This article has a strong focus on madness and discusses how film is uniquely able to reflect the flux of mental and emotional experience. The article also discusses conditions from a filmmaking and psychologist perspectives respectively. In this article, films that have interesting changes as well as similarities among reoccurring themes such as “society and madness; war and madness; paranoia and madness; and madness as sanity.” Movies can capture institutional problems faced by hospitals, specifically, psychiatric hospitals—overcrowding, cruel attitudes of staff, and the effectiveness of psychotherapy. The article also encapsulates the changes in film and psychiatric focus over time. The article shifts from the forties, to the sixties, and when it reaches the seventies, it addresses the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It states that the film version of Kesey’s book “fits the view of psychiatry dominant in the mid 1970s, which though it realize that institutions needed humanization, considered patients to be mentally ill, not visionary.” Later, the article addresses the “conception of paranoia as a disease; a state, a condition, or a syndrome of symptoms. The comparison of the changing of the psyche with the changing of events in history in the U.S. is constantly changing—as the times change, as does the mentality of Americans, so concurrently the film process changes as well. As the depression came, mindsets rapidly changed and peoples’ mentalities shifted. Simultaneously, the artistic experiments in cinema were nearly cut off. This compares to the decade of tremendous mental and social changes, or the 1960s, which was a decade of fun and optimism, but also a decade that lacked unification and hope and ultimately struggled with the production of feature films. The article suggests that through the changes in world status and the progression of events that occurred in America, film and psyche moved with society—through the ups and the downs. 

The article’s primary goal seems to be based on the pertinence of sociology, especially within the medical arena and the importance of film in a classroom setting. In order to help us as a society to better understand the relationship between medical science and the social world we must magnify on key issues that we communal encounter. Often, visualization helps us to comprehend medical sociology because if we can physically relate to it through the media, we can better understand how to be proactive in our communities. We can focus on three areas of medical sociology that are reoccurring themes in film: first, mental illness; next, the issue of death and dying; lastly, the political economy of illness. It is suggested in the article that there are challenges in getting the message of medical sociology out to many societal groups; i.e., children, young adults, adults and senior citizens through the same media. It seems that in order to ultimately “develop an awareness of the sociological contribution to understanding health, illness, and healing,” we must first grasp the “broader social factors that create conditions exposing individuals systematically to health risks and to variation in treatment and in outcome.” Film is good medium to project these messages as it is widely consumed and imposes an inevitable reaction on all who view it. The article states that there are three obvious purposes to which film can be put: first, as case studies of people, institutions, and times to experiment and toy with sociological topics. Next, similar to the first purpose, films serve as guidance and training for real life experiences. Lastly, films or audio-visual materials can serve as historical documents. The encouragement to use film as a way to teach is a realistic suggestion because while it requires more work for teachers, film is very easily accessible. Case studies have been done in this article, one citing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a film showing the realities of medical authority in our medical system today. 

Gèfin’s article compares satire with narrative and describes the character of Big Nurse as animalistic. The article begins by addressing female characters in American fiction as three dimensional, henpecking, monstrous, nagging, and controlling. In this article, we once again see a comparison between mother and Nurse. Because Ratched is recognized for her harsh leadership in the ward, “feminist critics have tended to downplay the menacing aspects of Miss Ratched” maybe to keep the positive light on working women alive as opposed to the shadow of the menacing woman weighing down the workforce. While Forman’s adaptation from the novel allows Ratched to be “more humanized,” critics have pounced on Forman for considering Ratched to be “one-dimensional.” The preconceived idea of nurse as overpowering and never outspoken can only be avoided if “Cuckoo’s Nest is read for what it is: an allegorical satire.” But is the story really satire? The article also suggests that the satirical intensions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are “constantly qualified if not undermined by its own fairly sophisticated narrative strategies.” So, which is the film: satire or narrative? Through the story, ‘Big Nurse’ is seen as a satiric target becoming “both victimizer and victimized for narrative reasons.” Through narrative, Kesey and Forman characterize humans not as beasts but rather as machines: ratchet to connect her to a mechanic form of nature. In the novel, “Kesey himself makes another blatant pun, “Rat-shed”, in order to suggest that she personifies a giant cage in which the rat-like mental patients are imprisoned.” But narrative and satirical intentions often overlap: Big Nurse is inhuman, this time herself a rat-like piece of machinery. The article is entitled Breasts of Big Nurse—breasts as a sign of the “destructive or bad mother.” As the article progresses, the reference to the bosom becomes “a supplement of her mechanic personality.” Throughout the article, satire and narrative are compared; but no satire would ever address these questions. In fact, satire would repress the question of “Are large breasts, even or especially in this culture that so overwhelmingly privileges them, uniformly a blessing?”

