Why I Watch 'M*A*S*H*.'
Why I Watch 'M*A*S*H*.'
The show that explains imperialism
(photo - Publicity photo of the cast of M*A*S*H shot just prior to the production of Season 2, 1974 (clockwise from left): Loretta Swit, Larry Linville, Wayne Rogers, Gary Burghoff, McLean Stevenson, and Alan Alda - Public Domain)
For 22 minutes, the legendary television show M*A*S*H*. engages in an endless banter about life, love, death, and survival. It is the human condition brought to you by Hawkeye and the other American soldiers of the #4077th “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.” The show, as it did for 11 seasons, from 1972-1983, will get you through the tough times.
I began watching it again during COVID-19 with the intention of watching all of the shows again. I know the stories. It was on when I was a young person. I watched and mostly missed most of the deepest jokes about the dirty politics of war and American imperialism. But Hawkeye (played by Alan Alda) and his cohorts was funny. The comedic banter was endless. They drank homemade liquor and Hawkeye was more horny than a porn star.
There are so many believeable and loveable characters - Radar, the nerdish gopher played by Gary Burghoff, Klinger, the cross-dressing combat medic who wants to get out of the war immediatey everyday, and Colonel Blake, surgeon and Commanding Officer of the 4077th, who also wants out but mostly does his job and chases away his own demons quietly and in private.
There are many others, Loretta as “Hot Lips” Houlihan, is another, as is Wayne Rogers as “Trapper,” Hawkeye’s straight man and comrade in endless escapism from a deadly war and the trappings of life in that war.
M*A*S*H* serves me better today 40 years after its end as the greatest television show ever produced to many because it spoke to today five decades ago and kept speaking. At the time M*A*S*H* came into our world, the wasteful war in Vietnam was finally ending. The generation that experienced that war fell in love with M*A*S*H*. They had no choice. M*A*S*H* was a sit-com but it really was about American imperialism and the ongoing ideological struggle in America over liberal thought and conservative intolerance.
Hawkeye cracked jokes all day and tried to woo nurses but mostly he was on his soapbox opposing the war. He was a loyal American, a man who wanted to serve mankind but he did not like the war or what it meant. There was little reason to misunderstand him either and what the writers and producers were doing through him. They poked fun and angst at America’s forgotten Korean conflict and as a result, spoke loudly against Vietnam, racism, sexism, and war itself. These are the social struggles that dominated the period before M*A*S*H* too. It was no accident.
I have other reasons for coming back to M*A*S*H* as well. My father served in the U.S. Army from 1947 to 1951. He didn’t see any combat (he worked in processing) but he remembers the period well. The war itself began in 1950 even though America was in Korea long before that and the U.S.S.R. controlled the North right after the end of World War II.
Naturally, Black Americans served in the war and they were disproportionately casualties in the war. Allegedly, civil rights organizations spoke up about this and the army scaled back sending African American soldiers somewhat. He also remembers a fellow white soldier he knew telling him, what a shame he would not see any action because of this.
My father played along and said - yes, what a shame. Truth is, he had no desire to be in the kill zone of that war. He joined the military to escape the growing lack of professional opportunties in Baltimore at the time. It was a calcuated risk for a poor kid from Baltimore.
My father’s twin brother also served during the Korean conflict although later. He didn’t last the four years like my father. He was forced out under a theory that he was a Communist. My uncle, who I got to know well before he died, was no Communist. He was apolitical. He laughed when he recounted that story.
In part, that is the story. I love M*A*S*H* became somehow it speaks to me personally and politically. My country, America, is an imperial nation. For most of the post World War II period, it has pretty much done whatever it has wanted to any nation on earth, especially the lesser nations. It has sought to dictate economic and political policy with force and financial squeeze plays. I personally don’t like.
Then there is my father who could have easily been stationed in a hospital like the #4077th. But my father had a love for paperwork. He was, at heart, a bureaucrat. So he worked in processing, learned office skills, and then worked for most of his life, as a Washington D.C. paper pusher. He directed personnel offices in the federal and local government of Washington D.C.
One of my favorite little tweaks on M*A*S*H* is when the show would lose the laugh track. The show is endless banter and commentary by Hawkeye with the colorful assortment of characters. Sometimes, the makers of the show, would drop the laugh track and let you try to figure out if this was funny or not. It was a subtle technique and clever television. Sit-coms are supposed to be funny, excursions from the unpredictable ebb and flow of life, yet, here was a show that was funny but also a punch to the head. But ask yourself: what was more unpredictable (yet predictable) as war itself?
Mostly, M*A*S*H* is now. America is still an empire. America is still engaged in picking on small fish in the ocean of the world. America, at least according to its detractors, still tries to impose its policies and ideals on other countries (Ask Venezuela, for example). And yet America is still full of very cool people like Klinger, and Radar, and Hot Lips, and when I see Henry Blake rock the orange University of Illinois sweater, I get goose bumps because my daughter just graduated from there.
One day, I do hope to go to Korea. I want to track down the war of my father’s generation. I want to try to understand why America went there, departed, and left the place, in somewhat of a mess that the locals are still trying to fix. I will then know for sure why I love M*A*S*H* and still think it is the best written television program in American history. I mean that. If you are too young to remember it, check it out. If you are of its generation, you probably already know.