# Questions about Robert Altman's "M.A.S.H." (MASH) (1970)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [April 13, 2020, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717 "2020-04-13T19:35:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/1 "2020-04-13T19:35:36Z")
Questions:
- Is Margaret’s family name “Houlihan” or “O’Houlihan”? The characters don’t seem to be consistent on that.
- The football scene (honestly, I often skip the last act of the movie when watching casually; it’s like a different movie with different characters) I am always puzzled as how two army medical units’ pickup football matches end up with a seemingly professional-level set of uniforms, pads, referees, etc. These aren’t official U.S. Army teams. Where did they get all that? Would it have been remotely possible for a M.A.S.H. unit and an Evac unit in Korea in 1951 to be so well-equipped?
- Has Donald Sutherland ever again sounded so Canadian?
- Trapper John is from Boston – Duke even makes fun of his accent – but Elliot Gould doesn’t even attempt a Boston accent.
- How could they justify doing what they did to Margaret’s character? Throughout most of the movie, she might be a clueless “regular Army clown,” but she’s also an educated, intelligent, dignified, competent professional who takes her job seriously. After Frank’s departure, she changes completely. She’s sleeping with Duke, one of the guys who harassed and humiliated her so badly, and she becomes a complete dunderhead as head cheerleader (Henry justifiably calls her a “nincompoop,” I believe)
- Was Duke supposed to have been cured of his racism by the end? That issue just seemed to be dropped.
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### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/2 "2020-04-13T19:53:36Z")
The movie was really more about the VietNam era than Korea. Altman was very anti-authoritarian and Frank and Margaret represented the straightlaced establishment so knocking them down a few pegs was par for the course.
> **[M\*A\*S\*H movie review & film summary (1970) | Roger Ebert](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mash-1970)**
>
> One of the reasons "MASH" is so funny is that it's so desperate. It is set in a surgical hospital just behind the front lines in Korea, and it is drenched in blood. The surgeons work rapidly and with a gory detachment, sawing off legs and tying up...
> [@](#):
>
> We laugh, not because “MASH” is Sgt. Bilko for adults, but because it is so true to the unadmitted sadist in all of us. There is perhaps nothing so exquisite as achieving (as the country song has it) sweet mental revenge against someone we hate with particular dedication. And it is the flat-out, poker-faced hatred in “MASH” that makes it work. Most comedies want us to laugh at things that aren’t really funny; in this one we laugh precisely because they’re not funny. We laugh, that we may not cry.
>
> But none of this philosophy comes close to the insane logic of “MASH,” which is achieved through a peculiar marriage of cinematography, acting, directing, and writing. The movie depends upon timing and tone to be funny. I had an opportunity to read the original script, and I found it uninteresting. It would have been a failure, if it had been directed like most comedies; but Ring Lardner, Jr., wrote it, I suspect, for exactly the approach Robert Altman used in his direction, and so the angle of a glance or the timing of a pause is funnier than any number of conventional gag lines.
---
### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/3 "2020-04-13T19:59:35Z")
> [@madsircool](#):
>
> The movie was really more about the VietNam era than Korea. Altman was very anti-authoritarian and Frank and Margaret represented the straightlaced establishment so knocking them down a few pegs was par for the course.
>
> [M\*A\*S\*H movie review & film summary (1970) | Roger Ebert](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mash-1970)
And … ?
---
### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/4 "2020-04-13T20:07:01Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> And … ?
Altman was giving the finger to the LBJ/RMN establishment. Frank Burns was a sadistic stuck up person who blamed others for his mistakes. Margaret was the humorless by the book authority figure. As Ebert mentioned, they were both sadistically treated because thats what the mood was is large parts of the country. They showed the shower scene during the Academy Awards. As hard as it is to believe now, the movie was beloved.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/5 "2020-04-13T20:16:51Z")
I don’t know what question you’re answering. It’s fine if you want to talk about some aspect of the movie, but i can’t tell whether you’re responding to my OP or just generally going on about the movie.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/6 "2020-04-13T20:20:08Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> Questions:
>
> - The football scene (honestly, I often skip the last act of the movie when watching casually; it’s like a different movie with different characters) I am always puzzled as how two army medical units’ pickup football matches end up with a seemingly professional-level set of uniforms, pads, referees, etc. These aren’t official U.S. Army teams. Where did they get all that? Would it have been remotely possible for a M.A.S.H. unit and an Evac unit in Korea in 1951 to be so well-equipped?
>
> - Has Donald Sutherland ever again sounded so Canadian?
>
> - Trapper John is from Boston – Duke even makes fun of his accent – but Elliot Gould doesn’t even attempt a Boston accent.
Movies (and audiences) were didn’t give a damn about minor details like that at the time.
---
### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/7 "2020-04-13T20:21:57Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> I don’t know what question you’re answering. It’s fine if you want to talk about some aspect of the movie, but i can’t tell whether you’re responding to my OP or just generally going on about the movie.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking? I was trying to respond to the part about Mjr Houlihan.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/8 "2020-04-13T20:31:18Z")
> [@madsircool](#):
>
> Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking? I was trying to respond to the part about Mjr Houlihan.
I was asking about the abrupt change in her character.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/9 "2020-04-13T20:31:20Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> - The football scene (honestly, I often skip the last act of the movie when watching casually; it’s like a different movie with different characters) I am always puzzled as how two army medical units’ pickup football matches end up with a seemingly professional-level set of uniforms, pads, referees, etc. These aren’t official U.S. Army teams. Where did they get all that? Would it have been remotely possible for a M.A.S.H. unit and an Evac unit in Korea in 1951 to be so well-equipped?
