Ratched final trailer

[drbat]

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Looking good today, Mildred. Witness the origin of one of the world’s most iconic characters, Nurse Ratched. Sarah Paulson stars in Ratched, coming to Netflix on September 18.

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#Ratched. 10 days. pic.twitter.com/M32MwtwKb3
- Netflix Queue (@netflixqueue) September 8, 2020

Source.

Comments

[eronanke]

I mean, it's been a long time since I've read the book, but I think the whole point of the character wasn't that she was grand or had a full, rich, inner life - she stood for mundane cruelties, random cruelties, and targeted cruelties of systems designed for compliance.

I think it's a bad idea, but when you see who produced it, it's, like, "yeah, that makes sense that he would want to revisit Asylum but with more money."

[justrachna]

Yeah I agree, not every villain needs to be humanized

[merel_93]

Lol yeah the more money bit... So she's an orphan, works a job as a nurse that by all means isn't a grand pay, but the wardrobe is that of a socialite? Please.

[drbat]

Ken Kesey said the real Ratched was a “whole lot more human” than he had remembered.

[rihaty]

Yeah like this looks interesting but it didn't need to use Ratched's name. This doesn't feel like the character or the book, it feels like something else.

[meadowphoenix]

she stood for mundane cruelties, random cruelties, and targeted cruelties of systems designed for compliance.
i think that's a problem tho, like an actual miss of framing when the true power in the system lied in the hands of men. there's a reason why the terrible women in the books only use words, and it's never a consideration of how they should be viewed by readers. i do think it's useful to explicate characters who both promulgate cruelty but who belong in a larger system in which they don't have power. I think exploring autonomy there is incredibly interesting. I just wouldn't trust ryan murphy to do so.

[eronanke]

I want to agree, but I like the simple inversion of a female nurse culturally representing care and nurture, but really, being a source of power, domination, control, cruelty.
I don't want to know why - it makes the movie richer not knowing, being consistently surprised at how far she would go to maintain power and domination.

What I worry is that, like the Star Wars prequels, something like this somehow becomes canon, and it eliminates the power of the original film/book. No one really wants to know how Darth Vader became Vader. That's not the point of the story. Trying to revisit and explain only causes us to shift focus and reverse-engineer a narrative that's already neutered by the audience knowing the result.

In short: all prequels are trash. :)

[meadowphoenix]

I like the simple inversion of a female nurse culturally representing care and nurture, but really, being a source of power, domination, control, cruelty.
Okay but this is misogyny. How useful is it to have inverted cultural representations of care and nurture that are female when a) the men in this same system use the same tactics, except ALSO force, and b) this system is not only predominantly male but also at the time only had men in positions of power. It is less an indictment of the institution, which encourages this type of malicious empathy in all genders, but of women who aspire to male control. The resolution is a loss of power for McMurphy (and Ratchet), until Chief "frees" him, but the lobotomy could only have been done by men. That's not a result of Ratchet's power at all. And yet the impetus of impotence all appears to be female, from McMurphy's ~statutory~ rape charge, to Billy's mom, to Ratched's control over voluntary patients. The solution to that impotence? Female exploitation, or loss of power, i.e. the

[eronanke]

>But it relies on misogyny, because not only are men equally empathetic, but especially for uses of control, but that is how they typically operate in their capacity as doctors in terrible institutions, but are not considered especially evil for doing the same things

[meadowphoenix]

Do we need a Fight Club prequel from Marla's POV to drum in the message that the film is actually about toxic masculinity and violence? Or a Goodfellas prequel from Karen's? Do we need a Scarface prequel from Elvira's?
Do we need Gone with Wind form the perspective of the slaves and former slaves? And yet it's a great book. So yes, I think there is always room to broaden a limited perspective.

[eronanke]

Well, different strokes.

I respect your opinion, but I can't abide by trying to reform texts through a second perspective... it doesn't give the reader anything they couldn't get by being critical in the first viewing of the original text/film. Like, who is going to read "The Wide Sargasso Sea" or whatever the prequel to Jane Eyre is, in 200 years? Or, as you mentioned, "The Wind Done Gone"? It's a fun creative dalliance, but I don't know if they can/will stand the test of time against the original it is trying to reinterpret. I mean, how big of a thud will "Midnight Sun" be compared to "Twilight"!

[meadowphoenix]

eh, I'm not sure "who is going to read a sequel of a literary canon?" is a reasonable metric of the literary value of a book. I mean what in the hell does "test of time" mean? we don't live in the type of world where the test of time is formed by people who have the desire to see alternate perspectives that don't validate the hegemony anyway, regardless of value. and this point belies your irritation that this nurse ratchet derivation might become "canon."

eta: also....I completely disagree about your understanding of media criticism. good grounded criticism is something that has to be learned and taught, and it's not. media which broadens limited perspectives instigates that type of critical thought when people have not been taught it, and moreover not everyone can learn to critique media without having the limits of one perspective being brought to their attention.

[eronanke]

>I'm not sure "who is going to read a sequel of a literary canon?" is a reasonable metric of the literary value of a book. I mean what in the hell does "test of time" mean? we don't live in the type of world where the test of time is formed by people who have the desire to see alternate perspectives that don't validate the hegemony anyway, regardless of value. and this point belies your irritation that this nurse ratchet derivation might become "canon

[meadowphoenix]

There are two points here, one that I think the literary value of a book does, somewhat, tie into it's ability to be enjoyed outside of a moment in time. If it's something that everyone read in 1995, but no one has reread, referenced, analyzed, or thought about it 15 years later, what was it's value? What did it give to the culture, to the audience, beyond it's temporary experience?
And my point is that this a weird point to make when the type of books which make impact do not necessarily do so because of their inherent value. Books which endure, endure not just because people love them, but because they uphold certain view or understanding of society that the people who push books into mainstream consciousness also value. That's not the book alone, or even I would say mostly about the book. Gone with the Wind endures because it's apologia for the confederacy. Underlined by complex characters, sure. But it would not have survived without people valuing the underlying confederacy apologia. That's something fairly organic. The

[eronanke]

I've tried to reorder our comments to reflect a grouping of similar ideas

[eronanke]

Pt2: LJ made me chop this up