| Title: | Lobotomizing the Virtual Violators of the Establishment’s Guardians |
| Author: | Felix Nicolau |
| Publication: | Philologica Jassyensia, VIII (1), p. 303-308 |
| p-ISSN: | 1841-5377 |
| e-ISSN: | 2247-8353 |
| Publisher: | Institutul de Filologie Română „A. Philippide” |
| Place: | Iaşi |
| Year: | 2012 |
| Abstract: | Gender studies have lately paid special attention to the oscillating condition of masculinity in an ever-changing society (see Shira Tarrant, Men Speak Out, 2008). As these aspects were taken into consideration especially in the United States, a very good representation of this straggling sexuality is to be found in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Oppressing the mental opposition to the Establishment by harming the integrity of the body is Kesey’s topic obsession. His hero, the machoistic Randle McMurphy, confronts with nurse Ratched who, in spite of her poignant female attributes, escapes every sexual connotation and calls her patients to reason and social conformity on behalf of what the Indian narrator denominates The Combine. Who doesn’t comply with her predicaments has to suffer electroshock therapy and even lobotomy. This is the blueprint of a conflict in terms of matriarchate being assaulted by the manhood of the asylum residents. More than this, the exploitation of the theme of disobedience in a consumerist, clerkish society is a theme which will know further developments in Susan Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted and James Bailey’s Man, Interrupted. The result will be a branched culture that is the culture of the social healers and the one of their patients. Interconnectivity keeps being scarce, but at a closer look we perceive the real conflict for power, irrespective of sex or even gender attributes. In the politicized asylums sex is not something to be pushed towards a cultural gender, but something that has to be eradicated. |
| Key words: | system, politics, rebellion, obsession, masculinity, femininity |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
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