Agreed, but propaganda movies like Patton sell, propaganda movies like Catch-22 don’t.
Patton: $61,749,765 gross.
MASH: $81,600,000 gross.
A bit OT, but what’s really striking is how they managed to spend 50% more on Catch-22 than on Patton. If it hadn’t been for all those B-25s, Catch-22 might actually have turned a decent profit in its theatrical run.
I haven’t seen it since 1970 (fifty years!) but what I remember about Catch-22 was the first hour was perfect and the second hour was a disaster.
I’ll have to look up formatting again, because spelling MAS*H correctly creates an italicized A. There’s a way of turning the asterisks off that I don’t remember.
I do remember that MASH the book was blacker comedy (in the 1960s sense of black=dark comedy) than the movie and the movie was blacker comedy than the TV show. All three were good, though.
MASH the movie is not anti-war. MASH is:
War is great fun for cynical, rich civilians in uniform who don’t give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves.
Kind of Animal House meets Patton. Catch-22 is definitely anti-war, both the book and movie. I liked them both. MASH is entertainment, Catch-22 is propaganda. I could be wrong. Perhaps you can tell me the message of MASH (movie not TV).
We're walking into Café Society territory here, although I don't mind. While I have read Catch-22 I haven't watched the movie. I have seen M*A*S*H the movie, but not the show or novel. My takeaway was that both Catch-22 (the book) and M*A*S*H (the movie) were satires.
~Max
Well, since you’re okay with it…
The trouble with MASH is that while it is meant as satire, it does actually came across a lot like Crane describes. I mean, adult me gets that it’s supposed to be satire, but teenage me… not so much. It’s the classic problem of how to (or how impossible it is to) make an anti-war movie. Plus, MASH is layered with racism and misogyny, which the series gradually smooths over and gets a grip on by the end of its run, but the movie never does. Satire needs to have a clear target, and when it comes to the straight-faced racial slur against Doctor Jones or the constant abuse of Major Houlihan, it seems to be played more for straight laughs (either in the “isn’t casual racism fun?” kind of way or the “what a b*tch, right?” kind of way), not in the sense of actually mocking racists or misogynists.
No, it was not, and no, news broadcasts did not report withdrawal was being considered (or if they did, they were making shit up.) You did not see it unfold live on TV, either. You saw tape delayed footage, a limited amount.
You are going by your memory and then expressing surprise that written accounts are different. Do not trust your memory; our memories are EXTREMELY unreliable.
Perhaps so. They were taped footage. I assume the press reported the position of some involved - those with a different position prevailed.
It was a debacle and we were stopped by a police force and some construction workers until we through in two additional battalions. The ‘planning’ was disastrous because it was a rush ‘wag the dog’ operation to distract from the Beirut marine barracks catastrophe.
I always assumed casual racism and misogyny was normal during that time period - it would have been the '50s since it was the Korean war. I think the whole bravado mindset of the time - and its parallels in the Vietnam war - was the target of satire.
~Max
The US has not declared war on anyone since 1942 when we declared war against Rumania.
Just saying… U.S. Senate: 404 Error Page
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen MASH, too, but if that’s what you got out of the movie you need to see it again, without the filters.
First, MASH the movie was about Vietnam, not Korea. The doctors in the movie were not “rich civilians.” They were young men torn from their lives and stuck in a hellhole trying to patch together kids sent to war by an unthinking, unfeeling military and government who knew the war was unwinnable yet fought it for public relations purposes. The enemy in the movie weren’t the North Koreans. They were the assholes safely in Japan away from the fighting, just like Nixon’s assholes in Washington.
I’ll grant that the movie doctors were assholes in their own way, smug and self-righteous in their superiority over the straights. That was the way most “hip” viewers saw themselves in 1970, so the identification was perfect. That same audience had no points of identification with the characters in Catch-22, probably why it didn’t make as much money (plus not being a good film).
MASH was not anti-war in the same way. It was anti-Vietnam war, though, in a big way. It was a movie of its time, for a contemporary audience who understood every moment. If you think that’s propaganda, then it certainly was propaganda. Finest kind.
I feel a difference between Catch-22 and MASH (the movies) was that the main satirical target of Catch-22 was war and the main satirical target of MASH was American society.
MASH TV was Vietnam. Movie MASH was Korea. During the Korean conflict you either got drafted or joined to avoid the draft. The phrase ‘civilian in uniform’ referred to those of us who were just waiting out the time to fulfill our obligation. We were not going to re-enlist. For middle class troops it was not a bad situation. Take all the training you could get and then go back to school on the GI bill.
Meanwhile back on topic, the American public is more receptive to Patton propaganda than Catch-22 propaganda. Grenada and post Grenada was a major propaganda period. More military decorations were awarded than there were participants.
It’s an interesting digression from the original OP, which I think has been answered, but just so you know, both the movie and TV show were SET in Korea and during the Korean war, but they were really about Vietnam in both cases. I think Exapno_Mapcases brief summary is pretty close to how I recall the movie, and it’s similar to other movies of it’s era of this type, at least that’s how I recall them (I was only a kid in 1970).
I hesitate to cite Wikipedia, but it’s correct.
Although the Korean War is the film’s storyline setting, the subtext is the Vietnam War — a current event at the time the film was made.Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau), who saw the film in college, said MASH was “perfect for the times, the cacophony of American culture was brilliantly reproduced onscreen.”
Anti-war media have a tell. In WWII books and movies, the war is personal. From Mr. Roberts to Slaughterhouse-5 to Catch-22, the emphasis is always on the poor guy stuck in the middle of madness.
In Vietnam books and movies, from The Forever War to Going After Cacciato to MASH the emphasis is always on the madness of war and warmakers.
That’s an interesting point. It probably reflects a general attitude that WWII was fought for a good cause. If you’re making a movie that condemns the idea of war, you’d rather set your story in a more morally ambiguous war like Vietnam or Korea or WWI.
The Americanization of Emily (1964) might be an exception. It’s set during World War II. Its satirical target is definitely the idea of war itself. The lead character, Charlie Madison (James Garner), is not portrayed as somebody stuck in a bad situation. He’s portrayed as a manipulator who understands that war is crazy and is playing the system to avoid it as much as possible.
Never saw it, but that description reminds me of characters from Catch-22. And a lot of more straightforward comic novels set in the war. At bottom, though, it’s still a personal response.
It sounds exactly like the main character of Catch-22… the whole premise of the book is that any sane person knows war is crazy and would try to avoid it. But the depiction of generals and that Milo were, I think, less about the poor everyman and more about the madness of the war machine.
~Max
No, I don’t feel there’s a good match between John Yossarian and Charlie Madison. Yossarian was definitely stuck in the war and was trying to (unsuccessfully) escape from it. Madison had successfully escaped from the war; while he was technically serving in the military, he had arranged things so he remained far from combat and surrounded by luxuries.
The story was about Madison confronting people (mainly Emily) who had a more traditional view and felt he should be ashamed for his behavior. They said he should feel guilty about avoiding combat when other people were facing danger. Madison’s argument was that he had nothing to be ashamed of; war was a terrible thing and he was right to avoid it. He said that if everyone thought the way he did, there wouldn’t be any war and the world would be a better place. He said that rather than him feeling guilty about not acting like everyone else, everyone else should feel guilty about not acting like him.
I should point out this was one of the most non-comedic scenes in what was generally a comedy.