One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nestⁱ is a version of 1984 that wasn't made by chickenshits for chickenshits.ⁱⁱ Here's how it chiefly looks :

Jack Nicholson has carved an entire career out of being a man lost, adrift in a woman'sⁱⁱⁱ little girl's world, ever since his debut in the gaytastic Raven all the way to Terms of Endearment or that one where he dates the twentysomething slut but ends up with her (annoying, insecure, anxious, overconfident and overpriced mother). Thus, when Mildred oh-so-valuably opines that "the best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine" he goes for the throat, and you can distinctly hear small bones crack under his thumbs. Thanks god for that.

Also of note, the part where he very casually shares the woman, for the maturational benefit of the Blair rat.

- The kid's cute, isn't he?
- Yeah.
- Think of me the whole time.

Tell me more about how men invented marriage, I'm ever so fascinated to hear all about it. How did it go, women were all anxious about things and then what happened ?

1. 1975, by Milos Forman, with Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito. [↩]
2. The entire point of that book is not, as you might imagine, to somehow expose the implicit evil of any system where the group is put before the individuals, or to critique or to comment or anything of the sort. 1984 has exactly nothing to do with and nothing to say about the world.

   The entire point of the book is that Blair wishes to excuse his defective nature. He is not a man, but a mouse. He knows he is not a man, but a mouse. He has a great story to explain why this is, and while that story does a pretty good job at misrepresenting itself, it's really nothing other and nothing past an exercise in nude and rude defeatism, "you will see"ism and other shitforbrainisms.

   Amusingly enough, as part of what I suspect is actually intended... homage, let's call it, Eric Arthur Blair is actually included in the film, as a virginal young man who stutters whenever he's reminded of his mother (if you recall the bedwetting issues of the original character, and how he unloaded them on the otherwise competent school mistress, you might chuckle along with me). Here's the scoop :

   - Miss Ratched! I can explain everything.
   - Please do, Billy. Explain everything.
   - Everything?
   - Aren't you ashamed?
   - No, I'm not.
   - You know, Billy, what worries me is how your mother's going to take this.
   - Well, you don't have to tell her, Miss Ratched.
   - I don't have to tell her? Your mother and I are old friends, you know that. [Of fucking course they are.]
   - Please...don't... tell my mother.
   - Don't you think you should've thought of that before you took that woman... in that room?
   - No, no. I didn't.
   - You mean, she dragged you in there by force?
   - She did. Everybody did.
   - Everybody? Who did? You tell me who did!
   - McMurphy. Miss Ratched... please don't...
   - Mr. Warren?
   - ...tell my mother, please.

   What did you think was in Room 101 ? Yeah, it's your dumbass mother, and all her dumbass friends. You did fuck her already, right ? The sewing circle no longer holds any sway on you, right ?

   You are a man now, no longer a bedwetting child of ambiguous gender like all children, lost in women's skirts, women's worries, women's degrading, gossipy notions of "friendship". Right ?

   Oh wait, nevermind me, you're for "gender equality", in the usual "lowering to the lowest common denominator" sense of "equality". I must have thought of someone else. Carry on. [↩]

3. No, you can't have actual women, as the adult representative of the human female gender, in a world devoid of men. What you get instead are that swampthing.

   This is what it means to be an ancillary gender, their maturation is driven by and depends on the presence of men and interaction with men. Meanwhile men mature autonomously, which is why there exists such a thing as a psychogenic mother. [↩]