One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 

Megan: Hey, you're listening to the I’m Triggered podcast, where two therapists talk about mental the health in the media with Jess and Megan! This is our first episode! Welcome.

One flew over the cuckoo's nest is what we're talking about today. The film, not the book. The book was published in 1962, written by Ken Kesey. The movie was released in 1975, directed by Milos Forman. I'm not sure if I'm saying his name, right? Who also directed one of my favorite movies, Amadeus, I love that movie. And this won five Oscars the year that it came out.  

Triggers? Let's see. It's rated R. It says due to language, some violence, sexual content, and brief nudity. There's so much more that's in it, though, than that. 

Jess: I don't even remember any nudity, but that sounds accurate. 

Megan: There's a little flash of man butt when,when, Billy, Billy Wormtongue runs out of the room. Yes. Towards the end. Yep, and they're all caught. Poor thing. 

Jess: He like trips on his pants. Yes, you're right. I know. 

Megan: Yeah. And he's trying to pull him on. Poor Billy. Yeah, we'll, talk about Billy. Yeah. 

Jess: I would say for triggers, definitely institutional experience it reads very like carceral, like carceral mental health care punitive mental health care. A lot of like infantilization of the mentally ill, definitely some racism, think what else. I mean it's a product of its time. I think it's very clear this was a movie made in the 70s.

Megan: Absolutely. There's so much in this movie that would not fly at all. There's also talk about and allusions to sexual assault, right at the beginning. There's talk about how the main character was arrested for what they're saying, statutory rape, and he completely minimizes what happened in really gross ways that I don't want to repeat on here.

And, then the part where they're the women in the ward having the party and one of them is left alone in a room. We don't really know what happens there, but it leaves you with an uneasy feeling, about what's going on. Definitely not a feminist story, that's for sure.

Jess: That was my thought. Women are very much objects in this movie. The only women who are not are the nurses. And they are objects in a different way. They are bad objects. I think it is very much a male centered film. Yep. Totally. 

Megan: Let's see. I wanted to do this as our first podcast I was trying to think of all these different movies and TV shows about mental health, this one comes to mind because it's such a classic and it really stuck with people.

When people think of institutions, they often think of this story when they think of ECT or lobotomies. So what did you know about it before watching it?

Jess: It's interesting that I never have seen it because I'm pretty sure I had read the book when I was in high school. So I had some familiarity With the story, but I'm wondering if I even finished the book, but I knew it was Jack Nicholson's, one of his first big roles, although I looked and it turns out it was not one of his first big roles, he had already, I think, won an Oscar by this point, but it was clear, according to everything I read, that this was the first movie he had done that was like this.

He wasn't like the bad boy, James Dean esque type of character. This was very much a more humanized role for him. And yeah, the only thing I really knew was That Jack Nicholson was in it, and it was in a very quintessential, like, 60s, 70s mental health ward.

And other than that, I walked into it pretty, pretty blind, didn't really know anything. So that was cool. Being able to really see it with, pretty fresh eyes and get the full cringe experience of some of it. Of which there was plenty of cringe. But yeah, I really, I thought it was a great movie and I could see why it had the impact it did, I think just, and has continued to have the impact it has.

Because it's really, I think it just speaks to what was going on at the time and how our world conceptualized mental health, but how really, I don't think it's changed all that much. I think it's better in today's world, but I think a lot of people could watch that and be like, Oh yeah, that's like what mental health looks like.

That's what mental illness looks like, which is unfortunate. 

Megan: Absolutely. It was really interesting to rewatch it. Cause when I saw it years ago, 

I definitely took the whole story at face value back then. I really liked Ken Kesey. I thought he was awesome. And I was very interested in the Merry pranksters. Now, looking back on it, I can see how he's promoting this very stereotypical view of Manliness. And this mentality of pick yourself up by our bootstraps even as it relates to mental health which is obviously problematic. 

It was really interesting to come into it and watch it again and be shocked by a lot of things, really from the get go, like, Whoa, I don't remember this stuff. But then also recognizing that this movie came out in 1975. So that was three years before I was born, but watching it as a young adult, I think a lot of the things about racism and sexism and institutionalization, I didn't even really think about it back then because it all just seemed pretty normal. 

Jess: Right. If I had watched this in high school, it would have been very lost on me. Interestingly, I think I would have felt differently about Nurse Ratched. I was trying really hard because that actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I did have a good sense of who she was because there was like a show that came out within the last several years that was based on her character and really she's become a cult iconic character in our culture because she was probably the 1st, 1 of the 1st characters of her kind, but maybe if I had watched this before I became a therapist, I would have had a different feel, but as a therapist, I was trying to give her some of the benefit of the doubt and especially having worked in.

Hospital settings, but after a certain point, Oh, no, there's no redeeming quality here. I can't give it to her anymore. A lot of condescension. It was rough to watch because I can't imagine ever speaking to somebody that way.

Megan: Definitely not. Very disturbing character. Very good Halloween costume. I don't know if you've ever seen anyone dress up like Nurse Ratched for Halloween, but it's a fabulous costume. I wish I had the hair to pull it off. I don't. 

Jess: But yeah, I, didn't watch it, and I'm not really sure what they did with it like how what direction they took it because given that it's Ryan Murphy I'm sure it was taken in some really funky directions 

Megan: Something funky something gross. That's what usually happens and confusing and where there's too much going on Watch, maybe the first episode and of course Sarah Paulson was great.

Jess: The Costumes and the set designs were really cool But it wasn't compelling and I didn't stick with it. And I'm the same with Ryan Murphy stuff. I don't even do it anymore, except I do like his, his crime story shows. He seems to be a little more contained with those. 

