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Free Masculinity: Finding Meaning in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Fool 4 Christ | YBT020 CWP106
When Masculinity Encounters the Machinery of Oppression: A Christian Reflection on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
What happens when the God-given strength of masculinity is distorted or suppressed by the world’s systems? In this illuminating conversation with literature professor James St. Simon, and Cloud of Witnesses host, Jeremy Jeremiah, we journey through the themes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—a film whose prophetic imagery speaks to the Christian soul struggling amid a culture that often denies the nobility of manhood.
Through the cold, clinical corridors of Kesey’s mental institution, we glimpse a microcosm of modernity's spiritual sickness. Bureaucracy replaces communion. Control supplants freedom. And like so many today, the men within its walls have forgotten their true personhood—imago Dei veiled under layers of compliance and fear. As Professor James notes, “They’re losing their dignity, their soul, themselves.” This echoes the patristic warning against passions and structures that deaden the nous—the spiritual eye of the heart.
Enter McMurphy—a rough, unruly figure, but one who bears an almost prophetic defiance. Though flawed, his unfiltered vitality ignites a spark in others long dormant. He calls the men to remembrance—an anámnēsis—of their dignity, their freedom, their calling as persons, not patients. His presence challenges the false peace of institutional order, much like the prophets of old who unsettled the kings of Israel.
Most striking is the arc of Chief Bromden. Silent and hidden, like the hesychast in his cell, he awakens through sacrificial love. His final act—breaking free and fleeing into the dawn—is a paschal image: a resurrection from the tomb of spiritual paralysis. In this, we see not just personal liberation, but the restoration of the masculine soul through kenosis, strength expressed in silence, in sacrifice, in love. It is Christ’s path, echoed in Chief’s wordless ascent into freedom.
We also reflect on C.S. Lewis’s warning in The Abolition of Man: the tragedy of “Men Without Chests”—a condition not merely psychological, but spiritual. Without the chest—the seat of rightly ordered desire—man becomes a ghost, unable to act with either courage or compassion. This, too, afflicts both McMurphy and the society that seeks to neutralize him.
Even in a work of secular art, we recognize the divine imprint—the logoi of God present in all true beauty and truth. This story, though tragic, points to higher realities: the sacrificial love that restores, the healing silence of remembrance, and the call to awaken from spiritual slumber. As Orthodox Christians, we are reminded that true masculinity is not domination, but self-emptying strength—strength crucified and risen.
For those wrestling with their place in a disordered world, seeking to reclaim their God-given identity amid soulless systems, this conversation is a call to rise—to stand, like Chief, in the light of morning, and walk forward in freedom.
How might Christ be calling you to remember who you are? To tear away the fog of forgetfulness and rediscover the image within?
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Cuckoo's Nest ends with this kind of a cut back to after Chief has gotten away. Mcmurphy has died, has been freed in another way, and you see the men who are still there playing cards. But it's different. They're playing cards in a way that McMurphy taught them to play cards. There's a bit more of this bravado, if you will. They know how to play the game. Now, for example, they're actually playing cards. Before it was just make-believe. Whatever they were doing, you know, they didn't know how to play.
Speaker 1:I can't help but be reminded of the example of the saints of the church, the chiefs who have gotten away right, the McMurphys, who are bigger than life and can give us an example, an inspiring story of that's how you can follow Christ. That's how you can find your freedom in this life and be your true self. Welcome to Clouded Witnesses Radio. We are super excited. Today we are talking One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. We have joining us a very special guest. This is our friend of Cloud of Witnesses, also a parishioner at our parish, friend of mine as well, james. James, thank you for joining us. James, thank you for joining us. He's a professor of literature and has a lot of insight when it comes to fiction and fantasy and sci-fi and application to philosophy and the modern world. So, james, I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest incredible, absolutely. And yeah, there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 1:That the theater where we saw Superman is right now showcasing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which, as you may or may not know, was from the 1975, based on the Ken Kesey novel which we've read. Yeah, it's a bit fresher to you than it is to me, right? And so we thought why don't we see that as well? Uh, and we can talk about that and look at some comparisons and whatnot yeah, and I've been wanting to watch it for a long time.
