Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Cuckoo’s Nest and Mental Institutes Milos Forman directed the 1975 film adaptation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which was originally a novel written by Ken Kesey with the intention of highlighting the terrible conditions of mental hospitals at that time. In the 1960s when the novel was published mental institutes had come a long way in terms of actually treating patients with mental illness compared to 100 years earlier, but in terms of how these patients were treated horribly and inhumanely had still never changed. This movie was filmed in the real-life mental asylum by the name of Oregon State Hospital and the film accurately depicts what life was like inside a mental institution at that time. The film has had a lasting effect on …show more content…
After the film’s release, there was a demand for better facilitated mental hospitals that would have courtyards, gardens, and a well thought out floor plan this style of hospital uses what is called the Kirkbride Plan. There was also a call for what is known as “moral management,” which was an approach to mental disorder based on humane psychosocial care or moral discipline, the approach has been praised for freeing patients from barbaric physical treatments and instead employees at these facilities would have to consider such things as emotions and social interactions with patients (Laffey 1285). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shows the mental hospital as a small world of regulations, routine, and discipline ruled over by Nurse Ratched. Unlike in the outside world, Nurse Ratched has just about absolute control over her ward. Nurse Ratched is a tool of society, used to exercise order and control. This she achieves less by direct confrontation and more by subtle means such as playing on and maintaining character weaknesses, undermining self-confidence, and constantly "rubbing salt in open wounds" through therapy sessions, the consequence of which is to maintain the malleability and suggestibility of her patients (stuartfernie.org). Contradictory to Nurse Ratched’s character the guards and other employees are …show more content…
Behind the outwardly caring and helpful facade of mental health care lies a subtle and widespread attempt to enforce compliance and acceptance of authority (stuartfernie.org). The available mental hospitals during the later half of the1900s had very unsafe living conditions, so the release of this film was hugely important at that time because it helped bring attention to some hospitals with unethical practices or unsafe living conditions. For his portrayal of R. P. McMurphy in the film, Jack Nicholson won his first academy award. He inspired people to work in order to obtain more rights and empowerment for patients in mental hospitals. The film gives insightful views into the societal problems such as stereotypes about people who have mental disorders. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest also challenged the traditional medical model of psychiatric hospitals as well as the use of psychotropic medications to control behavior and it also challenged the concepts of what people generally stereotype a “crazy” person to be

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: An Analysis