Yes, I agree.

Megan: We see nurse ratchet come in, unlocking the gate door . It's very clear from the beginning, the authority that she has. 

And she's, walking with her very upright posture, owning the place. And then a police car pulls up and here comes, Randall Patrick McMurphy, the main character played by, of course, Jack Nicholson. At the beginning when it shows him, he comes into the institution, he's handcuffed.

He's with two police officers. And they're taking off his handcuffs and he laughs in everybody's face and he's doing that Jack Nicholson cackle that he does so well. Are we supposed to be wondering if he's really mentally ill or not?

Is this kind of the question at the beginning, right? What's up with this guy coming in here? 

Jess: That was my question. The first, several minutes, he's doing some very, stereotypical mentally ill things, or I guess what our culture views as mental illness, did I get this wrong?

Is he actually, Mentally ill and in the institution for a reason, but then of course he's just playing it up and being kind of ridiculous, which, on brand for his character. Yep. And he's got his beanie on, his leather jacket, which we see throughout the movie.

Megan: The nursing staff go through the stuff from his bag. Did that bring back some memories for you of working in institutions? 

Jess: Oh, I was just like and that's also just a thing if you have ever gone to treatment, if you have ever gone to like even residential treatment, they go through everything. They take away everything and you feel like a child really, who's like brought, something you're not supposed to bring to school or something and yeah, I was so much of this movie. I think for me, thinking about like triggers. Oh, God, I was like, this is very reminiscent of experiencing, residential as a teen and just having a lot of, punitive experiences.

So it's again, I guess this is, it's an experience that really spans decades in that it's like there are some elements of treatment that have really persisted and I think that's one of them. 

Megan: The punitive controlling element. This movie shows that really well,. I have never worked in a hospital, but I have worked in residential facilities and we would always go through everybody's stuff. And I always liked to do it because I liked to hang out with people when they first came in and chat with them and get to know them.

I think I was too casual about it. Cause there were a couple of times that they snuck something in and I didn't catch it because. People can be sneaky and I'm like, Oh, so what grade are you in?

What kind of books do you like? And didn't catch it. It was like, Megan, you missed this thing. So I guess there's reasons for that. That's, what happens in these places. 

Jess: He knew the drill, because I, I realized he came from prison. He was well, acquainted with, having his stuff taken away or, not having access to a lot of his own belongings, He seemed pretty cavalier about it.

He didn't seem, bothered. 

Megan: McMurphy doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care. He's just glad that he doesn't have to be in the penitentiary 

it becomes pretty clear that this is something that he's doing because he doesn't want to be at the prison because he was at a working prison and what do you have to do at a working prison? You have to work. He doesn't like to work. He likes to drink. He likes to gamble. He likes to have sex.

He makes that very clear right from the beginning. So this is a ruse for him and what the doctor says is they're going to observe him for a while and they're going to make a decision if he needs to be in there or not. That's the setup of all of this. And he's very with himself about the whole thing and clearly cannot take responsibility for anything.

For all the reasons he's been arrested and that he's been in and out of jail, including his first arrest, which they said was for him having sex with a 15-year old, which he. Completely minimized and did not see the problem in that at all, which is gross. And sadly, I think was another thing that was consistent for the time, that's how things like that were looked at.

Thankfully, that has changed in a lot of ways. Then he goes on the ward and he starts to meet everybody. We see Chief. We wish that we knew what his real name was, but everyone calls him chief. We know his last name is Bromden. So he's either chief or Mr. Bromden,very tall, very big native American man who is, sweeping with a broom all the time and McMurphy goes right up to him to start talking with him.

Jess: And everyone is like, oh, he's deaf. He's dumb. He, which [00:13:00] that was a cringe moment. At first it seems like he doesn't talk to anybody and everyone believes that he is not even able to hear them or literally staring at them.

That's what is believed. And later we see that he actually can talk and is hearing everybody. So he's just been enduring people calling him deaf and dumb for as long as he's been on the ward, which I'm sure was impactful to him. 

Megan: Yeah. That must work for him in a lot of ways that he just gets to be in the background sweeping.

McMurphy does a bunch of again, stuff that would not fly in a movie now saying how and things like that and doing racist Native American, dance and yeah, cringey stuff for sure. He's such an interesting character and I don't know if you remember this about the book, but he's the narrator in the book.

I don't remember this very well, but I was reading up about it is, it's his point of view, all the things that happen on the ward. 

 The book also talks about, he has schizophrenia and he is telling a story at the same time about something called the Combine, the sinister force that runs the world. A symbol for how he views society at large and the ways that society oppresses people and that people come into the hospital ward, as a factory that helps them to remedy the mistakes that they've made within the combine.

And so what he does in the hospital is he's kind of like a robot. where he's sweeping and not talking or interacting, not really acting like a human. Then his story is that his ancestral land was taken to build a hydroelectric dam, which is a big issue in the Northwest. All these dams, the land that was taken to do environmental destruction of all the dams, of course.

I did find a really cool article that, when we post all of our Sources and whatnot, that is about the story if it was really told from his perspective, not from Chief Bromden's perspective as depicted by Ken Kesey, but what would it really be like, especially to have a multifaceted story, that would perhaps be consistent with his culture and where he comes from and, really speaking to the oppression of white supremacy and what that did to him as a person and also his family and where he comes from. 

Jess: It's coming back to me, some aspects of the book, and I imagine that would be a pretty huge criticism in today's world, that, this was a white man writing an indigenous character and probably missing out on a lot of nuances, and I think that is also the case in the movie, pretty reductionist, he was definitely the big character in the movie that I like wanted to know more about.

