Cuckoo's Nest Rationality

This challenging against the traditional concept of rationality is questioned in Wasserman’s script when the Chief eventually speaks to McMurphy after in fifteen years of complete silence. He explains to McMurphy his figurative impression of society and the Combine, how it devastated his father and dislocated their community. He concludes with: “I been talking crazy, ain’t I? It don’t make sense.” McMurphy’s answer explores the division between ‘crazy’ and ‘sense’ i.e. between reason and unreason: “I didn’t say it didn’t make sense, Chief, I just said it was talkin’ crazy.” (Wasserman 75) This distinction would be realised in performance by having the actor, in a similar way to Nicholson, place emphasis on the two separate terms to create an

immediate parallel within the audience’s mind. The Chief’s conviction in his own understanding of the wider world and the true nature of the Combine is not simply a ‘crazy’ conspiracy theory but a coherent metaphor for the oppressive consequences of the then foremost social philosophy. The notion that the capitalism found in the Western hemisphere is a perfect archetype for societal and financial objectivity may actually be more illusory than the Chief’s own theory. The Chief’s ‘mad’ explanation, like that of Colonel Matterson, has its own lucidity. Bromden and his people, as Native Americans, represent an attitude of remaining connected to nature and a substitute civilisation to that of the Combine. This would be seen in performance at the start of Wasserman’s script when the wardens of the asylum shout racial slurs at the Chief and call him a “The soopah-Chief” (Wasserman 8). If emphasis is placed on the words that signpost the Chief’s race and his inherent ideology, a dynamic is created where the minority are once again deemed mad because they do not conform to the social norm.
Whilst unreason provides a surrogate to social standards which might be unfair or repressive, it is the philosophy of reason, which Foucault discusses in his ‘Reason-Madness Nexus’, that attempts to uphold the social structure of Western culture. Obviously the agencies which clash with reason invariably bring with them the danger of disorder, of a vicious ‘craziness’, but it is imperative to bear in mind that ‘reason’ itself is not a fixed or rigid notion; reason is formed in numerous ways within explicit historical situations. Consequently, ‘reason’ may sometimes be a negative force; it can be a type of behaviour that is restrictive, even unjust.
Foucault establishes in ‘Madness and Civilization’ how the affiliation between madness and power worked in the early modern period in Western Europe. He discusses an extensive practice in Western Europe, starting with the social change that occurred when the medieval: “rites of purification and seclusion” (Foucault 3) were reassigned from lepers to those deemed mad. This in turn caused ‘The Great Confinement’ of the seventeenth century, in which the deprived, unemployed, and homeless were kept within ‘hospitals’ which were also inhabited by prisoners and those who were actually mad. This was a procedure set up by the prevailing authorities to suppress and restrain any individuals or groups who were reluctant or unable to uphold ‘decent order’ i.e. those who did not follow the conventional structure of social expectations. Those who chose to rebuke the orders of ‘reason’ were outlawed and / or institutionalised. This ‘regulation’ created ‘The Birth of the Asylum’, a unique clause for the imprisonment of those who were deemed ‘mad’ beneath the dominance of the medical profession. Since the birth of psychiatry as a field of expertise: “…a profound relation had been instituted... between madness and confinement, a link which was almost one of essence…” (Foucault 228).
‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ illustrates how the Reason-Unreason nexus functioned in America throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a society which had not forgotten the drive of the ‘Birth of the Asylum’ but amalgamated the quarantine of insanity with fresh technology.

The ramification of this was that the scientific dominance of psychiatry was able to use more ‘humane’ methods, including drugs and shock therapy to help rehabilitate its patients. This is seen in one of the more harrowing moments of the film whereby McMurphy reveals shock treatment and Forman has Nicholson physically retch and jerk his body around on a bed whilst loud, synthetic music is played over the top. The doctors and nurses in this scene are shown to restrain Nicholson as his fit intensifies. This sets up the vital idea that those who are in a position of power do not simply remain unaware of the torment this supposedly humane treatment has on its patients but also restrain those who do not conform and try by every means to make them adhere to what is socially accepted. The sustained link in western civilisations between delinquency and madness is illustrated by McMurphy’s relocation from the “Pendleton Farm for Correction” (Forman) to the asylum. This allocation is a transition through the blurred border between where felons are imprisoned and transformed to where the psychologically unstable are also transformed. Reason and Law stick together to punish those who demonstrate: “…outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath…” (Kesey 46) Those individuals who “…fight and fuck too much…” are reprimanded for their anti-social

conduct.
Upon being situated in the ‘healing world’ of the asylum, McMurphy puts his sexual energy and mirth in opposition to the emotionless ‘reason’ of the Nurse Ratched and her “ward policy” (Forman). A mirroring occurs in the film between the Nurse’s interactions with her patients and here rules; just like the structure of the patients’ day, the Nurse speaks in a monotonous and unchanging voice throughout the entire film, presumably to instil a sense of regularity within the patients. McMurphy is deeply annoyed by the inflexible structure of the Nurse’s timetable which administrates but nullifies the lives of the other men. This monotony, as described by the Chief, is a ridiculous and inflated form of an ordinary life beneath modern western capitalism; it is an automated, mind-numbing, and tiresome routine that heavily frowns upon individuality. As Dr Spivey suggest, the Nurse is trying to create a: “…little world Inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of the big world Outside…” (Kesey 48-49) In keeping with this notion is the Nurse’s defence for her iron-clad rules: “A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside world…” (Forman)
The asylum is a reliable imitation of the ‘Outside world.’ Those aspects of it that can be seen by the audience as being clearly unjust on the ward is also what is wrong with the world outside: the mental institution is component of an identical scheme, the same mechanising structure. This structure asserts that it is ‘representative’, as Dr Spivey similarly upholds that his archetype of the superior civilisation is a “…democratic ward run completely by the patients and their votes... much like your own democratic, free neighbourhoods” (Kesey 40). Dr Spivey’s copious definition, which applauds the dominance of medicine and technology is clearly untrue, whilst the Chief’s theories surrounding the Combine are, quite possibly, a harder-hitting (though metaphorical) description of reality.