This article recognizes the importance of Hollywood’s use and depiction of psychiatry. It shows advances in the acknowledgements and research done on the topic—The Gabbard brothers’ book allows American society to realize that in time, the issue of mental heath is being investigated so that the discrepancy between myth and reality in film can become clearer. Our perception of mentally challenged will be more realistic and less fabricated for audience enjoyment and realistic comprehension of the issues and factors that psychiatric patients face daily. The Gabbard brothers’ book is divided into two parts: “The Psychiatrist in Movies,’ examines the codes and conventions that have governed the perception of psychiatrists,” while the other part,  “The Psychiatrist at the Movies,’ is a series of essays in application of psychoanalytic theory to the analysis of movies.” The article also maps out the evolution of the role of the psychiatrist through time—more specifically, how the aspect of medicine was involved from a psychiatrist perspective as in opposition with the patients’ perspective. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson’s character actually develops more drama when it comes to taking his medicine. Because initially he is not suffering from insanity and strong psychiatric problems, he does not want to take his medication. Each day he argues with Nurse Ratched, who always wins, and by the last part of the film, Jack Nicholson’s character McMurphy’s psychosis ultimately unravels and his determination to refuse the medicine because he did not feel it was necessary dissipates as the need for the meds becomes more evident each day. The photo in the article clearly reveals the development of Nicholson’s character as he goes mad, screaming and tormenting the other patients while concurrently disorienting himself even further from reality. 

This article discusses the awareness of the discrepancies of media representation of mental illness. This subject is very important to those who are questioned about the lack of research on the topic and how it has developed through time; yet, we still can only find a few papers that have been published on the subject. For a topic that is very serious and applies to a percentage of our society, why is it so underrepresented in our coverage of the truth-value of the media? “Movie psychiatry has projected a view of the profession through a distorted lens of fear, defensive ridicule, and the yearning for an ideal parent.” The article suggests the differences between myth and the reality of psychiatric and mental issues. The way the media often depicts mental illness is as a dangerous entity that we as a society should fear. While embracing mental illness may be too difficult to actually effectively enforce, there is a median between embracing and fearing psychologically challenged individuals. The representation of mental illness in film is difficult as it is supposed to convey mental illness in a way that is based on reality but also is not supposed to make an audience fear people who are suffering with a mental illness. But the article also states that when an audience watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, its opinions towards people with mental illnesses changed (negatively), while following the viewing of a documentary, the attitudes among the audience members remained consistent. Once again in this article we see the comparison between reality and myth and film causes the blurry landscape of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to remain ambiguous. The Title of this article is catchy and draws the audience into it, just as the title of the film is very appealing to an audience as the meaning is so unclear and vague to those on the outside of the psychological surface of the film and its initial intent.  

This article discusses the psychological “limitations of individual freedom” and contrasts the open world of psychosis with the concealed side of hidden psychological doubt. This film is important as it is not in concurrence with any psyche norms and this article suggests that the film demonstrates landscape in different forms throughout the movie, always as a “blurred feeling of reality.” The beginning stage shows the ambiguity of the psyche—how we can be chaotic in our own psyche and that it does eventually have to come out: this being the black hole finally seeking a light or freedom of sharing thought. The article suggests that the middle part of the film shows nature as open and boundless—we can escape out of our psyche but still never get rid of it: “One cannot get away from one’s own ill psyche, burdened with anguish, unstable, weak.” Often times we begin to believe all of the madness in our psyche and lose touch of reality, ultimately driving ourselves crazy. The article breaks down the development of the psyche throughout the film and especially through the perspective of a mentally ill person. The article describes McMurphy in the film releasing all of the mentally ill from their inhibitions—the contrast between what is mad and what is normal no longer exists and the psyche can finally run free and in many cases provides recovery for mentally ill patients. Inevitably, Bialostocki claims that Forman tries to exude in the film that “the world of mad people is a metaphor for the human world in general.” Ultimately the system, which is revolving around the landscape of emotion and our psychological guards, is questioned in this film and Bialostocki poses the question: is the defeat of McMurphy in his clash with the system his defeat or is it the defeat of the system?