And of course, you don't get as much information as he doesn't really go into too much backstory. He talks about his dad having abused alcohol. And that seemed like that was a lot of his storyline or that was just some backstory that they provided.

Megan: I felt the same way I wanted to know more about him, which is probably why I went down the rabbit hole a little bit, . We meet all the other residents. So let's talk about all of them, because then a lot of the movie is really just the shenanigans of all these dudes on the ward.

 It is, such a trip just to see everybody right at the beginning and to recognize some of the actors. 

Jess: I was so shook when I finally realized, I was like, that's Danny Toto. Holy shit. And it especially made me laugh because I if, you've watched, it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, his character has like a whole storyline where he had been institutionalized as a child.

It's. Intended to be humorous, but I just thought I didn't realize that he had been in this movie. So I just thought that was a really interesting parallel. He's like, very young Danny DeVito. He's very squinty. He just seems very sweet in the movie. But then you also see Christopher Lloyd and apparently this was like a really first big role for him.

Megan: He's the screaming guy. 

Jess: It's very loud. I would say that like the, anytime they're doing any sort of like group therapy or even just having any sort of conversations, it's just very loud. It escalates very quickly, especially with him. 

Megan: I can really relate with Bansini, who's the guy that walks around going, I'm tired. I’m tired. And then he gets really upset when it's really loud. I relate with that guy. That's how I would feel having to be in this place because It's so loud there. They're always yelling. There's that music playing all the time in the background, and it's turned up really loud. And then the nurses coming on over the speakers to be like, medication time.

Jess: It is just sensory overload for sure. So much yelling. 

Megan: We've got, Mr. Cheswick is one of the big characters is super nervous. He kind of looks like a frog or a toad. 

Jess: Oh my god, yes, I agree. He definitely looks like a frog. 

Megan: And so we see him get very attached to McMurphy throughout the film and, he's an anxious dude, gets really fixated and stuck on things. Who else do we have? Oh, we have Billy Babbitt. Sweet little Billy Babbitt, who, when I re watched this, I was looking at him like, that guy is familiar. I've seen that actor somewhere.

And my shock when I looked at IMDb and that is Worm Tongue. 

Jess: I pulled up his, his Wikipedia and I was like, this guy looks really familiar. And, and I'm seeing like, oh, he was the voice of Chuckie in the Child's Play franchise.

I'm like, that can't possibly be what I recognize him from. And then sure enough, I'm scrolling down, and it says Lord of the Rings. And I had a meltdown. I was like, how did I not even realize it? Because it looks, it definitely looks like him. You could see it. It's just incredible.

This was like a jumping point it seems like for a lot of people's careers. 

Megan: He just needs to like greasy black wig and the white makeup and the voice. And there we have Warm Tongue and really different character than Warm Tongue, of course. He's very nervous and sweet.

He stutters when he talks. His mom seems very controlling, if not abusive, and he's scared of her and therefore also very scared, more than everybody else ,of Nurse Ratched. Scanlan, who you're saying looks like Charles Manson with the big beard.

Jess: He does! This is this was in the 70s, so of course they probably put in, a Charles Manson character. I think that [00:20:00] might be a reach but does look a lot like him. And... Apparently, he was obsessed with I think you had said it like destruction or something.

So I do wonder if there was some attempt to push that in there, but it could just be they needed some person on the word who is like more quote unquote dangerous or something. 

Megan: Didn't they say that he was one of the people who was actually committed to the ward there weren't very many people who are actually legally committed there and he was one of them so he did something.

Jess: Yeah, I thought that was a super interesting conversation. I worked in a psyche or in the beginning of my career. Super familiar with the process of having someone committed slash, admitting someone voluntarily or and then there's like a middle ground. I don't know if it's the case across the United States, but in New Jersey, it's called consensual where it's basically they're voluntary, but their mental health is compromised to such a degree where it's probably not ideal for them to be only voluntary. So, it's like a half and half. It's like they're half committed, half voluntary, basically.

Okay. I have some. Some thoughts about that. Having been the beginning of my career, I've, probably would not be as agreeable to having that job into today's world, but yeah, I just thought that was so interesting because it takes a lot to have someone committed and at the same time, there is a lot of subjectivity, depending on who's doing the evaluating and what, collateral information is received.

If you have a very conservative psychiatrist, if the collateral comes from someone who is trying to get a person committed or is like, I think he's dangerous. It's like that is factored in and it ends up the person could just be committed even if they don't necessarily quote unquote deserve it.

 It seems Like what they were saying with McMurphy was he was committed to the unit. Is there grounds for that? How did they manage that? But of course this is the seventies. So yeah, the standard was probably the threshold was probably a lot lower, 

It was just so interesting to think what was the criteria then like for commitment versus now and how hard it is after you have been committed to quote unquote prove your sanity there are good reasons why it is hard to have a person involuntarily committed.

Megan: And I do think it varies state by state. And it's been quite a few years since I've been in any kind of professional situation where this was coming up, but I do remember that there's a period of time where somebody can be involuntarily committed because of safety concerns and then after I think it's a three-day hold.

They would actually go up in front of a judge and information would be presented. And so it's really a big decision because this is about somebody's literal freedom. And I was also thinking about HIPAA with this film as well. There are reasons why these things are so strict now, and it's because there were real problems in the past with, people's private information being shared, the way that Nurse Ratched leverages her friendship with Billy Babbitt's mother is so fucked up. That was the first thing that came to my mind. You can't do that. I know. Yeah, you can't do that. Back then they totally could. Because if we think about the timeline too, and I'm sure the movie buffs out there would really know this, but the movie came out in 1975.

Now the book was published in 1962, and it was really in the sixties and the seventies that these institutions. started to close down and, there was more of a community-based movement that people who had mental illness were funneled into like community based care or sent back home, different things like that.