Speaker 2:After reading it I was dying to watch the film, but my wife she's one of those movies. I've seen it once. Don't want to go through that again and I can see why. But it was really wonderful to see quite faithful to the book, which was very I enjoyed that. There are some reasons that make sense that they left certain things out, but overall it was quite faithful to the book, didn't lose a lot of the important plot points and character development that I think they did a great job, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:The themes that run through Cuckoo's Nest and Superman. But since we just saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, maybe we start there. We just saw it literally. You know, with 30 minutes ago, cuckoo's nest, maybe we start there. We just saw it literally. And you know, with 30 minutes ago, themes of masculinity, themes of freedom, of choice, of free will, these autonomy, what's kind of at the forefront of your mind?
Speaker 2:biggest takeaway yeah, well, I think one of the big things that jumps out at me is um One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was all about men who feel suppressed, who lost confidence in themselves and they have allowed themselves to be really controlled and tamed to the point of complacency and even insanity. So they're institutionalized and we find out some voluntarily institutionalized because they can't find their footing in the world and they have lost all sense of drive and motivation and autonomy. So it's easier for them to be in an environment when they're controlled, because they feel safe in that. But really what's happening there is they're losing more and more of their soul Right Themselves.
Speaker 1:They're losing themselves, their soul, absolutely, absolutely, no-transcript. They're losing their dignity is a word that you were using earlier, when we were talking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and confidence is a big part of that. Yeah, not necessarily self-confidence, because we see that caricaturized in the character of Murphy, which is Jack Nicholson's character. He does a phenomenal job, yeah, great actor. But we see how extremes bring out other extremes, the opposite ends of the paradigm. In Nurse Ratched we see extreme authoritarian feminism and then we see the complete opposite spectrum, which is, you know, toxic masculinity, one would say. And the reason why it's toxic is because it's devoid of virtue, which kind of we can compare to Superman in a sec. But it was what was needed to oppose the opposite extreme. And what he accomplishes really is to ignite the spark of self-worth. Ignite the spark of self-worth, dignity and masculinity in the men who had been oppressed, really, and have lost themselves. That fire needed to be lit by someone who was burning with masculinity.
Speaker 1:They needed a hero, they needed a mythological figure, in a sense, to come in and inspire them to make change, to actually bring about real change.
Speaker 1:James, what you remind me of is this idea of systemic, this systemic oppression. I see that coming out of this story of Cuckoo's Nest, and certainly what Ken Kesey was talking about, that not only is it an individual losing their masculinity, one at a time, but it happens easier because we see in this common theme in the film is a group talk, a group session, right, a group therapy session, and what happens is not only is my masculinity being oppressed, being pushed down, not allowed to flourish, but I see it happening to you too, and when I see it happening to you, it becomes much more easy for me to accept. Oh, this is just the way life is. It's not just me, I'm not just oppressed. James is being treated the same way by the system. So this must be the way the world works. I cannot help but think about our modern, current culture and how men, masculinity, are being tapped down, kept in place. We can talk about education, how our education system maybe even is feeding into that narrative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, education system maybe even is feeding into that narrative. Yeah, well, something that you said really strikes me and you know we were talking about that earlier about how insanity happens is an absurdity is accepted as reality, and seeing other people adhering to this absurdity, and willfully, it goes against your nature and you want to resist, but then, when you see the consequence of resisting, you become fearful, and fear is a great motivator. Fearful and fear is a great motivator, um, and fear will either motivate you to act, uh, and and resist with great opposition, but that takes a very strong figure, and most men who have already been, you know, subjected to fear, to shame, especially, um, and we see that in the movie uh, you would rather just go with the easy route, which is where complacency is, and just give in to the absurdity, and giving into it day after day will lead you to insanity. We see that there's a big problem right now with boys in the classroom primarily boys, it's creativity as a whole, but mainly with boys.
