with the rest of the personality in a certain way. So you could see someone like Chief. He's the one character who could really benefit from this. I think the rest of the guys actually do need to be in the institution. They're not going to do well on the outside. On a more charitable reading of this movie, it's only Chief who's really configured to fully benefit in the long term from someone like McMurphy. Assuming that he does. Assuming he doesn't end up back in the hospital the next day. But if McMurphy can be transformative in the long term for someone, I think this is a good. Maybe it's time to talk about the Chief, this particular character that he can be especially helpful to. 18:08 Erin: Yeah. And maybe, maybe my idea that Nicholson, that the film is single mindedly on Nicholson's side is actually because I'm reading that character's effect too generously. But it seems to me that Harding doesn't need to be there. Billy is hurt by being there in the same way that he's hurt by living with his mother. Billy needs to be kind of, you know, like a lot of this is. I'm actually. In other words, maybe I see Nicholson or maybe I see the film as positing that Nicholson is having this tremendously positive influence because I see his influence as positive. And this goes back to, I think this. You know, the idea that I had that Nurse Ratched is like this overbearing mom and Nicholson is like this licentious dad. And these guys have too much of this overbearing mom in their lives and they need the dad. They need the. The dad who's gonna throw them in the deep end of the pool. Dad who's gonna say, let's go out and do something dangerous. When they go out on the fishing trip, everything turns out fine. You know, I mean, they get in trouble. They don't like run through the streets tearing their clothes off or crying and getting hysterical or, you know, like, you know, they're capable of being out in society, it seems. 19:14 Wes: Well, but they're in a very specific circumstance. They're on a boat. Right. Which I think is important. This little, as Melville calls it, a boat is a very important little microcosm. And yeah, I don't think they would function very well for the most part in society. Just, just based on my. Okay, my experience. And I think it. So someone like Harding might be there to avoid killing his wife. In other words, they are looking for their impulses to be restrained. If they're There voluntarily. You ever watch police videos where someone. You probably don't, but I watch these sometimes because I find it psychologically fascinating where people work very, very hard to get arrested by police by being confrontational, when otherwise they're just going to be let go and they can't help themselves. It's almost like they want to be locked up. It's almost like they're. And they're really, really out of control. And it's almost like they want someone else to keep them in control. So this dynamic goes both ways. Where Nurse Ratched wants to be a controller, some people want to be in control because they're afraid of what their impulses will do, even if they're incorrect. It might not be that Harding would kill his wife if he stays home, but as an obsessional character, which he's a perfect representative of, he could well be afraid of that impulse. That's why there's this double play on life and wife. You know, I'm talking about my life, not just about my wife. It's also talking about her life. 20:52 Erin: I think this reminds me, I was just thinking of this little anecdote before where, when I was in college and taking an American lit class, we were reading Emerson, who I adore. And I came into class and everybody was talking about how Emerson is just this crazy egomaniac. And I found it really inspiring. And I remember the professor said, you know, that basically that most. He finds that most of his students who are healthy psychologically find Emerson to be too much, but depressed students find him. Exactly, exactly. But depressed students find him to be really inspiring and, like, need the jolt of self confidence that Emerson is dishing out in these essays. It's good for them. That's what they really need. And so I remember walking away from that, first of all thinking, am I depressed? And second of all, really understanding, I think, what he meant by that, because there's something about, like, you need to be in the position to be able to receive that message. And, you know, Emerson is talking to the person that he's trying to reach, you know, that that particular person, which was me in part, one man's satyr, one man's Dionysus, one man's trickster, evil antichrist, whatever he is, Topsy turvy Christ, is another man's motivational speaker, you know, and another man's positive paternal influence. And I think that what is frustrating about so many of these patients is that they. They seem to lack the ability to be decisive, to