And these institutions really started to shut down and there were good reasons for that because. Of a lot of the things shown in this movie there was a lot of mistreatment. There was a lot of course of control and just, if you read back on the institutions, I think we're going to talk about this with other stories.

We go into as well, just bad conditions, where people aren't being fed enough. It's filthy. They're not being bathed basic human rights are being violated I think this story might even be more like the 50s. It's probably what we're looking at if Ken Kesey released a book in 1962 and knowing a little bit about the writing world, that was probably different back then too, but just the process of writing a book and getting it published, like that takes quite a few years.

We're looking at a long time ago, but yeah, there's a lot of things that come up in here where you can't do that. that's not okay. 

Jess: Even, at different, various points, they sneak out, they sneak people in, they are sneaking substances in.

That would never happen in today's world. Maybe, but I think it would just take a lot more. Jack Nicholson got on Chief's shoulders and jumped over the fence. That was it. That was like the whole thing. 

Megan: Easy peasy. 

Jess: There are a lot of elements of it that are very clearly if you watch it in today's world, yeah, this would never fly.

This is not okay. Granted, I think there are still some things that. In today's world with, , like higher levels of treatment, it seems like a very different experience and a lot of, lumping people in together granted, they were all adults, which that's something, because I know in some levels of care, they do lump adolescents and adults together.

But with this in particular, it was like a lot of, yes, very clearly people who were struggling with mental illness, but then there were also people who were like, intellectually disabled, who did not appear to be mentally ill, and they were all in the same place and getting the same treatment, which like, arguably, I do not know what treatment they were getting outside of medication and ECT .

Megan: We'll have to talk about Nurse Ratched's therapy groups. 

Jess: The cringe that I had. 

Megan: Another, Hey, you can't do that. You're totally right. The way that the ward was shown, that was really interesting where there was a split where there were people who.

Almost like the story was saying, these guys are not actually mentally ill. They don't actually have any kind of problem. They just don't fit into society. And so many of them are actually voluntarily there. So they're choosing to be here. And this really upsets McMurphy. And that's kind of part of his mission throughout the movie is he wants them to stand up for themselves and be brave and just not really care what the world thinks, just like him, which clearly is working so well for him being that he gets arrested all the time and is planning to run away to Canada.

And then there's the other half of the people on the ward, they're most likely intellectually disabled. I also wondered if some of them just had their brains fried from ECT and were totally overmedicated, because that was definitely something that was going on. And towards the end of all the institutions, they were using less ECT, doing fewer lobotomies.

And more medication because they started to have more of these psychotropic medications haloperidol was the big one, it's an antipsychotic it's still used sometimes today but it has major side effects. So, Bansini, the tired guy, we see him with tremor in his hand throughout it and that's a pretty common side effect of medications like that.

I think that you're bringing up something really important of, mixing a bunch of people together without real consideration? What exactly is the treatment? What are we doing here? 

Jess: It's hard to say especially because like I don't I think we could make the argument like are these group therapy sessions actually Therapeutic it doesn't seem like any of them are getting any therapeutic benefit from it.

Megan: We're talking about the yelling That takes place and a lot of the yelling is inspired by these therapy groups. So they all sit in a circle and Nurse Ratchet and the other nurse lead the group. They start with these calisthenics or stretches or something. It's like they're trying to be a tree or something.

They're like waving their arms around. I'm like, what is that? It reminds me a bit of They're doing these like big breaths, Shh! 

Megan: Yes! The whoosh breaths. 

Jess: Reminds me of Girl Interrupted, which is like a similarly, problematic, lens into an institution, but it's kind of same thing, showing them doing some bizarre interpretive dance movement.

Megan: Yeah. It's therapy. Well, maybe that's their version of a mindfulness exercise.Let's be a tree and do some whoosh breaths. 

So they do that and then basically from what I could tell the therapy group is Nurse Ratched talking about personal things and then trying to get input from the other residents. So for example, they talk about, Mr. Harding, who seems to be a closeted gay man who is in this institution. Right. Because his marriage is not working. She's talking about his sex life and how his wife is not satisfied. And, oh, what do the others think about this? 

Jess: Yeah, that was so bizarre. Especially because she didn't let it go.

She just kept poking and trying to ask each person well, what do you think? Or what do you think? I just truly cannot imagine being in a group setting and doing any of that. It seems like there is a reason why therapists take a group counseling class and maybe it's just because of that, how that went.

Megan: I remember taking a group counseling class and it was very elaborate. Like we all got to be facilitators and we got to be group members too. And we made up our whole persona and the group that I ran. It was like one of these, where everybody just started yelling and everybody went off and it was sort of a nightmare, but it was very good practice, because one of the things that you learn is that you need to have rules and guidelines for the group. And one of the big ones is often, and I think even an AA, they do this where it's you're not doing crosstalk. You're not giving advice to other people unless they ask for it. And, and yet that is the whole point of Nurse Ratched's group is actually to have people comment on what's going on with others.

When she does the same thing to Billy Babbitt, Wormtongue, that is... especially disturbing because she's talking about information that she gets from his mom. Again, HIPAA wasn't a thing then and thank goodness it is now in so many ways. And then Billy is clearly uncomfortable and Cheswick, who You know, for all of his froggy nervousness is sensitive, dude.

He's like, Hey, I don't think Billy wants to talk about this. What if somebody doesn't want to talk about it? And she just stands by that. This is therapy and this is what they're there to do. It doesn't seem therapeutic at all. And I wondered, does she want them to get riled up so that then they can engage in the coercive control that they do there by, restraining someone or sending them upstairs to get ECT or different things like that? Because she doesn't seem phased at all when they start going off, she almost looks satisfied by it. 