Speaker 1:The issue is that the classrooms are about seven hours a day, yeah, and sitting in rows, sitting in your chair right, quietly, not moving around, not getting up too often, normal, certainly boy behavior yeah all of that? Nope, doesn't work and stay quiet.
Speaker 2:Stay quiet and be respectful, and you listen, and they don't see the relevance of what they're doing right. And why do I have to figure out these math problems, write these essays and do this rote memorization day after day after day? And there's also a shortage of men in the field of education, so primarily they're dealing with women as their only authority figure, which boys need men to look up to. They need men to teach them manliness, but we see that they're in a system where their teacher is a female, which is, again, not a bad thing. But if that's all that they have, then whenever there is resistance, whenever there is opposition, whenever they feel the need to speak up for themselves, it can turn into that conflict of the men in one flew over the cuckoo's nest and nurse ratchet right where they're being forced to talk about their feelings.
Speaker 2:And men are just naturally not as good as at expressing our feelings, um, and when you're forced to talk about it, our natural response is I don't want to talk about it. I'm overwhelmed with emotion, and our natural disposition is towards when we're emotional, we become angry. Even when we're sad, we become angry. So we need time to process and we also need a release for that, that pent-up energy right, and for us that's either physical activity, that's hitting something right, running, and when that's not allowed, right, you have to suppress all of that and it turns into raw emotion 100 and that's where it can burst open or it can be suppressed to the point where it's never coming back.
Speaker 1:We see in the film, once we're Over the Cuckoo's Nest, even their outdoor activity, if you remember, before McMurphy got them actually playing basketball. They're they basically were identical outside as they were inside, docile standing there, you know, literally on a basketball court, but they would just kind of stand there and look at each other. There was no real activity and it took again this masculine hero figure, if you will, even though we'll talk about it in a bit. He wasn't a saint, you know. He maybe did become this toxic masculine stereotype that we hear about all the time, but his activity, his vigor, brought a life to where they were playing basketball. They were having fun, they were smiling, they were laughing.
Speaker 1:And what I want to touch on with this is you brought up the school system. The school system has kept this format that you described, this Western form of what a classroom looks like, what it ought to be, for many 50, 60, 70 years, maybe more. The system in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They saw the doctors, nurse, ratched, witnessed clearly good, healthy behavior, for example, when they were playing basketball, right, but that what? It didn't matter to them, right? It wasn't enough for them to say hmm, maybe we should rethink our methods, and I feel like that's the same problem we have in today's society. In modern education, old habits are hard to break, aren't they? James?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're very hard to break because the whole system has been built to function that way. We have a system that was shaped by the Industrial Revolution. It's an assembly line of passing children along from grade to grade to grade and they all have to fit this mold, and the children who don't fit the mold you have to cut pieces off of them that you know are part of their identity. It's part of what makes them creative, it's part of what makes them unique, right, and it's a system that is more akin to socialism and communism, where the individual identity is a problem for society. Yes, and all of society needs to be identical. All of society needs to be uniform, they all need to comply, but what that really does is kill creativity, which is really the soul of humanity.
Speaker 2:What makes humanity unique from animals is that we produce art, we produce literature, poetry. You don't see a goat stare over a hill and you don't see it moved by the scenery, so much so that it feels that it needs to paint a picture of this moment or write a song, whereas we have that. But we do that. We all have different creative outlets that we understand the world and interpret the world by, and when we're not allowed those things, a part of ourself gets lost. And when they say no, your knowledge needs to look like this, it needs to look like a test, it needs to look like you write this essay, and not everyone fits that.
Speaker 2:Their soul gets crushed, and when they're crushed, it affects them physically it turns into depression, it turns into stress or it turns into hyperactivity, because they can't let it out. And what's our solution to that? Well, this child is broken. Let's medicate them Right. So they put them on Adderall, ritalin, anti-anxiety medication, depression. This is the most over-medicated society that we've ever had, and what that does is it builds a dependence on pharmaceuticals, and the system profits from that, while we lose our sense of individuality. Right, and it's a shame.
