Camera And Action, page 20
Like Life Magazine's front cover of John Wayne and Dustin Hoffman two years before, this ad brought together more than just two movies. Not only did Fox reinstate the importance of the World War II narrative through the image of General Patton saluting while standing in front of the American flag, but it defined a new sensibility with the M*A*S*H logo - a peace sign and naked legs in high heels. With Oscar in the middle, the seamless joining of discourses created a quirky juxtaposition of complex social issues wrapped in war and military symbolism. While Franklin J. Schaffner won Best Director over Robert Altman, Altman's treatise turned audience endorsement of a look into an icon of protest. If Schaffner's portrayal of Patton adjusted itself to an antiestablishment sentiment by portraying the general as a coldblooded killer, Altman's surgical unit better suited the taste for iconoclasm. M*A *S*H clearly produced and advanced a sympathetic image of the "sixties" man - part counterculture, part locker-room jock, and part escapist. Where Patton's playing field consisted of reinterpreting the meaning of a renowned general's legacy, Altman's film determined how audiences should resist familiar World War II persona and embrace another one built of its alter ego - antipatriarchal, anti-authoritarian, and anti-protocol.
Promotional poster of M*A *S*H (1970) (Photofest).
In 1970, in the pre-Watergate Nixon milieu, three war films appeared - Catch-22, Patton, and M*A*S*H. Though temporally set in the middle of the Vietnam debates, not one was specifically about Vietnam. The only mainstream feature to be intended as a Vietnam film was John Wayne's The Green Berets, released on July 4, 1968, after the Ter Offensive, the My Lai massacre, and President Johnson's March announcement not to seek reelection. In the film, Wayne is clear about Vietnam, its link to communism, and the importance of America's involvement in Southeast Asia, where the United States Special Forces were clear about their mission. By 1970 a popular image of the disillusioned, disoriented, young draftees entering a war they never understood replaced the earlier Green Beret figure. Now cliched, those images framed a new cinematic discourse about Vietnam, war, and manhood.
The closest a film came to engaging the anti-military sentiment toward the Vietnam War at the time was M*A*S*H. Robert Altman put it aptly about his picture, "I think we've tricked everybody in the United States into seeing the film ... even if they don't lay down their guns and pick up banners." In an interview overseas, following M*A*S*H's award in France, Altman unleashed on Americans. "The vote for Nixon," he argued, "was ... an endorsement of the Kennedy assassinations." He continued, "I'd do anything to help my son, or anyone, escape being drafted [including going] to prison over that."2 Altman found in the screenplay "the opportunity to do something [he] had been working on for about five years, which was a World War II farce."3
The war hero had been transformed into a medical professional who could have his cake and eat it, too, but that sort of regeneration carried its own contradictions. Altman's cinema unselfconsciously stylized the look of male authority but failed to redesign new relations of power between men and women. Sixties masculine imagery in this film was therefore contingent on degrading images of women, suggesting the same problems in the larger culture, considering the film's popularity. M*A*S*H's fame measured the inability of popular culture to extend the progressive project of social change to women. Substituting conventional masculinity with clear versions of updated men but not of females reveals the limiting level of insurgency in Altman's antiwar call. For as far as filmmakers saw themselves liberating Hollywood from old models of male representation, sexual identity for women remained constant.