Jess: Yeah, such a, masterful acting experience. Watching how her facial expressions move and don't. So limited in how she expresses her feelings. Because there are people screaming in her face, and she's just very dead inside. The way she holds her mouth.

Megan: That, slight little Grimace scowl that she has. It's impressive. Unfortunately, I'm sure there were plenty of people who worked in places like that who were just like that and were there in part to exert some control over people or to feel like they had some power or control over people and mm-hmm.

Jess: arguably the system enabled that because apparently you could just sit there and, be forceful with what you shared about a person's personal life and that's it. Like you could just ask for opinions and thoughts from other people and it was fair game.

Megan: Yeah, Nurse Ratched, I was thinking about her and how this happens in all sorts of settings. Especially in highly stressful settings, like working in a psychiatric institution, that's a stressful job. Like I said, I haven't worked in a hospital. I have worked residential.

It's stressful. You're in crisis mode a lot. You do have people yelling in your face, you have scary stuff happening. Have people on suicide watch, you're seeing people hurting themselves. It's a scary job in a lot of ways. And what can sometimes happen is when people stay in a job like that, they harden to it and they start to lose their compassion.

And that's the way that they continue to show up. They start to become dehumanized and they also are dehumanizing the people that they're working with. I was very curious about Nurse Ratched has she always been like this or did the system create this monster? Obviously she's, she's an arm of the system.

She's carrying out what the system would want her to, which is that power and control. But was she always like this? Did she come in? 15 years before, however long, a bright eyed person, straight out of nursing school. Like I'm here to help people

Jess: That's so sad to think about.

Megan:  It totally happens. And also when you worked in places like this, were there people who'd been there for a really long time? 

Jess: Yes. And part of why I didn't work in a hospital setting for very long, because I, A, I could feel myself completely dissociating, and I didn't work on an inpatient unit.

It was effectively like an arm of the ER. We would evaluate people for what level of care is appropriate for them. And very sick people come through and often people who were exhibiting violent symptoms. It was always a gamble like what I'd be walking into on a daily basis.

So it wasn't a very safe job either. So I think there was a level of you need to Compartmentalize and turn your brain off in order to even go to work and unfortunately, I think there were a lot of people there who had been there for 10 years, at least, and just did not have a soul left, like they just were so unkind about the patients, and not even that they were like unkind about the patients, they were unkind to the patients, and that I thought was a really sad aspect of that work, because there isn't really structure to support people in doing that work and not getting burnt out, but.

At the same time, clearly this particular work appeals to some people and sometimes it is people who just already do not have a whole lot of empathy for people struggling with certain things, something that just comes to mind there was a person I worked with who was very, very biased when it came to folks who struggled with substance use, and he was very open about how he felt about it to the patients and was very judgmental and it's just interesting, why you would choose to come and do this job with so many people who cycle through the ER or people who struggle with substances.

So it's a unique position. And I can see why so many people end up getting really burnt out and really hardened to the process because it's, it does, it makes you feel like you're like herding cats sometimes. 

Megan: How can a person actually remain engaged and grounded and empathetic when they're working in chaos and their job is to maintain control.

It makes me a little uncomfortable to oversimplify Nurse Ratched's character as she's bad, she's evil, because we know that this happens to people. And there's a reason why a lot of jobs in hospitals and residential facilities have really high turnover. And it's because of the rate of burnout and how hard it is.

And often the, nurses tend to get paid better than therapists. That's for sure. But the pay tends to be shit, you know? So why would I stay and do this? Like, why would I keep doing this? 

Jess: I think I was paid 15 an hour, which even that, like that was like the highest paying job I'd ever had up to that point, but it was.

Very scary work. I had a master's degree. There were so many things that I had been led to believe about the field that like, Oh, okay. Like you'll get paid a living wage. It was a bit of a shock and I can't see why people in like community care or just agency work really get burned out.

Like it just, it's hard not to. 

Megan: Ken Kesey is right in some ways that the problem is the system and I think he also oversimplifies it in some ways, by almost making a point that mental illness isn't real and people just need to accept that they don't fit into society and just fight against it.

I think that's part of what's going on here. Throughout the movie, and this is a big part of the plot. There is this power struggle between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, and as the story progresses, more and more of the residents are rallying behind McMurphy and starting to agree with him on things. There's the whole argument about watching the world series and, they take a vote and, he actually is able to get enough votes. But then she said, Oh, the group was over. So that doesn't count. So she's just making rules as she goes along because she's in charge and she can do that.

Right. And he's just a patient on the ward and he actually has no power. But when he does this, he goes and he pretends in the TV room that he is watching the game and everybody cheers around him. And even when he's forced to go get ECT, he pretends like he's a zombie afterwards. So everybody sees him come in and he's stumbling along and then he just laughs and he's like, I'm all good.

 He's really trying to show like, you cannot have power over me. And actually, in the end, that is his complete undoing because, the system wins. Nurse Ratched wins. In a way, in a way, we can talk about that. 

Jess: I thought that was interesting foreshadowing when he comes into the room and is like pretending to be lobotomized, more or less, and then seeing how the movie ended.

Arguably, there is. Did she win? I don't know, like, yes and no, because I'm sure that there is like some part of her that wouldn't have actually supported that maybe at some point in her career, but that was also just the way of things at that point, 

Megan: Maybe its that there really are no winners here. Because everybody is hurt, she has a neck brace on at the end. She gets strangled to the point by McMurphy at the very end that he nearly kills her. And I thought it was surprising that she was back at work after that.