make a decision, to act, to do something. Your description of this need for control or perhaps need to be restrained as an angle, which I had not thought of. But I think more often than not, society or people's own inhibitions turns them into passive figures who need this jolt to get them out of that. And that seems to me to be something that. That principle is something that McMurphy is supplying to these men. You know, and I could be wrong, and I think, you know, maybe you're right about Harding, that he would attack his wife. But it seems to me that he need. That all these men need some. Just some chutzpah. They need some. Somebody to just give them a little jolt of confidence. Which is why, you know, sleeping with Candy works momentarily for Billy. At least in the film, it works. 23:19 Wes: Yeah, I'm having trouble figuring out which side you're coming down on here to the Ben. 23:23 Erin: Just though I'm distrustful of the way that the film is setting up Nicholson to be a kind of a hero, I also feel as though within the universe that the film is creating, he is the hero. And that these characters, in the way that they're constructed and the way that they're responding to Nicholson are kind of proving that they need. I'm sorry to be using his name interchangeably with McMurphy, but they're, you know, one in the same. I imagine they seem to need what he's giving them. Yeah, it may not be actually true in terms of the way that what they would need in real life, but in the fictional world, they seem to need what he is supplying. Now, I find that to be troubling and somewhat, in terms of this relationship with women, somewhat misogynistic. But I also think these men need a positive paternal influence to help them get a little decisiveness in their lives. At least in the film. That seems to be what they are lacking, these characters, and he's supplying it. But maybe this would be an opportunity for us to talk about why this works on Chief and what makes Chief. 24:33 Wes: Well, let me, before we do that. So I think it is probably part of the social. You know, there's a very kind of 1970s social commentary to the film, which is anti establishment, probably, and anti bureaucratic and maybe even, you know, not happy with the concept of mental health. You know, you have people these days who are right against all psychiatric medication or. Which is foolish, but they don't. It just reflects the fact that they don't really know what they're talking about. But it's a little unclear to me on where the film is on that but it's crafted well enough to be a bit. It's ambiguous enough to me where you could give it a more charitable reading and say, well, they do need that in a sense, but it's very context dependent. So they can have a fun time on a boat and they are having a nice party, but that's in the hospital. They're still locked in and there's still going to be staff the next morning on a real world basis. It's not a sustainable thing for them. They do need a different relationship to the instinctual and they are shut down in various ways. The solution is not just, hey, let's be more instinctual. Freud made a big point of this because I think people misunderstood them. He wrote a. I gotta remember the title here. Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness in which he complains a lot about the sexual mores of the time and the fact that there basically isn't even really any dating, right. And just people end up with each other and then they're very unhappy. But he also makes a point in that essay to say, yeah, just saying, don't be uptight and let's have free love and let instincts reign. That is not a good solution. To say that some people need this more Dionysian element introduced is, I think, absolutely true. But how it's integrated is key. And it's like a long term therapeutic process. It's not enough to have this temporary paternal, lively figure. So this is a very temporary experience for these guys. It is therapeutic. Does say something about what could be different in that environment. Right. So if Nurse Ratched were a little more lively, that could be good. But of course she could be too lively. We wouldn't want Nurse ratched to be McMurphy. That would be. Yeah, not good for them either. 27:07 Erin: Well, here's. Okay, maybe this is my bias or something, but one of the things I think that is detrimental to these guys or to anyone really is talking things to death. One of the things that he's doing is not necessarily just bringing in the instinctual. He's having them do things. It's like occupational therapy, you know, instead of just sitting around and being, you know, made to talk about these things which they don't want to talk about and which make them extremely uncomfortable and which make the men around them listening to it extremely uncomfortable. And instead of just this constant passive, this kind of like, you know, benevolent thing that Ratched is doing where you don't act at all, there's no activity and everything is suppressed. There's just the idea of let's watch the ball game together. Let's. Okay. Not necessarily getting drunk and sleeping with women and stuff like that, but going out and doing something. Just doing something. It seems that that's the big problem. These men want restraint. Well, it seems that they're already overly restrained in their behavior. They're inhibited in their behavior, and then all they want to do is talk about everything. 