In December of last year, I started watching the television show M*A*S*H, which ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983. As a history nerd with a penchant for old TV shows I quickly became obsessed, watching every single episode in under six months.
For those unfamiliar, the show is a comedy-drama following the exploits of the personnel serving at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) during the Korean War (1950-1953). Intended as an allegory for the Vietnam War, the show tapped into the intense anti-war and anti-institutional sentiment of broad swaths of the American public of the time.
The show is unapologetically anti-war and progressive, unrelenting in its insistence that basic human dignity be upheld in the most horrific circumstances. It is extremely well-written and enjoyable to watch, a true classic of twentieth-century television. M*A*S*H may have premiered over fifty years ago, but it still has much to teach us today.
Best Care Anywhere
Alan Alda stars as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, a gifted young surgeon drafted into the war. He has a penchant for pranks and a consistent distaste for military discipline. Alda’s performance is unmatched, and he is truly a once-in-a-generation comedic talent. His sardonic wit, impeccable comedic timing, and old-school slapstick gags combine to create a masterful performance. At the time of writing, the 90-year-old Alda is still acting and speaking out for progressive causes. He deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest American comedians of the twentieth century, standing alongside the likes of Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and Steve Martin.
There was a significant amount of cast turnover spanning the course of the show’s run. Every time someone left, I was very nervous to find out who their replacement would be, and I wondered whether the new actor could live up to the standards of those departing. I was never disappointed.
Hawkeye’s original sidekick, Captain John “Trapper” McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) was a zany, sarcastic prankster. His replacement, Captain B.J. Hunnicut (Mike Farrell) is a grounded family man who often serves as a calming presence and voice of reason. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) was the good-natured, borderline incompetent commanding officer of the outfit in the early run of the show; he was replaced in season four by the firm-but-fair, no-nonsense cavalryman Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan). The whiny, arrogant, and right-wing Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) was replaced in season six by the blue-blooded and snobbish but cultured and honorable Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers).
Rounding out the main cast are the two other characters who stayed for the entire series: the meek and kind-hearted Catholic chaplain Lieutenant Francis Mulcahey (William Christopher), and the career-driven and tough head nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit).
The only character swap that is more ambiguous is the replacement of the boyish and innocent but preternaturally competent company clerk Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff), who left the show in season eight. He was replaced by Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr), the Toledo-born, Lebanese-American cross-dressing soldier who spends much of the war attempting to convince the Army he has gone insane in pursuit of a Section Eight psychiatric discharge. Both characters are quite beloved by fans, and Radar’s departure marked a major turning point for the series.
The focus of the show is highly varied. Plots typically involve pranks and hijinx, Army bureaucracy, dealing with North Korean and Chinese POWs and Korean civilians, confronting racism, the psychological and emotional struggles of the staff, attacks by the enemy, interpersonal conflict that blurs the line between comedy and drama, and much more. The show also experiments with its own format, for example by filming an entire episode from the perspective of a wounded G.I. (S7E11), following a casualty in near-real time (S8E11), and depicting a soldier who is lingering as a ghost after succumbing to his injuries (S10E10).
M*A*S*H is based on a 1970 film of the same name and the 1968 novel that inspired it. Both works fall outside the scope of this article. The franchise received three spinoff series: Trapper John, M.D., which is not related to the show at all; W*A*L*T*E*R, the once-aired pilot for a show following Radar; and AfterMASH, which ran for two seasons. I would only recommend the latter to the most die-hard fans.
“There’s No Such Thing as an Anti-War Film”
In a real sense, this quote from the late French filmmaker François Truffaut is true. Accurately capturing the abject horror of war renders a movie effectively unwatchable as entertainment and impossible to distribute beyond an extremely limited audience. No such project could ever appear on network television.
At the same time, M*A*S*H avoids the typical pitfalls of other “anti-war” media that actually serve to glorify armed conflict or advance pro-war messages, such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan or Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. There are several reasons for this.
First, the surgeons in the show are not soldiers in the conventional sense. They are doctors first and foremost. Hawkeye, Trapper, and later Hunnicut only reluctantly submit to military discipline. The show does not depict frontline combat or give the sense that a victory on the battlefield is a victory for the cast. Direct engagement with the enemy is sporadic and never glorified. The show makes it explicitly clear that every advance of blue squares on the map in a general’s office sends countless teenage boys to the hospital in critical condition. The surgeons at the 4077th must perform “meatball surgery” on their shattered bodies in the hope of keeping them alive long enough to get them to a hospital in Seoul or Tokyo. This constant drumbeat of “incoming wounded” keeps the show grounded in its values, and many episodes focus explicitly on the unique stresses endured by wartime medical staff.