Patton and M*A*S*H framed the debates over war and men at the beginning of the decade. The former personalized the war for soldiers on the battlefields and placed them in the discourse of epic history. "Duty is the essence of manhood," the general says in his speech to the audience, and "battles decide who is coward and who is magnificent." In M*A*S*H, soldiers are silent, brought in on stretchers and laid to rest on surgical tables. Surgeons trying to piece bodies back together ask audiences if the ends indeed justify the means. Cameras zoom in on close-ups of wounds, surgeries, and the gruesome side of battle. Blood is everywhere in M*A*S*H. Patton depersonalizes "the bursting of flesh" and "the shedding of blood" that M*A*S*H exposes almost boastfully. In Patton soldiers are restored to valor by the paternal leader. Their efforts are honored by their courage. M*A*S*H, on the other hand, removes the correlation between liberty and war, duty and action.4
For General Patton freedom is not rhetorical but always a battle as the general tells his audience in the opening sequence of the film where he stands for two long minutes in front of the American flag covering the entire screen. As the camera zooms into a close-up of General Patton addressing the unseen audience, the viewers, his troops, he orates about what it means to overcome weakness. In M*A*S*H duty is pragmatic, not gallant. Discipline is mocked. Patton returns to the classic qualities upon which American myths were built - what Scott himself called the "immortality of individuality" or the measure of a man on traditional, heroic terms.5M*A*S*Hreplaces the value of individual honor with men and women responding to circumstances.
The posters of Patton (1970) and M*A*S*H (1970) on page 115 symbolize the debates over men and war; one personalized heroism and the other personalized fun (Photofest).
With the draft in full force but Vietnam's outcome yet a few years away, popular debate centered on America's role in the world. Was it a heroic nation or an imperialist one, an intruder or a savior, progressive or barbaric, liberating or subjugating? Americans could not reconstruct ideal manhood easily, since America's moral call to enlighten the rest of the world now seemed like another example of "westward" expansion. Thus, the popularity of these two films showed competing arguments about deciding the meaning of the present.
Ten days after the release ofM*A*S*H, the same New York audiences flocked to Schaffner's Patton. The films ran neck and neck in gross sales. M*A*S*H edged Patton by approximately $12 million, with Patton bringing in $61-plus million and M*A*S*H over $73. A year later, however, on April 17, 1971, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Patton swept the Academy Awards. It took seven of its ten nominations, winning Best Picture (Frank McCarthy, producer), Best Screenplay (Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North) about a historical figure, Best Director (Frank J. Schaffner of Planet of the Apes fame), Sound (Douglas Williams and Don Bassman), Art and Set Direction, Film Editing (Douglas Williams and Don Bassman), and Best Actor, which was scandalized by Scott refusing to attend the Oscar ceremony. M*A*S*H received five nominations and won one Oscar for Screenplay Adaptation (Ring Lardner, Jr.), but its most prominent claim to fame would be measured by the eleven-year run of the namesake's famous television series for a generation that did not know about the film at all.
The film's ultimate role in deestablishing the establishment began with the conversion of the book into film. The general aim of the book, as author Richard Hooker (alias for Dr. H. Richard Hornberger) wrote to Lardner, was to "know doctor is human," a bit screwy in behavior but "dedicated, too." Lardner said of the characters, "I've tried to follow not having the Swampmen do anything gratuitously defiant but only things in keeping with their general aim of asserting their independence in order to get their work done and live their lives without bureaucratic interference."6 Author Hornberger quibbled with Lardner over the use and characterization of the medics. In referring to the team's dentist, Captain Waldowski, Hornberger prodded, "Is slob the right word?... For some reason ... slob has no special meaning for me." Hornberger suggested to Ring that he should "avoid confrontation of goofing off, drunken surgeons and dying patients." Himself a medical doctor, Hornberger worried about the script misrepresenting the medical profession and helped Ring with medical language ("ask technical advisers what gauze is ... another classical non-word" and "change `vital indications' to `vital signs"').'
Hornberger felt uncomfortable with overly gratuitous close-ups of bloody hands inside mangled bodies. Showing so much "exposure to wounded ... [may] just leave bad taste in everyone's mouth," the author cautioned. He also objected to Lardner's focus on the gruesome side of life. "How many movies," Hornberger wrote, "that I was thoroughly enjoying have I left with bad taste in mouth because a tragedy was thrown into relative happiness? Hell, us grunts don't demand that much reality. We want to escape it." The quibble was over the script's treatment of an "adopted" Vietnamese youngster, Ho Jon, whose death Lardner added in the second draft because "of imbalance favoring comedy over grimness," he explained. "We felt it advisable," continued Lardner, "the audience should realize death was a constant factor on the scene."
