Ratched - Blog Posts

Saw this in a Facebook group and my first thought was

“Did…did Mildred type this? 👁👄👁”

ratched spoilers //

the show gave me a comp het storyline in a character played by someone over 45 which is my biggest weakness. if i think too hard about it i have to go and have a nap or get hysterical

who do you have waiting for you at home nurse ratched? 😳

It must be said that the Nurse Ratched of the ‘75 film had some villainous tendencies. She was condescending, unfair and used her patients as an excuse to keep things the way she liked them. She was on a power high, and most certainly had a sense of superiority. While her treatment of her patients was not quite abuse, medical abuse - especially that committed by nurses - is not acceptable and should not be ignored.

That said, her treatment of McMurphy was entirely justified, at least in my mind. McMurphy - who was known to not be mentally ill - was a misogynist and an arse, who never once respected any of the nurses (even before she gave him any reason to dislike her). I believe him to be entirely unsympathetic. This warped my watching experience, and caused me to actually enjoy when Mildred belittled him. A story that should have been the uplifting tale of disabled men rising up against their domineering nurse is watered down by how unlikable it’s protagonist is.

Just finished Ratched 2020, and I’m conflicted. I loved it for the most part, but Mildred was clearly a completely different character to that of the film.

So yes, Mildred Ratched is, most certainly, a villain. She just isn’t as bad as Michael Myers or Count Dracula or Hannibal Lecter, but she is a villain. The manner in which she is viewed by the original audience presents her actions as worse than they are, focusing on the more trivial - such as her emasculating of McMurphy - over her heinous manipulations of her actually disabled patients.

Once again, the patriarchy would present Mildred Ratched as a bitch, and a liar, rather than the cunning, selfish, horrible person that she is, and the depth that comes with it.

Hot Take: Mildred Ratched is not a villain. She’s just a woman in a predominantly male field prescribing to the accepted medical practices at the time. It was the treatments and McMurphy’s (Jack Nicholson) reckless endangerment of other patients that were the problem, not her.

Yes! Yes! I totally agree with this hot take 100% Especially in Milos’ version he mentioned how it would be more “evil” or “disturbing” if Ratched didn’t think that she was in the wrong, that she truly and wholly believed that what she was doing was intentional to help them. She was most certainly is a woman (a woman with immense status) working in a male dominated feild, running a male dominated ward. She certainly had to leave her own opinions, ideas, and parts of herself at the door on the Outside. She wants to make sure that her authority and station will not be questioned hence why she is seen as mechanical, stoic, and “evil”

She’s most certainly not that, perhaps, even with my own interpretation, Mildred Ratched might be inclined to keep some people under her control out of a sense of superiority but ultimately that superiority is acceptable as she is a successful woman (and when during the book and movie being published or premiered) there was the second wave feminist movement. Something I’m positive that Mildred would pay close attention too.