28:15 Wes: But we do know they're taken on field trips of some sort with that bus. We don't know exactly what they are. Right. 28:21 Erin: And they have the basketball court and they have cards. 28:27 Wes: Yeah. But it's pretty meager. Yeah, it's pretty. 28:30 Erin: Right. That seems important. And that's the role that. I mean, they're being taken on these field trips by the orderlies. Right. So it seems as though the actual therapeutic element is not incorporating this kind of thing. It seems that recreation is their break from talk therapy, which is their only recourse and their own. The only way that they're being ministered to psychologically. That, I think, is a. That's a problem for these men. I think they need to feel. I mean, I don't know. What do I know? I'm not an expert, but. But I would seem to me that they would maybe need to feel useful, that they are doing an activity that gives them some pride, like fishing. Being able to catch a fish. 29:10 Wes: Yeah. 29:11 Erin: Doing something that has an end result that they could feel accomplished. Not necessarily just sitting around and talking in circles like Harding does, or just getting embarrassed or, you know, talking all the time. Seems like something that. I mean, it's certainly something I don't want to do, you know, so if I were in this place, I wouldn't want to be constantly talking about my problems. That was. Seems to me that would be a very painful and detrimental thing if it were not broken up by some other form of therapy. Not electroshock. 29:42 Wes: Yeah. I think fishing field trips are a good idea. It's just the stealing the boat part. 29:49 Erin: Right. But I mean, like, in a directed, therapeutic way, rather than just. What are they being taken, for instance, to a movie theater to just sit passively in front of a screen? I don't know. You know, we don't really know. 30:00 Wes: Yeah. We don't see that in the film. And that's. You know, that's. I thought was interesting because we could have had this. We could have been hit over the head with this. We could have been shown a very depressing field trip. And maybe there was. And maybe that was cut out of the movie. We could have been shown orderly. You know, the orderlies are cruel and not great at points, but they're not like caricatures of cruel orderlies. 30:30 Erin: No, not at all. 30:31 Wes: And they're not even as bad as stories I've heard of, you know, institutions here in Massachusetts of what goes on. Right. So we could have been hit over the head more in the movie with that type of thing. I think it's going for a little bit more ambiguity or nuance in that respect. I think at the points where Nurse Ratched gets really cruel and humiliates Billy, for instance, there's no longer any nuance. But it's true to her. I still think it's true in a sense. Right. It's not just caricature. This is her character and it fits. And she can be in general, she's not necessarily acting out like that, but she does it. She does in that context, in a key moment. So, yeah, I totally agree that activity helps. And I used to basically force people to do that, which they hated, including socialization time, which is one of the things they mentioned in the movie. Forced socialization, not letting people be isolated. I had to do that. And they often were not happy with that. But this is a good point about talking is not going to be enough. And part of what's therapeutic, I think the point you're making has to come from real life. So I know you would have taken them to the baseball game. Definitely. 31:44 Erin: Of course. Of course. I mean, this is a lot of this, a lot of where I sort of agree with the film is this idea that too much. There's too much rumination. This seems to me to be the extremely prevalent problem that too much rumination, not enough action. And maybe that's easy for me to say, I don't know, because then maybe if people were just acting instead of ruminating, the world would be in chaos. But I think action of any kind, any kind of positive action. But then again, I don't want this conversation to devolve just into what I would do if I were running the institution. 32:19 Wes: But, yeah, and I'm just saying they have to be made feel safe to act. They have to feel like their action is not going to kill anyone or whatever. Dangerous things come from the use of one's impulses. 