The author and scriptwriter bantered about including a description of Colonel Merrill in an unfavorable light. "I plead guilty," confessed Lardner, "to inserting a bit of propaganda reflecting my own view that the Korean War was part of a mistaken policy that has culminated in Vietnam ... but I don't defend it and certainly don't assume any right to imbue your characters with attitudes you find distasteful."8
Generally a traditional narrative about the value of medics in war, Hornberger's novel placed the experience of Korea in print. It was a testimony to the value of service in the Korean War. While the focus was on the medic not the soldier, the novel's conviction to portray men as human, a bit screwy, but "dedicated, too" kept masculine representation within conventional identity of power and authority. Yet, to convert this story into a sixties sentiment meant fetishizing the "screwy" behavior as a sign of liberation for the American man from the authoritarian hold of the past. The Lardner screenplay was marked "FINAL" by February 26, 1969, six months after he signed a contract with Aspen Productions, Inc. Adapted from the novel, the script tried to remain faithful to Hooker's intent and, after several meetings and correspondences, the author thanked him for honoring his request.
The film opens to the theme song, "Suicide is Painless," and shows MASH-unit helicopters flying wounded soldiers on stretchers attached to the runner. The song finishes as choppers take off for other wounded soldiers and the camera focuses on surgeon Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) as the phrase, "And then there was Korea," rolls by, followed by statements from General MacArthur and President Eisenhower. Other than those specific references, the film was anywhere Asia and the medics similar to the popular press's pictures of American soldiers in Vietnam.
The Korean War is typically written as a stalemate, largely ignored in cultural representations but remembered by Korean War veterans as a victory. It was sandwiched between the endless representations of exceptionalism through World War II heroics and the public's larger denial of meaning for Vietnam vets. This "forgotten" war provided Altman with open ideological terrain. Not established as a sacred icon, there was no mass-culture narrative to be suppressed or built upon, little to be resisted or reinstated. Simply put, Korea was a safe bet. Creating a new war story of Korea directed toward Vietnam meant bringing a new consumable, a new means of regenerating the male image in the military without turning audiences away. Certainly humor was a viable narrative tool, but a comedy about the Korean War carried little cultural transgression. To override that liability, Altman combined the fact of Korea with the look of contemporary subversion. The fusion was a veritable success.
"Fade In ext. landing area outside 4077th; see large letters `M-A-S-H,' Mobile Army Surgical Hospital," page one of the script reads. The "sex-starved men on the post" run the unit with nurse "Lieutenant Dish, twenty-four, blond and clearly, even in her winter fatigues, the sexiest looking nurse in military history" (JoAnn Pflug). Captains, majors, lieutenants, men and women, attend to the wounded and assist the two central characters, the top-gun surgeons, Hawkeye Pierce played by Donald Sutherland and Trapper John played by Elliott Gould. Major Margaret Houlihan, "who will soon be known" as "Hot Lips," "tallish, willowish, blondish, fortyish, prettyish" arrives at MASH by helicopter and introduces Sally Kellerman to the viewing public.
The 1960s presented a challenge in representing vets, soldiers, and the military. To begin with, Vietnam was the first war to receive extensive television coverage. Media coverage quickly dashed ideas about heroism in war, pride in battle, and honorable return. To American viewers, it was clear wars were not movies. The value of war could no longer be assumed, nor could the value of the soldier as the persona of what Scott called the "immortality of individuality." Despite Variety's claim of Patton being "100% American, in every way," America, in definition, vision, and image, was anything but clear. M*A *S*H could fill the Korean War's empty representation history and use it as an allegory for Vietnam at the same time. The film and the later turn in television to M*A*S*H reconstructed the image of the military but did not spark a national preoccupation with the Korean War. Thus, the issue for a viewing American population was clearly Vietnam.
