Take your pick if you want the movie and TV show in the same continuity. was Hawkeye bi? what happened to Spearchucker? (there actually were a couple of Black MASH surgeons during the Korean war) For that matter, what happened to Duke?
I never heard the bi thing until a couple days ago, but if LGBT fans choose to read him that way, there are clues to latch on to. If that pisses off CHUDs, all the better. Alan Alda is still around, let's ask him. I bet he'd give it the thumbs up.
yeah... I do seem to remember at least one time he refused to out a soldier. and while he joins in the jokes, he's pretty sympathetic to Painless Pole during the movie when he goes through a crisis of identity. Sutherland likewise gives some ambiguity to the performance though... calls other guys babe and sweetheart frequently, like everyone in camp is in awe of Painless' penis...
M*A*S*H, the book, the movie, the tv series, were all written at a very different time than what we have now. The media didn’t encapsulate so much of our existence. Hawkeye could behave the way he behaved because there wasn’t 24 hour Fox News telling bigots that his behavior wasn’t acceptable. People were able to think for themselves back then. I hate that people now say shit like “back then, people didn’t get offended as easily”, but it’s the very people complaining about others being offended, that take the most offense to people existing.
The bi stuff I've read here seems pretty weak and strenuous but if people want to believe it no big deal, I couldn't' care less In any event I always preferred the movie to the TV Show. The movie is goddam hilarious, good old Hot Lips. Had Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland and even Tom Goddamn Skerritt
Statistically some of the characters (if they were real people) would have been gay or bi. Just unable to publicly reveal it because it could have led to dismissal from the military, criminal consequences, and social ostracism.
I was always more a fan of Me-Lay Marston. Reminded me of a friend's methods... They're three fairly separate works, even if they all share events (MASH pilot took the Ho Jon goes to college story and a few one liners) Bookwise, it's more interesting to me that Burns was also only a captain and many of his behaviors from both the movie and show went into a character called Hobson. Or that there's a past between Duke and Spearchucker's families. Different ending and epilogue as well. I think that's part of the brilliance in the movie, is that they were fairly loose with the script and letting them inhabit the characters compared to how they were written. the relationship between Duke and Hot Lips was a nice bit of side development for both of them given how antagonistic they started off.
I don't think Hawkeye was bi. Frank Burns might have been ace, though. I can't remember ... after Ugly John left the show, did they have any anesthesiologist characters? Did they just have extras doing it? Did they ignore anesthesiology as a specialty and just have the surgeons handling anesthesia for each other's patients? Or just not show it being done at all?
Frank was quite the tragedy... I forget the episode-one of the few times he was sympathetic to both the audience and other characters, but there was a strong implication he'd been abused by his mother.
or Walt Waldowski... Painless Pole was convinced that his Don Juanism was a denial of his latent homosexuality.
Radar is in both. Either the movie and show are in the same world, or there's a multiverse of MASH-es, and Radar is in all of them, like Stan Lee. Hmm, Stan Lee, Radar, Mel from Alice, there's a lot of Watchers in human disguise running around...
Season 2, episode 1. Hot lips- there isn't anyone here they haven't tried to molest! Trapper- Well, except the male ones. Hawkeye- Speak for yourself.
Hm ... I think I had heard at some point that Gary Burghoff had that condition, but what I didn't know until just now is that despite it, he was a drummer.
I watched MASH that night, and could see him hiding the flipper hand. I can't not see it now. It's like when you learn about "cigarette burns" in Fight Club.