Second, overt displays of patriotism, love of country, and sympathy with American foreign policy goals for Korea are almost completely absent. The show’s thesis does not seriously entertain counter-arguments as to why war should be seen as a moral good or a regrettable necessity. Characters do express belief in traditional American virtues including justice, fairness, democracy, and equality, but it is rarely tied explicitly to patriotism. It is only foils like Frank Burns who demand loyalty, obedience, and paranoia as they salute the flag.
Finally, the more “gung-ho” officers, soldiers, and civilians who visit the 4077th are consistently depicted in a negative light. The doctors are often pitted against officers willing to trade young lives for their own glory, bigots of all stripes, war profiteers, adventure-seeking journalists, anti-communist witch hunters, the officious bureaucracy of the U.S. Army, and more. These figures are often drivers of conflict in the series. They nearly always either learn a lesson, receive some kind of comeuppance, or set up a serious and contemplative moment for the main cast.
The show is not intended as an attempt to shock the viewer with the horrific, gory reality of war. Its elements are packaged in a way that is palatable for 1970s TV. Episodes are by no means excessively violent, and they aren’t at all unpleasant to watch. But they do send an unambiguous and consistent message: There is no value in this kind of killing.
If any piece of popular media can be considered truly anti-war, M*A*S*H is it.
Questions of Taste
Most of the humor in the show holds up to modern standards. It is intelligent and well-written, and there are relatively few cases in which a joke is made that I consider to be in poor taste. In one early episode (S2E9), the doctors paint a soldier in partial blackface to teach him a lesson about racism after he requests that he not receive “the wrong kind of blood” (referring to the recent integration of the U.S. Army’s blood supply). The message is intended to be anti-racist, but this plot point couldn’t air today for obvious reasons.
Some of the accents of the actors playing Koreans are uncomfortably broad by today’s standards. Many Korean characters’ inability to speak English seems to render them unable to speak at all, though this is likely due to the difficulty of sourcing actors who speak the language fluently at a time when the number of Korean-Americans in the U.S. was much smaller than it is today. There are also a few cases in which a person being kissed against their will is played for laughs, most often Major Houlihan. For these reasons, and likely a few more that I missed, some viewer discretion is advised. By the standards of a fifty-year-old show, however, there isn’t much to cringe at.
The portrayal of the cross-dressing Corporal Klinger is particularly noteworthy as an early example of what I would consider positive trans representation in media. Klinger is not transgender in the modern sense. He openly admits that he dresses in women’s clothing only to convince the Army he has gone insane, though his wardrobes are quite involved and he obviously revels in the freedom of expression it affords him. Klinger never changes his name or pronouns, he refuses a Section Eight that would require him to admit to being a “homosexual,” and he returns to a regulation uniform and ceases to angle for a discharge after he replaces Radar as company clerk.
The most notable part of the performance is how the majority of the cast treats him with matter-of-fact tolerance, and the characters who scorn him (particularly Major Burns) are portrayed as bigoted and petty. Even from those characters, anti-trans rhetoric doesn’t go to extremes.
Other trans people have different opinions on this topic. They believe Klinger plays into a harmful stereotype of the “man in a dress” that has been weaponized by the cisgender majority to delegitimize trans experiences. Given how the show approaches LGBTQ+ issues more broadly, including Hawkeye and Trapper’s acceptance of a closeted gay soldier (S2E22), I am personally inclined to believe the showrunners approached the question of Klinger’s identity as carefully and sensitively as could be expected for the time. That said, readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions.
Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
The series finale is a two-hour tour de force. Its live broadcast was watched by over 100 million people nationwide, and to this day it remains one of the most-watched scripted television events in history. Directed by Alan Alda, the finale does an excellent job of capturing the heart of the show. The episode is perfectly calibrated in its bittersweetness, and it serves as a powerful, emotionally satisfying, and fitting sendoff.
There is one rather disturbing plot point in the episode relating to the ultimate reason for Hawkeye’s hospitalization. It isn’t graphically depicted and is handled with care, but sensitive viewers can choose to skip that section, which takes place from timestamps 38:51 to 41:25.
As the ceasefire is announced during the finale, the total number of U.N., communist, and civilian casualties is read out over the base’s loudspeaker system, serving as a memorial for all those killed and permanently scarred by the Korean War. Klinger’s question: “Vietnam? Where’s that?” is particularly poignant as a nod to the show’s origin as a critique of the Vietnam War.
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M*A*S*H is solidly progressive in a way that socialist viewers will immediately recognize. None of the characters are socialists, nor could they be in a show set during the early Cold War. But we can still admire and praise the virtues the show promotes: Radical tolerance of those different from us. Scorn for the horror of war and cruelty in every form. Sacrifice for those who have nothing. M*A*S*H reminds us that we should not apologize for our values, that our most basic humanity must be upheld against the forces of imperialism, militarism, and hatred.
The doctors of the 4077th are unable to stop the unbelievable carnage around them. They can only do their best to help those who come through the door. In our own time of global crisis, we should strive to do the same.
M*A*S*H is currently available to stream in its entirety on Hulu.
