[ SECRET POST #1005 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1005 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

101.


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102.
[Albert Ellis/Carl Rogers]


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103.
[Soul Eater]


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104.
[Loony Toons]


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105.
[Glee]


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106.
[Dreamcatcher]


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107.
[Dollhouse]


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108.
[Air Force One]


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109.
[Folklore]


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110.
[Final Fantasy 9/Phoenix Wright/Mega Man/Gurren Lagann]


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111.
[Patrick Stewart/Jeremy Northam/Hugh Laurie/Cary Grant]


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112. [too big]


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113.
[07-Ghost]


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114.
[Supernatural]


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115.
[Charm School]


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116.
[Avatar]


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117.
[Bosom Buddies]


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118.
[Fame]


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119.
[X-Factor]


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120.
[Kev and Alice]


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121.
[Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle]


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122.
[Scott Gairdner]


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123.
[Zero Punctuation, Guitar Hero World Tour, Neon Genesis Evangelion]


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124.
[Questionable Content]


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125.
[Homeward Bound]


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126.
[Supernatural/Pita-Ten]


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127.
[Lena Headey]


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128.
[Veronica Mars]


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129.
[Last Days, deleted scene]


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130.
[Supernatural, The Amazing Race]


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131.
[The Dresden Files]


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132.
[Song of Ice and Fire]


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133.
[The Vampire Diaries]


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134.
[Supernatural]


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135.
[Juno]


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136.
[Elijah Wood]


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137.
[Life on Mars]


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138.
[Days of Our Lives]


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139.
[Good Omens]


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140.
[The Mentalist]


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141.
[Supernatural]


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142.
[Lie to Me]


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143.
[Supernatural]


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144.
[Burn Notice]


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145.
[Fullmetal Alchemist]


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146.
[3rd Rock from the Sun]


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147.
[Supernatural]


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148.
[Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog]


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149.
[Song of Ice and Fire]


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150.
[Gyro Gearloose/Uncle Scrooge]


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151. http://i37.tinypic.com/acwnrc.png
[porn... I think?, A Mate]


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152.


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153.


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154.


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155.


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156.


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157.


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158.


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159.


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160.


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161.


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162.


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163.


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164.


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165.


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166.


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167.


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168.


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169.


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170.


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171.


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172.


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173.


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174.


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175.


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176.


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177.


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178.


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179.


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180.


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181.


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182.


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183.


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184.


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185.


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186.


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187.


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188.


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189.


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190.


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191.



Notes:

New affiliates I forgot to announce!
wow_secrets - for all you World of Warcrafters.
Accompanying startrek_secret, st_secrets_arc - all the ST secrets from FS in a convenient archive!

Secrets Left to Post: 10 pages, 250 secrets from Secret Submission Post #144.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

152. http://i34.tinypic.com/2i1e1kp.jpg

[misty-days.livejournal.com]

The original book was pretty sexist too.
It's one of my favorite books but that doesn't mean it's completely flawless. It has it's problems but the story is still very interesting and good.

I don't think your friend would get too mad if you tell her what you feel.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Well, duh. If it's anything like the book, the climax involves the hero putting the evil uppity woman in her place by forcibly undressing her. And this is presented as a courageous and heroic act.

I mean, it's still great literature, but damn.

[childings.livejournal.com]

So you think it's okay for a woman to treat grown men like children because they have mental illnesses? Honestly, if someone treated me like a child because of my mental illness I'd be pretty fucking pissed off about it.

I agree that she was demonized but that doesn't mean the way she was allowed to treat her patients was okay in any regard

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I didn't say that at all. I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who abuse those they are supposed to be caring for; she was evil, end of story. However, the book treated her evil in a very gendered and sexualized way, and that's what made me uncomfortable. Her actions would have been every bit as reprehensible had they been performed by a man.

[childings.livejournal.com]

Well, the superintendent (or whatever his job title was) of the hospital who interviews McMurphy isn't any better, but the patients didn't interact with him on a daily basis.

I haven't read the book in a long time (not since the course I took in Counter-Culture Lit in college, which would've been at least five years ago -- I feel old now), I just remember not liking her. The only gender-based stuff I remember was all the stuff about how she put on a feminine passive-aggressive facade but was really anything but -- to be honest, that seems realistic to me given the time period. I don't remember her being sexualized at all, but like I said it's been a long time since I read the book (this thread makes me want to drag it back out).

[eppy]

Well, she was the villian of the piece. And her actions, driving that poor boy to suicide, attacking every man on the ward, I wasn't exactly mourning her fate at the end of the book in the same way I was McMurphey's.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

See my response to the above comment.

[childings.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the play but I've read the novel and seen the movie version. I can see how someone could find it sexist since the only female character in the novel is the antagonist (though I think the movie makes Nurse Ratchet seem a lot more evil than the book version). However, I never saw it that way because I felt like the point of Cuckoo's Nest was how amazingly horrible mental hospitals and mental health in the United States was at this point and time (and still is in a lot of ways). Nurse Ratchet is just part of that whole system -- really the head doctor there who interviews McMurphy at the beginning of the story is just as bad, if not worse, you just don't see him interacting with the patients like the nurse does. Also, I don't think that themes of emasculation are in any way sexist (no grown man wants to be treated like a child), of course, maybe that's because I can relate to people of both genders instead of just women.

If you can't read the book because you think it's sexist, you're really missing out on a classic of American literature

[eppy]

This. This so hard.