Before they were drafted, the main characters were all doctors, so fairly affluent. Football was very big in the 1950s. You could get pads and helmets from mail-order catalogs, or have your stateside relatives ship them to Korea. It’s theoretically possible. Likely? I don’t know.
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> - How could they justify doing what they did to Margaret’s character?
She was not a human being. She was a conservative. Decency is only required toward people who agree with one’s own politics.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/10 "2020-04-13T20:37:01Z")
> [@mbh](#):
>
> She was not a human being. She was a conservative. Decency is only required toward people who agree with one’s own politics.
Again, I am not asking about the acts committed against Margaret in the story. I’m asking about Margaret the character. I’m asking about what Altman did to _Margaret’s character_,not what Hawkeye and company did to _Margaret_. Her personality completely changed. It’s completely unjustified by the story. How could Altman justify that? It makes no sense.
---
### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/11 "2020-04-13T20:37:47Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> I was asking about the abrupt change in her character.
Imo, after Blake and the General blew her off she had a choice between keeping her course and being a (social) outcast or loosening up and joining the fun. Trapper said at one point ‘You might be a pain in the ass, HotLips, but you’re a damn good nurse.’ So she was respected but not initially liked. Social pressure can explain her change.
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/12 "2020-04-13T20:38:04Z")
As someone with a smattering of experience in the US Army 15 years after MASH, I don’t have a problem with the idea that uniforms might be available at government expense if the brass wanted it.
It might not work that way in true wartime (Korea was not wartime, officially), but the amount of non-military material readily available to us was amazing and excessive. In the states, anyone with a military ID could go to the Special Services building and check out an unlimited supply of camping gear – enough to outfit a sporting goods store – just for a short camping trip, for no charge.
And while I was the band librarian in Vietnam, I was handed a blank check for any printed music I wanted and could find in a catalog, as long as I could write a description on an IBM punch card. 6 months later, I got almost everything I ordered.
Once a year, the band got a complete set of new instruments, whether we needed them or not. We had so many that we gave the excess to the Koreans in the compound next door. They were quite grateful.
The Army supply line isn’t logical, but it can move fast if the right authority puts its weight behind a request.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/13 "2020-04-13T20:54:36Z")
This^^. Special Services exists to supply things like football uniforms. If a general wants something, they’ll move some of Heaven and sometimes a lot of Earth to get it for him.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/14 "2020-04-13T20:58:05Z")
> [@madsircool](#):
>
> Imo, after Blake and the General blew her off she had a choice between keeping her course and being a (social) outcast or loosening up and joining the fun. Trapper said at one point ‘You might be a pain in the ass, HotLips, but you’re a damn good nurse.’ So she was respected but not initially liked. Social pressure can explain her change.
I’m not buying this. She might be forced to put up with such behavior, but she wouldn’t completely change her personality. She was a career officer, a skilled nurse, and commissioned as a major. She wasn’t going to have to put up with the gang at 4077 for a relatively long time. She could have stopped being so aggressive about her displeasure with Hawkeye, etc., but she wouldn’t become a different person. And I can’t believe she would have forgiven them for the shower stunt, not to the extent of actually entering into a relationship with one of them.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/15 "2020-04-13T20:58:48Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> Has Donald Sutherland ever again sounded so Canadian?
Perhaps he felt that his native New Brunswick accent was a close approximation of a Maine accent.
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### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/16 "2020-04-13T21:05:54Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> I’m not buying this. She might be forced to put up with such behavior, but she wouldn’t completely change her personality. She was a career officer, a skilled nurse, and commissioned as a major. She wasn’t going to have to put up with the gang at 4077 for a relatively long time. She could have stopped being so aggressive about her displeasure with Hawkeye, etc., but she wouldn’t become a different person. And I can’t believe she would have forgiven them for the shower stunt, not to the extent of actually entering into a relationship with one of them.
Perhaps you are overthinking? Altman was making satire so the characters had to bend to the needs of the story.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/17 "2020-04-13T21:20:03Z")
> [@madsircool](#):
>
> Perhaps you are overthinking? Altman was making satire so the characters had to bend to the needs of the story.
I don’t buy this. It doesn’t hold for the other Altman movies I have seen. His characters are true to themselves, and changes in their character are justified. And he did a whole boatload of satire.
Even in a comedy or a satirical work, characters and events must be true to their premises, for a story to be good.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/18 "2020-04-13T21:26:02Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> How could they justify doing what they did to Margaret’s character?
The [del]sexual assault[/del]crass and humiliating, but ultimately harmless, prank knocked her down a peg and encouraged her to loosen up. (Neither the 50s nor the early 70s were super-enlightened.)
(It should be remembered that the original book wasn’t intended to be a single narrative, but episodic short stories, and Altman didn’t really try to unify them.)
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### Author:  [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/19 "2020-04-13T21:37:54Z")
Altman’s 14 year old son wrote the lyrics to Suicide is Painless in 5 minutes. He made around $1 mil. His father only made $80k for directing the movie.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2020, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-robert-altmans-m-a-s-h-mash-1970/851717/20 "2020-04-13T21:51:29Z")
[Moderating]
> [@mbh](#):
>
> She was not a human being. She was a conservative. Decency is only required toward people who agree with one’s own politics.
I got a report on this post, and feel that I should explain how I view it. **mbh** was (incorrectly, but reasonably) interpreting the question to be “How did the other characters justify their treatment of Houlihan?”. He was then answering that question by describing the view those other characters, in his opinion, would have held. Injecting one’s own politics into a CS discussion is frowned upon, but discussing the politics of fictional characters is fine. Therefore, no action is taken, here.
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