Speaker 1:Have you ever seen Pink Floyd the Wall? I have Right the song right. I cannot help but picture that old music video where the kids are going into the meat grinder. That really is what you were describing, even the cutting off the body parts to fit the mold.
Speaker 2:You're just another brick in the wall.
Speaker 1:You're just another brick in the wall, and I think that we're Christians, we're Orthodox Christians, and it is almost even more tragic from our perspective because we believe we're created in the image of God. Right, we believe we're. We're icons. We are living icons of the image of God and of what God wants us to be. Right, we're not there yet, none of us are perfect, but we're. God is making us sanctified, he's making us holy through his grace, through our cooperation with him.
Speaker 1:That is completely and totally individualistic, insofar as it's me that's being transformed through the grace of God, through the energies of God. And yet I'm not alone. I'm not on an island. I'm attached to the church, I'm attached to the body of Christ. We are working on our salvations together. So there's this beautiful melding of individuality to the nth degree. But also we're not just individuals. We are tied to a greater whole. We are tied to a system, if you will, right, but it's a godly system. And can we talk about as great and as inspiring, as much as we fall in love with McMurphy in this film? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He takes it too far, doesn't he Right? So what is missing there? What is that piece? Why does McMurphy take it too far. What doesn't he have?
Speaker 2:missing there? What is that piece? Why does McMurphy take it too far? What doesn't he have?
Speaker 2:So CS Lewis wrote a great paper called Men Without Chest. It talks about the head being the intellect, it being knowledge, and many people are driven by that and they can become argumentative, or they can become complacent, or even depressed and nihilistic, as we see geniuses like Nietzsche. It drove, you know, it drove him to madness, right. And then we have people who are all passion, which is in their belly. So we have the head being knowledge, the belly being passion, and people who are driven by passion. They'll go to these protests without knowing what they're protesting. They'll be quick to jump into a fight or they'll be moved emotionally to do things, but they're controlled by their passions, sure, sure.
Speaker 2:And what CS Lewis posits is that what's missing is the chest component, which is the heart or the virtue of man. That if we were to be able to combine and connect our passion and our knowledge with virtue, then we would be able to accomplish godly things. And that can be even tied to creativity as well. That we were all created by God, unique, to have different gifts and abilities and talents to use our creativity, and those should be celebrated, and God can use different aspects of your life to bring about his glory and his work. It says in Ephesians that we were created for good works, and those good works are unique to individuals and what they can do. You could be a makeup artist, you could be a writer, you could be a plumber, blue yeah, blue collar worker, or or just a beautiful person like Queen Esther in the scriptures right.
Speaker 2:Her beauty is what was used by God to save all the Israelites. You could be a great speaker. You can even be a hermit, right, who lives a monastic life and is an example of saintliness and humility.
Speaker 1:You can be a priest's wife from a tiny, little, nowhere town in Alaska, in the example of Matushka Olga, absolutely, an absolute nobody, if you will, from nowhere, if you will, becomes a saint of the church.
Speaker 2:And brings about safely the lives of many infants who will then continue the work of the Lord.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, exactly, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:In Cuckoo's Nest. Eventually. There's spoilers here. Sorry, the film came out in 1975. So if you haven't seen it, I apologize, but if you're watching this video you've probably seen. The film came out in 1975. So if you haven't seen it, I apologize, but if you're watching this video you've probably seen the film, otherwise you probably wouldn't care.
Speaker 1:Um, we know that the system couldn't take this hero figure for long. They, they, they couldn't allow him to continue to operate as he did. So eventually, in this powerfully tragic scene, we see McMurphy after he has had a frontal lobotomy, right, where they literally cut out the front part of the brain. And this was really done. This was an actual practice. So if people think this is just fiction or dystopia, uh-uh, this took place in this country and it wasn't even that long ago. Right, this took place in this country and it wasn't even that long ago. Chief takes action. Chief finally finds he is a big man in the true sense of the word. Talk to us about that, james. What do you see in the person of Chief while he's getting to know McMurphy, after he experiences what McMurphy brings? What's this mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, chief is a really important character because he's our narrator, so everything that's happening is happening from his perspective.