That's the kind of thing that would make a lot of people go, yeah, so I'm not going to do that job anymore. I think I'm going to go work at the coffee shop or maybe be, be a secretary or whatever else. I'm going to pick something else. I'm going to pick a totally different career path.

Jess: Anything else, anything else. It did not seem long after at all, maybe like a week, if even that. 

Megan: We could talk about what happened at the end because everything gets really ugly, really fast. When he brings in. The women and he's planning on running away.

He wants Chief to go with him at this point. Chief has started talking to McMurphy and they have this bond. Chief really likes him, I think because he paid attention to him, taught him how to play basketball. Everybody loved that Chief was playing basketball and helped them win, their game against the orderlies.

They all have a big old party and trashed the whole place. 

Jess: Even that, how? There was one person who was like, on duty. Mr. Turple, I think. 

Megan: Did you recognize him? No. Is he in something else? That is, Dick Halloran from The Shining. Okay. No, I didn't realize, that's interesting.

Just hanging out with Jack Nicholson. I looked at a few of the other actors too, who were like on the staff and they were also familiar. So, again, seems like this was a big launching point for people. It like seemed like there was not a lot of oversight at night and they took advantage of that.

There was like one person on, on call or like on duty at night. And that was it. 'cause they're like partying and doing all sorts of stuff and it's like, where is any staff like that? This could go on for as long as it, it went on all night. There was no, I interaction went all night. 

Megan: There was a night supervisor.

'cause at one point she comes in, she hears all this commotion and he just shows that he has a woman in there with him. And she says, get that woman outta here. And then she leaves. And I thought, well, she's not going to go back to check.

Jess: Right. And she doesn't check on the clients or nothing. 

Megan: Yeah. Cause none of them are in bed. They're all in the staff office. I don't know how they trashed that room so quickly, but there's stuff all over the walls. Everything is broken. Two of the men are in there, reading files, which I thought was hilarious.

They're going through files, probably reading about themselves. Like, what are they saying about me? 

Jess: There's like a whole scene in, Girl Interrupted that's just like that I imagine that, we're all interrupted stole some stuff from that. Or at least there's some parallels, but yeah I would want to read my file.

Megan: I would do it. Oh, absolutely I did this for a writing project where I actually requested my records from some past therapists and I have never been interesting. Yeah, you could, you know, records are for the client. 

Jess: That's true. I think now it's probably too late because it's like seven years that they're supposed to keep it. Any treatment I had at this point was many years ago. You know what, it's probably for the best. Teenagers, not any, I don't want to read that. But being in a facility like that, yeah, you got to get into the staff office.

There's going to be certain people and I think I would definitely be one of them. 

Megan: It sounds like you would be too, where okay, y'all are going to sit on the couch and drink and break stuff and make a huge mess in two minutes. Okay. Good for you. I'm going to read my file or I'm going to read somebody else's file because I'm nosy and I want to know what's going on.

Jess: That would absolutely be me, because it, otherwise, it did seem like they trashed that room in like a second flat, there was every imaginable, liquid all over the place, I couldn't tell, it was like, was there blood on the wall? Was there, I don't know. Couldn't tell. 

Megan: Yeah. They're drinking like Jägermeister and it exploded.

Jess: I don't know. There was some kind of dark liquid all over the wall. 

Megan: They trashed the place. The supervisor never comes back. And so they just have a party. There's. They're wearing tinsel from the Christmas tree. They put alcohol in an IV and they're like spraying it on everybody.

It would have been gross, but if this actually happened, there would have been like vomit everywhere. I'm glad they didn't show that, but that's really how it would have been. And they end up all passing out. But before that happens. They have Billy go off with, what is her name?

Candy. Um, who was, who he already knew. She was also around when they went on their outing on the boat, on the fishing boat. And, Billy has a crush on her. And we know from all the stuff that Nurse Ratchet disclosed at a group session that. He can get really attached to women and that he actually tried to kill himself when he was in love with someone and asked her to marry him and, she maybe didn't even know that he was interested in her.

And so we know that he is naive and sensitive in this way. He goes off with candy. Candy is encouraged by McMurphy to do that, I think Candy and her friend coming in is disturbing because they're wasted and they're there to be there for the guys.

 I'm not really sure, are they getting paid for this? I'm guessing they probably are. What concerns me about it is what I talked about at the very beginning. When we started recording. McMurphy had promised the night guard, bribed him really, that he would give them alcohol and also time with women. For him to go along with this party taking place on the ward. So McMurphy and candy, leave the room and they leave Candy's friend with the night guard. And she looks scared and she says candy right when she leaves and closes the door. And that just left me with a very uneasy feeling. And it also made me wonder. Uh, Are they sex workers or are they friends and not really knowing what's going to be happening here I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be sex workers or if they were just like friends of McMurphy's that were there to party. That was not clear.

Jess: My guess would be that they probably were sex workers just in that, it seems based on McMurphy's. Life experience that he has a very active sex life and is just like constantly trying to get it. So it wouldn't surprise me.

Megan: Yeah. The plan is that Chief and McMurphy are gonna leave. They were able to get the keys from, the night guy from the shining who is passed out but before he's about to leave, but then he helps Billy out by letting him spend some time with candy, and then they all fall asleep as people do after they're drinking a whole lot. I guess this is another big trigger warning that we should have put out there is big time partying, getting wasted scene, cause it is quite a scene.

And then in the morning, here comes the orderlies, here comes Nurse Ratched, and they come into this utter disaster. How bad must that ward have smelled? 

