Two scenes that have come to my attention recently seem to be lingering in my mind for a lttle extra attention. The first is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the significance of the only character in the play that is dead (literally) and that is Skipper, Brick's childhood friend. The end of the play reveals that Skipper committed suicide but we are not sure why. Brick is guilt stricken because Skipper reached out to him before he died. He also reached out to Maggie with sexual advances, which she rejected. Brick was seemed attached to Skipper's corpse, inhabiting more of the groud six feet under than above. It was shame that drove him underground. It is clear he must let this person go to move on with his relationships (wife and father). Maggie and Big Daddy resent Skipper for holding Brick in the grave. They also resent Brick's attachment to the puer realm. Brick's release from Skipper (Captain?) is necessary for him to move into adulthood. There is an underlying suggestion that Skipper was in love with Brick in a homoerotic relationship that Brick did not come to terms with either. It suggests the puer realm is the realm of homoerotic love. This sounds very platonic but may be very close to the truth. Brick's wounding is in the leg, as close as one gets to the source of generativity. This makes him impotent. We realize that Brick was carrying the fun loving aspect of Big Daddy, who set that part of himself aside for ambition. He reflects on his own father's carefree and loving nature and realizes that by resenting his father he cast the baby out with the bath water. Brick of course let's go of Skipper precisely as Big Daddy embraces the fun loving aspect of his father and himself. Skipper is sacrificed. He dies then though he's been dead for a while.
Now what does this have to do with Cuckoo's Nest? No idea. So let's proceed. Nurse Ratched is confering with her psychiatrist colleague over the fate of RPM and the "Boys" are talking about how RPM is no ordinary man (superman) and Nurse Ratched breaks in, "Oh. no gentleman, I believe you are very wrong. He is very much just a man." Ratched is like Hera unable to forgive Hercules for being born of the love affair between Zeus and the mortal Alcmene so she sets out to kill him. The story is more ancient than I originally realized. It is the battle between puer and senex and senex always wins because senex is tied to aging. Brick and RPM are more alike than I knew. Only RPM's fate can only be castration, because he is archetypal. Brick is a real person and unsticks himself from the complex and moves on.
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Very interesting post.
ReplyDeleteBoth stories deal with the walking corpse, the man who is literally alive but generatively dead, somehow separated from his male power. For Brick and Big Daddy, Skipper is a symbol of a part of themselves that is disconnected. It is only through connection with each other and shared pain that they can heal, and in Brick's case rekindle, this lost male energy.
The residents of Nurse Ratched's ward are almost completely emasculated by her control. They are the walking dead, lost is a fog, each completely separated from their own masculinity. RPM is a living symbol of their maleness, their resistance, their drive to live freely. When this symbol is destroyed, then the real male power buried deep within Chief is ignited.
It is interesting that in both stories there is a confusion of homoerotic love that must be dispelled in order to move forward. On the night that Chief first reveals himself and speaks to RPM, he describes wanting to touch him, and not understanding why. He eventually comes around to the reason being it's because "he's who he is." The male separated from his own masculinity craves it in any other form, and will readily project that power onto another man in order to find it.
I would also take note of the different roles that the feminine play in these two stories. Maggie the Cat is a catalyst for change, and an advocate for Brick's masculinity. She waits and hopes and tries to pull it out of him. But ultimately it is only through the father that the man can be healed. Yet her role is important, for without it these two men might never have found each other again.
Nurse Ratched, conversely, plays the role of antagonist to the masculine energy. By controlling and sedating all men in her presence, she asserts her smothering maternal dominance, which is anathema to true male identity. Yet she is a catalyst as well. For most of the men on her ward are there voluntarily. They need to be completely emasculated until, like Chief, they discover the man within.
In both of these stories, the women play traditional roles to reveal something about the male characters. It would be interesting to see either story retold from the female character's perspective. I imagine young Maggie like Liza Minnelli, dancing to entertain her own gay father. Or Nurse Ratched as a young girl, spending Christmas Day washing up after a house full of alcoholics.