Speaker 1:In the novel.
Speaker 2:And that's a good reason to read the novel Absolutely, because you see his return to sanity. After accepting absurdity every day, he begins to embody that absurdity by not really identifying with his height.
Speaker 1:And his strength, and his strength.
Speaker 2:He's completely unaware of it and he even says to McMurphy at some point I'm not as big as you, even though he's, you know, 10 feet taller than everybody else, big as you, even though he's, you know, 10 feet taller than everybody else. But your perception and your reality is what you believe, not necessarily what is and this is what we were talking about with Blade Runner that our memories are not photorealistic replicas or representations of what actually happened. Sure sure, they are our feelings about what happened.
Speaker 1:Our memories are not nonfiction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot of fiction and we carry the fiction and interact with reality based on that fiction, which creates even more absurdity in our lives, so that we are functioning in absurdity. And it leads to destructive living, and usually it's self-destructive, and that's why we turn to over-medicating with either drug abuse, turn to over-medicating with either drug abuse, alcoholism or any other vice Right, because we can't cope with the reality that we've chosen. But what needs to happen is something needs to reorient our perspective and our view of reality back to the, the actual um occurrences that are happening. Uh, so that it takes.
Speaker 2:When there's an imbalance, something needs to swing you the other way and it often needs to be a very strong force in the opposite direction to bring you back to center. And that's what Murphy does to uh, to chief um. Nurse ratchet brought him very far off center into this alternate reality which people live in an alternate reality All the time. It's not the true reality that we all live in. It's another one that they have chosen, where they get to pick and choose what's right and what's wrong, and that creates conflict and disunity. So what happens is McMurphy, in his own extreme of the opposite, pulls him back into the middle so that he can finally see himself for who he really is. He can look in the mirror and see what is actually there, and then he is able to act. So, although McMurphy is, a Is an extreme form of masculinity.
Speaker 1:And even an unhealthy form, we would admit, you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Devoid of virtue. Right. In his own twisted way, he felt that he was doing this for the sake of others. Right, which makes him heroic in a sense, sure.
Speaker 1:I dare I say almost Christ-like Almost.
Speaker 2:Self-sacrificing.
Speaker 1:Self-sacrificing, self-sacrificing. He had a chance to get his freedom. He didn't choose it. That's the difference between the film and the book, christ. I think as well of Paul, right, when Saul of Tarsus was confronted with Christ, with the living God, and it completely brought him back to center Because, I have to say it, we are the chiefs of the world, right? We often too easily become the guy sitting in there, willingly pushing the broom around, not doing anything until what? Until we see who we actually can be and who is that. That's the person of Christ.
Speaker 2:That's a great observation, actually, the pushing of the broom, because the broom is supposed to be cleaning, or the mop is supposed to be cleaning the floor, and he's doing it, but it's not really cleaning the floor, it's not doing anything, which was like Paul observing the law, but the law wasn't going to bring about the salvation that Jesus brought, and so, rather than emptily cleaning the floor, thinking he was doing something, the Lord was calling him into something different, a new work A reality, a real cleaning, a real transformative mission and ministry.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, that would cleanse the world of sin through Christ and through the way that he lived and saying imitate me as I imitate Christ. Rather than going about in this circular way and really thinking that persecuting the church was a way that he was honoring God, and it took God crashing into his life and telling him stop persecuting me. Go now and first learn and then, once you have learned, go and cleanse the world of sin by bringing about the message of salvation. Amen.
Speaker 1:Cuckoo's Nest ends with this kind of a cut back to after Chief has gotten away. Mcmurphy has died, has been freed in another way, and you see the men who are still there playing cards. But it's different. They're playing cards in a way that McMurphy taught them to play cards. Right. There's a bit more of this bravado, if you will. They know how to play the game. Now, for example, they're actually playing cards. Before it was just make-believe. Whatever they were doing, they didn't know how to play. I can't help but be reminded of the example of the saints of the church, the chiefs who have gotten away, the McMurphys, who are bigger than life and can give us an example, an inspiring story of that's how you can follow Christ. That's how you can find your freedom in this life and be your true self. Talk to us about that. Where do you see that overlap?