Congrats on taking the words right out of my mouth, bb. ^_^

[latexana.livejournal.com]

*STANDS UP AND APLAUSE* Pretty much. I actually like the fact that she is not portraited as you know nursing and caring. Evil exists in everyone, unregarding of gender.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if this is in the book or not, but in the version of the play I watched there was also a female aide, who was constantly sexually harassed by McMurphy, and a prostitute, as well as the suicidal boy's mother. The head doctor was also portrayed as weak and despicable because he deferred to the head nurse instead of just controlling her and forcing her to do what he said.

I'm not going to contest that Ratchett was one evil person, but the way the play that I watched, at least, presented it, the most appalling thing about her was that she was a woman with power over men. It was the same with the suicidal boy and his mother - the route of his problem was that she was in charge of him instead of the other way around. And the man who was the leader of the inmates before McMurphy came in, he didn't take control of his wife. Again and again, the theme was that women should never be in a position of power over men, they must be put in their place and submit. All the women in the play with any sort of control over men were demonized, and McMurphy was glorified for treating women as objects.

I enjoyed it, and I thought the other themes on the fucked up conditions of mental hospital systems at the time were really well done and interesting, but I just couldn't help being squicked by what seemed to me a very obvious message that real men are aggressive and domineering toward women, and can always 'put women in their place' --- that is, below men.

Re: OP

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

Well of course that theme was there. But you have to look at it contextually. Partly that is in context of the time it was written and the time it was portraying -- it's a relatively accurate, albeit arguably exaggerated, take on the social roles of men and women and how they were reinforced, individually and culturally. If you recall, it reflects homophobic attitudes as well -- in the pretty boy with the fluttering hands and large-breasted wife who INSTITUTIONALIZED HIMSELF.

But more so than that... well, I've never seen the play, and it's been a long time since I read the book, but I seem to recall that NO ONE in that story was really "glorified." I guess in the sense of obtaining power in the context of the plot, perhaps, but there is a difference between a character obtaining power and a character being portrayed as a sympathetic or heroic individual. As I recall, there was very little of the latter.

Sexist characters in a sexist society do not a sexist story make. But if it troubled you so much... I believe it did EXACTLY what it was intended to do. And that is the mark of a really GOOD story.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

But I don't really know if, in this production of the play at least, it was done consciously or not. To me it seemed a lot like McMurphy was being congratulated for taking the role of a man and asserting his masculinity when he constantly treated every woman around him as sex objects; it was seen as a positive thing when he convinced the others to follow his lead.

I'll agree that it's a great story, and it was a well-done production of the play, but even taking the context into account, and the possibility that the sexism was on purpose and all that, it still really squicked me hard.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

To add to what everyone's said above, McMurphy is in the mental institution at least in part because of conflicts with and about women; he is not set up as a role model except in that his anarchic behavior is a healthier alternative to the kind of sanity (repression of feeling and individuality) Nurse Rached represents. Kesey does tend to show women as representatives of order and civilization in all his books, but in Cuckoo's Nest he's dealing in archetypes rather than daily reality, and it's not so much simple sexism as bad midcentury social theory, which is a whole other bag of worms.

[meri-contrary.livejournal.com]

and it's not so much simple sexism as bad midcentury social theory, which is a whole other bag of worms.

Intresting. Although I'm not sure it's a whole other bag of worms so much as an intersecting one. Part of the problem with a lot of mid-century social theory is its unexamined sexism (and racism, and homophobia, and a lot of other things).

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the privileges weren't so much unexamined as they were rationalized and justified. The superiority of men like McMurphy was in their lack of socialization to female standards (contrasted with Billy's being controlled by his mother and Nurse Rached).

(Cutting some blah blah blah about the way some writers and social theorists believed that feminism was good because it "freed women's sexuality to be strong like men's" because too much of it has to do with lectures and seminars with Kesey from the seventies and that's way too much like work).

[childings.livejournal.com]

Well I thought Nurse Ratchet was pretty subversive when it came to gender, which I always found interesting (I think I wrote a paper on this, actually, but I barely remember college now, LOL). You're also right about McMurphy being an asshole, despite the fact that he's a protagonist.

[ayeayes.livejournal.com]

Was it different from the movie version? That's the only one I saw.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know too. I only saw the movie. (And found it completely annoying, but don't remember it specifically being annoying in a sexist way.)

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read the book, but I've seen the play, which I assume is closer to the book. And yeah, as far as I can remember the play was way more sexist than the movie -not that there weren't sexist issues in the movie but they were generally down-played. McMurphy chokes Nurse Ratchett in a completely non-sexual way (in the movie) rather than ripping her shirt off, for instance, which makes quite a bit of difference.

[xxamlaxx.livejournal.com]

The book really wasn't intended to be full of female empowerment. The women are supposed to be ball busters or whores or bitches. The only "normal" woman was the Japanese nurse. Nurse Ratched specifically is physical embodiment of the combine, while women in general are viewed as either sex objects or controlling and domineering.

You have to remember that this is set in the 1950's, it was a sexist time. But at least the women have power in the book rather than being helpless and defenseless.

[(Anonymous)]

I think what everyone here is missing is the fact that the secret OP was talking about a play version. Productions vary in content and actors make choices; the play the OP saw could very well have been overtly sexist, regardless of the book or the archetypes there in.

That, incidentally, is why I hated scene dramatizations in high school. We'd read a story or play or even watch a film, and we'd have to act it out in our own words. Some kids would color the scene with crudeness or just plain got it wrong. Hamlet poking at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being false friends became R and G mocking H behind his back. Making the foolish guy correct and the woman who originally told him off an "uppity dumb bitch" (their words, not mine).

[(Anonymous)]

that second sentence was a separate example, btw.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's actually the reason that I don't want to tell my friend. Maybe it was just the way the specific actors and director executed it.