5 Feet of Fury

Nurse Ratched, My Hero: my NEW PJMedia piece

Four female movie villains I love:

It’s 1963. You’re a smart, capable woman, but were told all your life — by guidance counselors less clever than you are, or perhaps your own embittered mother — that your only career options are teaching or nursing.

So you finished nursing school at the top of your class. You’ve adopted an impeccable, ice queen persona to deflect the unwanted attention of coarse, creepy doctors (some of whom strike you as troublingly dimwitted.) (…)

Your job doesn’t pay very much, but it is your whole world.

A world of dealing with weird, weak, helpless men in diapers all day.

Some of whom waste your valuable time, and the state’s resources, by pretending to be crazy, the better to evade life’s responsibilities, or the harsher consequences of their despicable actions.

The cocky one who seduced and abandoned a 15-year-old girl has been particularly difficult from the start…