Jess: My gosh, I cannot even imagine. Just like pure alcohol. I'd be like, 

Megan: Again, she's so deserved that Oscar, she is seething, but she is like a statue just standing there looking around, taking it all in, calling out. Things for the different orderlies to do, get the men cleaned up, check to make sure everybody's here, get that woman out of here, and the one person they can't find is Billy Babbitt, and they eventually find him off in the room with Candy, naked in bed together, that's where we see the man butt, cause he runs out, trying to pull his PJ pants up, and she then uses the mom card and says, I think your mom would be really upset about this, And she goes and she has him put in the doctor's office to wait until the doctor comes in to talk with him.

And that was a part it was another, you can't do that sort of moment. We know she said suicide attempts. So we know that he has this history of multiple suicide attempts. Something highly stressful just happened. They had to drag him away screaming, and they leave him in the doctor's office by himself.

Jess: Felt very, little kid, you're in trouble, go to your room. Yep. And stay there. Go wait in there for the doctor. Yeah, think about what you've done. If you had that, definitely had that vibe to it. 

Megan: Yeah, exactly. And not really considering the actual risk . Yeah. And then McMurphy is about to go out of the window.

He still has the keys and he has a choice there between either jumping out the window or going to see what the commotion is about because everybody goes into the doctor's office and finds that, Billy cut himself with the broken glass and died in there. And there's blood everywhere. And all the patients are there.

The doctor comes in and he says, Yeah, everybody's freaking out, of course. It's just horrible. And McMurphy chooses to go check out what's going on with Billy. And he gets really upset and takes it out on Nurse Ratched. Very upsetting scene, with him choking her and holding her down.

 For so much of the movie, she does have control over them. And I think working in places like this, where, there's a few people running the place, and then there's a lot of residents, you know all the time, At any moment, they could figure out that there's more of them than there are of us. 

Yeah. And when that happens, it's really scary. And this is one of those moments one of the orderlies does end up pushing, pulling him off. And then she goes after that orderly. 

Jess: Yeah. It takes a little while. Yeah. 

Megan: And then Chief goes after the orderly that pulls. McMurphy off, and then there's a puppy pile on Chief to try to get him to stop because he's so big. 

Jess: That part felt very realistic. The possibility for violence to happen.

I don't think it's very common in those settings, but It's not like it doesn't. So that just felt scary to watch, as someone who has worked a hospital. 

Megan: There's the whole structure to make it so things like that don't happen.

And that might be part of why the workers are so compelled to control everything because they know things like that can happen. They've lived through experiences like that. They're probably traumatized from experiences like that. And they obviously don't want it to happen again, right.

Let's see what happens after that. Everything just explodes. And then we have the final scenes where now we're back in the ward, they're gambling with their cigarettes, playing cards. It's the same old guys around the table, but McMurphy is not there.

And they're telling stories about him. He's become mythological. Oh, I heard he escaped. I heard that he beat up some orderlies and got out of here and someone else said, no, he's just upstairs. And of course they would want to believe, that he got out of there and that it's not that he's upstairs.

Cause we know that upstairs is where all the ECT takes place. And then we also learned that's where the lobotomies take place. 

Jess: Megan: After that, day passes and they show Chief and I think he's in bed or it's around bedtime and they show, McMurphy being wheeled in.

And put in bed and sheep is trying to talk to him and he's been lobotomized and is very clearly not present, not really able to participate in a conversation. And then Chief proceeds to smother him with a pillow, which I thought was an interesting choice. 

Megan: I wrote down the things that Chief says it's so sad.

Chief is, is horrified to see the state of McMurphy. Cause he was so excited when he came back in and he's like, I'm ready to go. Cause chief was chickening out about. Running going to Canada. Yeah, going to Canada. He wasn't ready to do it. And he's like, I'm ready to go. Let's go. And then he sees that he's not really there.

He sees the scars on his head. He says, Oh, no, I'm going to let you out. I'm not going to leave you this way. You're coming with me. Let's go. And then he smothers him with a pillow to, release him from being in that state. And then Chief takes the, what is that thing? It's like they have a tub room and it shows the tub room and there is foreshadowing with this like big marble block with like hoses on it.

Jess: I guess it's supposed to be some sort of, sink ish situation, where there are, multiple hoses that come out of it to fill the tubs. I also couldn't tell, but it seemed like it was, like, very much, stuck to the ground, and McMurphy had tried earlier in the movie to, move it, and he had, bet some of the other men that he could move it.

He couldn't. But she like goes up to it and rips it out of the floor as if this were not very difficult and launches it through a window, like a football. 

Megan: Yeah. And then he's out, we see him walking off into the Oregon forest until, we can't see him anymore.

 Tabor, the yelling, the yelling guy, Christopher Lloyd, he, of course, they all wake up when they hear the noise. 

Jess: Right. And they're like cheering for him. 

Megan: He got out. That is the dream for them is to, get out of there and be in the world. And Chief is. Going off into the woods, and that's the end of it. And I couldn't help but wonder, where's Chief going? What's going to happen with him? 

Jess: Yeah, they definitely leave it open ended in that, he could get captured, but it very much seems like they are giving you the message that he did get away. And Maybe made it to Canada. Maybe made it to Canada. Hopefully for now.

Megan: Overall, what did you find triggering about this?

Jess: So many things. I tried to think, what was most triggering to me personally? And what stuck out to me is how much they infantilized all of the men and just like very condescending and patronizing. As someone who was in eating disorder treatment as a teenager, it felt very resonant because That was very much my experience, being treated like a baby and treated like I couldn't make decisions about anything.

 That apparently is not something that's changed very much, unfortunately, but that really stuck out to me. But also I think just nurse ratchets behavior.

There was a lot of like quiet simmering rage and resentment and passive aggression and it seemed very much like maybe not that she got off on acting this way towards the men, I was having a lot of feelings of Oh, God, there are therapists who act that way.