32:32 Erin: Well, and something about, actually, McMurphy coming back unscathed from ECT seems to increase everyone's feeling of safety. His resilience seems to inspire them with more courage, because that's when Cheswick gets upset over the cigarettes and fights back. And has some agency in that moment. It results in chaos because of Nurse Ratched's need for everything to be controlled and her refusal to sort of compromise with them or really listen to their concerns. I'm just interested in what you think in. Chief is particularly receptive to McMurphy. If I had to guess, I would say his being so inhibited as to not be able to speak or respond to people. McMurphy represents something that's. For him, you know, like a depressed person. Encountering Emerson, we somehow get to normal instead of from normal person to, you know, fascist dictator or whatever. The. Whatever the worrying effects of Emerson might be on someone. Too much confidence. But McMurphy's influence on him works like a tonic. 33:37 Wes: Yeah. So let's look at. Maybe let's look at what the Chief says about what's troubling him. Because, of course, he's. He's chosen not to speak and he's chosen to pretend that he's deaf, which. Who could blame him in that environment if he doesn't really want to communicate with all those people, he's there. He's using it more as a refuge. So, anyway, let's look. I think, yeah, it could help just to look at what the Chief says. So McMurphy says to him, chief, I can't take it no more. I gotta get out of here. And Chief says, he can't. And then McMurphy says, It's easier than you think, Chief. The Chief says, for you, maybe. You're a lot bigger than me. Which is a great line in the movie because we learn that, you know, despite his physical size the Chief thinks of himself as spiritually small, in a way. Murphy says, why, Chief? You're as big as a goddamn tree trunk. And then the Chief talks about his father. My papa's real big. He did like he pleased. So there's a reference to problems of impulse, which is one of the reasons why people shut down like this. That's why everybody worked on him. I don't know what that means exactly. The last time I seen my father, he was blind in the cedars from drinking. What does that mean, blind in the cedars? I mean, it sounds like he drank some bad alcohol and went blind. But blind in the Cedars or that just means blackout drunk. 35:04 Erin: I don't know. 35:04 Wes: Do you know what that means? 35:06 Erin: No, I don't. 35:07 Wes: The reason why I'm going to this speech is just. Yeah. I didn't have time to parse all of it, but I thought it was something we would come to, so. And Then he said it. And then every time he put the bottle to his mouth, he don't suck out of it. It sucks out of him until he shrunk, so wrinkled and yellow, even the dogs don't know him. So his father was real big, but got smaller because of his impulses. The impulse. The release of impulses, in the case of his father did not lead right to vitality. Chief has learned the lesson that. 35:41 Erin: But people working on him, too. I think that's related perhaps to the fact that people were also sucking the life out of him. They were leeching off of that vitality. So he was somehow being victimized by the people around him in addition to being ruled by his own impulses. 35:58 Wes: Yeah, I just. Again, that's a line I find really opaque. I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, what you're saying makes sense. But he did like he pleased. Yeah. That's why everybody worked on him, took advantage of him. 36:11 Erin: Yeah. Like McMurphy, his sort of overabundance of sanity or his bigness or his capacity seems to put a target on his back. And that's the. What do they call it? Tall Poppy syndrome. Okay, you want to cut the tall poppy. The thing that stands out, stands above. 36:29 Wes: Okay, I like this. Yeah, this makes sense. So the Chief. And there are elements of McMurphy and the Chief's father, but what he saw was the destructive side of that. So his father became small by having the life sucked out of him by liquor. Right. And Dionysus is the God of liquor as well. So he seems to make himself small preemptively. And that includes by not speaking, pretending like he can't hear, not communicating with people. He's such a big, strong person, but he doesn't want to. It seems to me like, again, this is another place where he doesn't want to do something with his impulses anyway. So wrinkled and yellow that even the dogs don't know him. And then McMurphy says, Killed him. And he says, I'm not saying they killed him. They just worked on him the way they're working on you. Yeah, I don't know exactly what exactly that means. 