After settling on Robert Altman, Fox's fifteenth choice for director, the company was ready to produce what would be a defining film for the beginning of the new decade. Converting the script into a film Altman-style meant creating the texture of a community instead of building a story around individuals. The actors Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould were essential to the film's overall effect of antiestablishment. Sutherland had a healthy TV and movie career before M*A*S*H. He appeared with the stellar cast in The Dirty Dozen (1967) and later starred in Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland (1970). Elliott Gould had convinced an American public of his quirky talent in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969). Gould charmed viewers as the liberated, dark-haired husband who finds "swinging" a satisfying addition to conventional marriage in Mazursky's hit. In M*A *S*H the Gould persona signifies the professional class that negotiated new terms for the organization man. With his buddy Hawkeye, Trapper defines the ethical center of Altman's film. Creativity, flexibility, and autonomy are more heroic and necessary than hierarchy, loyalty, and lofty military ideals.
By April 1969, the film was well into production with Robert Altman at the helm. A common Altman strategy - texture over plotline - operated in this picture to advance his argument that society and its institutions destroy men.10 Hornberger would have agreed that the screenplay stayed with the book's thematic integrity, but Altman has never been known merely to adapt a written work. Matching his impromptu style to the subject of sanity against insanity, Altman transformed a straightforward script into a timely signature piece. As one reviewer put it, "M*A*S*H crashed through all defense lines, obliterating any trace of respect for such cherished conceptions as army discipline, precedence of rank, male virility, womanly virtue: nothing is sacred in the climate of an absurd war." These two "anarchic actors" look and dress the part." They easily take on the discourse of appearance as a sign of rebellion.
Altman laid the groundwork for the forgotten Korean soldier and the un-representable Vietnam vet by arguing that masculinity is measured by performance not adherence. When Trapper John, for example, enters the MASH unit, he is unrecognizable as an officer. He sits covered in a makinaw, complete with fur-trimmed hood when the camera slowly focuses on him. In Altmanesque darkness, Trapper is finally revealed but not who he is. Unshaven and unkempt, he has just been transferred to this unit and arrives fully out of uniform. Throughout the film, he redefines the identity of the medical establishment by making a fetish of appearance. Except for his surgical scrubs, he is in Hawaiian floral print much of the time. This laid-back identity and over-attention to appearance undercuts the glamour of handsome men in power and shows that scruffy can be attractive, but this guise of anti-authority has nothing to do with dismantling established male power.
By January 1970 the film was well on its way to box office success, but this time Ring Lardner confessed his ambivalence about what Altman had done. At the first screening, Lardnet remarked to Altman that he had "ruined the script." He wrote to Hornberger, "My main objections, for the record, are to a bad beginning and a weak ending, a stupid routine with Onward Christian Soldiers [sic] and the use of a song called Suicide is Painless [sic]. I also dislike the asterisks in the title and the loathsome picture in the ads .1112 Yet by the summer of 1970, the film's popularity made it hard to deny its importance. As Hornberger was convinced, "There is no question in my mind that this is one of the best movies I've seen" and was already writing his sequel to the film, enjoying his "screaming public.""
What had transpired from book to script to film was the conversion of a relatively conventional portrayal of medics in the service to an updated, socially relevant treatise on the Vietnam War masked as a 1950s historical event, but its stylized use of the historical past allowed the film its most egregious discursive transgression. Reviewers applauded the film's "irreverent ... blasphemous, and destructive" diversions from traditional military movies. It is notable because it is "dirty, disrespectful and crammed with carcasses - and, of course in its fast-cutting modern style," said Dilys Powell of The London Times.14 Film Quarterly critic William Johnson applauded its "hilarious antimilitary satire" and its lack of piety.15 Yet, what some lauded as "anti-war, anti-establishment and ... anti-American," others saw as reestab- lishment.16 Johnson, for example, questioned its value as anti-military since the hierarchy's characterization was largely one-dimensional. "The higher authorities are clearly willing to turn a blind eye on Mash [sic] so long as it [did] its surgical duty," he pointed out. The realism of surgery "work[ed] hard and well," but asking an audience to dislike commanding officers simply because they were bores or idiotic evaded a clear central strength of the film's potential.17