And that is And I wish that were not the case. And yet, here we are, but yeah, I would say those are the things that stuck out to me most as like triggers. What were yours? 

Megan:  The scene with the ECT, I found that really hard to watch and especially Scanlon before he goes in to get his ECT and he's so scared, almost like he knows what's going to happen. And McMurphy is just like.Hey, it's fine, because he doesn't know what's about to happen to him.

He doesn't know that he's about to go in and get that. That's really upsetting. I think they did a very good job showing that. And there's a reason why that is the scene that people really remember from this movie. They remember the part where McMurphy gets the electroshock therapy, and also where it shows that he's been lobotomized.

I also agree nurse ratchet is horrifying. That coldness and That detachment is really disturbing because there are a lot of people working in the mental health world like this. And this is one of the many reasons that the mental health system really needs an overhaul 

 Because the system really does encourage this kind of detachment. Otherwise, it's impossible to do jobs like this because they're hard and overwhelming and they don't pay well and people aren't getting the support that they need.

And they're often in environments where people aren't really encouraged. I do think this is slowly shifting, but where people aren't really encouraged to talk about, that was actually really upsetting when that happened, or I was scared. They're encouraged to be like, this is how it is. This is the job.

I just got to keep on with it. So, her coldness. Is rough I can go into a lot of kind of almost an existential crisis about the view of people who work in mental health and also the idea of mental illness in general and I felt that partially when watching the movie but more when I was reading up about the book and about Ken Kesey he's making a statement that he doesn't really believe that people are mentally ill and that it's instead that they don't fit into society and I got into my head about clearly there are things that happen.

We know that there are real things that happen to people's brains. And also a lot of times mental illness is something that is labeled on people because they're not functioning correctly. A lot of what we look at is like, how well are you functioning when we're really, we can see that the level of functioning that people are expected to do is unreasonable in a lot of ways.

So that is a trigger to me as well, because there's not an easy answer and it's complicated. I can mentally go in circles about that. 

Jess: I don't think I really, I guess he was perhaps, part of the, anti-psychiatry movement or had some of those, sentiments. More of the oh, mental illness is not real or you can have these experiences, but they're not necessarily pathological, which I think there's an argument for that. I think there's a lot of nuance. I think, unfortunately, in the way that our world works.

We do have to view things through a lens of pathology in order to, get adequate information and adequate treatment. And I think there are a lot of things that we label as mental illness that are actually reasonable reactions to the world around us. And it's a way to not blame the system and instead just blame the individual.

So it's nuanced. I think there's a lot that gets lost in these conversations, considering the time that was like a hell of a statement to be making considering how packed a lot of these institutions were. 

Megan: This was happening during the deinstitutionalization movement when they were actually starting to close a lot of these facilities and more laws coming into effect, requiring that institutions, keep records and have, actual treatment plans and be able to show, what are you actually doing With these people in here and why are they in here rather than sort of situation that was happening before, on Ken Kesey's Wikipedia page, it says that he was inspired to write the book when he was working the night shift at a veterans hospital. It says there, Kesey often spent time talking to the patients, sometimes under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs he had volunteered to experiment with. He did not believe these people were insane, but rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.

Megan:  So because we're talking about triggers, we can also talk about glimmers.The things that made us excited or gave us some hope, was there anything like that for you in this story? 

Jess: Really? I liked that. yes, McMurphy is a flawed character, but I appreciated that he tried to have real human relationships with the other patients. He didn't look down on them.

I thought that was interesting, like he didn't see himself as better than them. He wanted to like, help them, almost, or improve their experience. So I thought that was just a nice, nice aspect of the story. And just his friendship with Chief was sweet. 

Megan: I love that scene. I think it's a glimmer for me even though they're both about to get ECT, and that's fucked up, that they're sitting on the bench and he offers Chief the gum and chief says, thank you.

And McMurphy's like, you can talk, you can hear me. And, and that's what really starts their friendship. I found that lovely and Chief coming out of his shell because somebody. Cares about him and is paying attention to him. I love the basketball scene too. It's really awesome how hief like marches across the basketball court and just holds the bottom of the net.

So that when the basketball goes in, he just like pops it right out. 

Jess: I wonder how tall the actor is because, or was, I don't think that he is, still living, but he, it just, it seemed like he was like seven feet tall. Oh, okay. Six feet, seven inches. According to Wikipedia. That is really tall. It's very, very tall, so that tracks.

But yeah, that was a really fun scene . 

Megan: I read one criticism of the movie is just that, nothing really happens, that there's just, a lot of scenes of them, messing around, playing cards, playing basketball. But that's also, That's their life.

 I really liked how they were getting to know each other and that there are these friendships there because even, with this idea these are people who don't fit in whether it's that or that they really do have, issues with mental illness, it could be a both and many things are , that they care about each other and that they're there for each other.

There's something very sweet about that. 

Jess: Yeah, it does seem like there's very much like a community element, and that it. Comes together a little bit more concretely when McMurphy comes, it seems like they're a little bit more, disconnected before he shows up and then they're all on the same team, which, problematic just in that then they're all it's like us versus them.

But at the same time, it, it seems to allow for a little bit more joy, like they're actually laughing and like having fun and in those settings it's so difficult to have fun or like to feel like things are okay. So I did like seeing that they, even though in the midst of it they're all yelling and carrying on but they're also sometimes having fun.

 Megan: They have fun and then it turns into a bunch of yelling. 

Megan: Thank you so much for listening to the I'm triggered podcast, please stay tuned for more episodes. 

Maybe You can like rate or review us on spotify Apple music or wherever else you may listen to your podcasts And until next time, take go