Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2021

MASH- The Elephant in the Operating Room

When I watch TV, I find that I watch the ME TV Channel a lot (Memorable Entertainment TeleVision).  It contains a lot of the old TV programs that I used to see from childhood to teens and twenties.  Among these is M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).  The film came out in 1970 during the Vietnam war, and the TV Series started in 1972. After a while, we figured out that the producers were using a story set in the Korean War to protest continued American Involvement in the Vietnam War, but that’s not all there was to it.  I remember enjoying the episodes, when they first came out.  Mischievous Hawkeye Pierce and his bunkmate were always getting one over on their rivals, Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan. When they weren’t defeating Frank and Margaret, or convincing a different nurse each week to sleep with them, they were complaining about the Korean War–Why were we there?  When could they go home? Why is the food so bad? These were consistent features of all the episodes, and consis