Speaker 2:Well, freedom often comes through great sacrifice. I mean, that's the message of salvation really, is that true freedom came from Christ's sacrifice, not just in sacrificing unto death, we see that, but in sacrificing, coming down to earth and living as a human Condescending absolutely. To live is to suffer Right To quote Dostoevsky, exactly who we love. And living is suffering, but the way you choose to suffer. One can give into suffering and it only leads to more suffering, or one can step into suffering, the suffering that Christ calls us into, that he promises. But that suffering is ultimately where true freedom is found. It's the freedom that, when Christ came and died and inspired the world towards godliness, which was now attainable because of his resurrection Right, it was the spirit of McMurphy that resurrected Chief's masculinity, or his will, his drive, his confidence.
Speaker 2:His strength, his strength and his vigor to lift up that fountain and throw it out the door. And what it did was it opened the door for the other men as well. Right so that the door represented freedom from a system, freedom from bondage, freedom from oppression, from the lies of the enemy, freedom from oppression from the lies of the enemy, and freedom to go out and step into whatever God is calling you into. And he's still going to suffer, he's still going to go through challenges, but now he's going about it with the same freedom that the saints lived in, the freedom that I can suffer for Christ, which, in suffering for him, I can experience peace.
Speaker 2:I can bring about freedom to others, I can serve the world and bring real cleansing, like Paul did when he cleansed people. He cleansed them of sin, he cleansed them of the disease of sin, and it was no longer just a. It's not just a nice message, it is a new way of living in this life that reflects heaven on earth. And so we remember heaven as we go through life with all of its challenges, and interact with heaven, interact with the heavenly host, because we are now joined with his nature and are being joined with his nature, and that gives us peace, whereas either way you're going to be suffering. But if you're suffering alone, you just go into this pit of despair, nihilism, where you're pushing around a broom that's not doing anything, right, right.
Speaker 1:And then when you die, and it's all over and nothing matters.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think that's one of the beauties of the Christian faith is that we can watch a film that was made in 1975, based on a novel, I think from the 1960s, and imbue it with so much meaning. It's not a Christian film, but orthodoxy comprises and encompasses all of reality, including that of a mental institution from the 1960s. Tolkien were famous for talking about how these stories, how these fictional stories, are a sub-creative act reflecting the reality that we all yearn for. We yearn for it to be chief, to get out and to run to our freedom. Right, this is what in eternity we are doing. Right, we're participating in it even now.
Speaker 1:Right, it's a taste of it, it's a image of it. It's not in its fullness, but there's so much beauty there still, and I thank you, james, for having this conversation because to me, this is part of that beauty. We're not nihilists, we're not naturalists, we're not of the opinion or the belief that we're just this physical matter and suffering is horrible and one day we're going to die and that's it. We have the hope of eternal life. We have the assurance that even this story that can inspire us to look heavenly right, to look to the heavenly reality, the eternal reality that there's healing there, there's growth there for eternity. Right, we will almost forever be chief, running off into the distance, getting ever closer to God as he waits for us with open arms, in a sense.
Speaker 2:I love that imagery the rolling hills as he's running. I think that true good literature and good art is seeking truth.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And when you, truth is the fingerprint of God. All truth carries the fingerprint of God, because Jesus says I am the way, the truth and the life. So when an artist is authentically and genuinely seeking truth in their writing, in their art, they touch upon the fingerprint of Christ and you can find him in there, whether they know it or not, absolutely Whether they know it or not.
Speaker 2:I've found it in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 100%, which is satirically atheist, right, but still you can find that wherever truth is, there Christ is. And in art that is genuinely trying to touch at something that's real Christ can be found. So we'll see it in anything, amen, amen.