37:26 Erin: Yeah, that sort of taking him down. So it's almost implied that he was, you know, his propensity for liquor was encouraged by the people around him. His self destruction was perhaps, you could say a setup, but that's a little bit too obvious or a little bit too naked. It would be something more envious and pernicious. But that similar relationship that ratched has to McMurphy and the tall poppy who needs to be neutralized through lobotomy because he cannot be brought into the fold or restrained in the way that she wishes to restrain or pacified in the way that she wishes to pacify him. 38:03 Wes: I mean, we do get. McMurphy becomes lobotomized, and he really is, in a sense, deaf and dumb. Right. He really is what the Chief was pretending to be. Completely out of touch. That comparison is a little bit rough, but you can see how seeing that, seeing someone else made that way in another person, I think might have put Chief in touch with the desire to not preemptively do that to himself, or not to partially be self lobotomized, so to speak, at least at a social level. So I don't know. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out here what it is about McMurphy that could have been especially therapeutic for Chief, despite the fact that this kind of McMurphy, like, character, Chief's father, really, it was. For him, it was just entirely destructive. Right. Alcohol and impulse and all that. 38:57 Erin: Maybe the desire to see McMurphy succeed where the father failed. So to see those two in parallel, and then ultimately, when McMurphy is made to fail, the decision to somehow. What can that mean? Decide that, you know, okay, if this is maybe an inevitability for those men who I find, great, then I'm going to let the world do it to me instead of doing it to myself. Perhaps. But that seems a pretty bleak way of interpreting that final act of freeing himself. 39:28 Wes: Yeah. And we know that it's not just seeing McMurphy lobotomized and then killing him. That. That's not entirely the catalyst for him breaking out. Because he says he's ready to do it, Right? He says, I knew you wouldn't leave without me. I was waiting for you. Now we can make it, Mac. I feel big as a damn mountain. So something has happened between the party and McMurphy's return to the ward. I guess that's enough for Chief to go from feeling too small to leave to feeling big enough to leave. And of course, there's that great symbolic act of throwing the. What is it, a hydrotherapy station or something? I don't know what. The big fixture. Anyway. 40:12 Erin: Yeah. 40:12 Wes: Waterfall. Taking that. Right. So he is literally physically big enough to lift it the way McMurphy wasn't and to tear it out of the floor and throw it through the window. And the parallel there, of course, is the psychological or spiritual lifting required. 40:31 Erin: Yeah. This is almost not worth saying, but if McMurphy returns from the dead with ECT. That's his resurrection. Now, this is his 40 days on earth of teaching his final lessons before he then goes off. Right. So in a way, it's like, okay, he needed. And now he's converted his faithful, and then he sort of ascends into the ether, and the work has been done. The conversion work has been done on Chief, or the work of the Holy Spirit, whatever you want to call it. And so now it's as if McMurphy has ascended. He's left, he's died, and. Yeah, ascended into whatever kind of Heaven will accept McMurphy. Aka, you know, hey, whatever direction he's traveling in, he's traveled there. 41:29 Wes: Or it's purgatory. And purgatory is just like a psychiatric unit 41:34 Erin: and he has to help Martini for the next thousand years. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So finally, teach Martini how to play blackjack. 41:43 Wes: Take people on fishing trips. Right. 41:45 Erin: That's a little too fun. It's not quite sufficiently purgatorial, especially if there's a candy on board. But anyway, yeah. 41:53 Wes: This is going to be the final word. Word. What you're saying. Oh. 41:55 Erin: Oh, no. 41:56 Wes: This Comparing. 41:58 Erin: No, no, no, no. Please, let's say something else. 42:01 Wes: This is the way the episode needs to end. 42:06 Erin: Oh, no. What did we miss? What did we. What final word can we end on 42:12 Wes: that isn't Misogynist Jesus? Misogynist Jesus. What are some other good names? Evil Jesus. I don't know. He's died for our sins. And when I say for our sins, I mean so that we can continue. 42:30 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Well, 42:36 Wes: do you have any other last words? 42:41 Erin: I can't. I feel my frontal lobe is not. Not communicating anymore with the rest of my. 42:47 Wes: Is there anything you would like to take back. For the sake of your soul? 42:57 Erin: Many things. Many things. 43:00 Wes: All right, thank you. 43:02 Erin: Thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast Please send your questions, feedback, and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook @subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.