Aging Badly
“It is our duty to create a future
that regards us as monsters.”
-- Harlan Ellison (attributed)
“When transgressive art succeeds
it changes the culture enough to make
the transgression boorish.” — yrs trly
Three iconic, enormously successful, even more enormously influential comedies…and only one is even barely watchable today.
M*A*S*H (1970) is based on the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by “Richard Hooker” (actually Dr. H. Richard Hornberger Jr. writing in collaboration with W.C. Heinz whose most notable other work was Run To Daylight with Vince Lombardi).
The film, adapted fairly faithfully from the source novel by Ring Lardner Jr. and directed by Robert Altman, sticks to the novel’s original Korean War setting but in actuality was about the Vietnam War.
The novel is a standard “at war with the army” service comedy based on Dr. Hornberger’s tour of duty in a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. While modestly successful, it’s not terribly insightful, at least not in the way the author/s intended.
In other words,
it ain’t no
Mister Roberts.
It’s been said that surgeon is an ideal career choice for a rational sociopath as they are able to divorce themselves from any sense of empathy for the suffering patient on the table and approach the task at hand as a purely technical problem needing a solution.
The novel and the subsequent film reinforce this. The purported heroes* of the story – Duke Forest, Hawkeye Pierce, and Trapper John MacIntyre – all behave as one would expect professional sociopaths to behave under such circumstances.
To be fair, their behavior and the Army’s treatment of them is consistent with the time and circumstances: Wealthy, entitled civilian surgeons pissed off at being drafted by the military show a gross lack of duty and decorum, escaping punishment only by holding a skill set so valuable the brass has to put up with their bullshit.
And it is bullshit. Despite the novel & film’s attempts to paint these three sociopaths as standing up for the little guy, in actually they act as a disruptive force inside the MASH unit, heaping abuse on all around them.
This behavior is especially abhorrent in the film, culminating in a sexual assault on Nurse Houlihan’s person and dignity. Yeah, the shower scene got a big laugh in 1970; it is repellant and horrifying today, and if Houlihan grabbed a Colt .45 automatic and shot all three of them, no courts martial would have convicted her.
Novel and film were both greenlit in no small part due to the continuing success of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 in bookstores and paperback racks. Heller’s 1961 book is a genuine literary achievement that remains relevant to this day, and as the decade wore on it gained increasing relevance in understanding the contradictory insanity that was the Vietnam War.
Dr. Hornberger’s novel is a barely adequate midlist title that lucked out in finding a film company willing to produce it. While by all accounts Dr. Hornberger was highly regarded as an accomplished surgeon, his book is mediocre. His two sequels, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine (1972) and M*A*S*H Mania (1977), attempted to cash in on the movie more than his original book, followed by twelve (!) TV tie-ins purportedly by Richard Hooker and William E. Butterworth but in reality by Butterworth alone.
(I’ve read
M*A*S*H Goes to Maine;
it’s dreadful.)
When M*A*S*H hit theaters in 1970, the US was reeling in the aftermath of 1968’s Tet Offensive, a wave of political violence and assassinations at home, and the election of Richard Nixon. While the hippie counterculture of 1967’s Summer of Love still remained vibrant, growing disillusionment with the Vietnam War on both sides of the political aisle were souring the country on the military.
Many middle class predominantly draft eligible males escaped active duty during the 1960s by attending college, creating a divide between the white middle class and the more multi-ethnic working class and the even more multi-ethnic poor.
While the 1960s saw the birth of a great many forward thinking approaches that repudiated the old ways of doing things, it nonetheless remained an era where young white males -- particularly middle or upper class white males -- thought the world was their oyster and that the pearl therein needn’t be shared with anybody else.
M*A*S*H novel & film absolutely reflect that attitude. In many ways it resembles a hoary old great white hunter movie from the 1930s, only the benighted natives are now women, minorities, and lower ranking enlisted personnel who not only endure the protagonists’ abuse but look upon them with admiration as they do so.
In 1970 the movie M*A*S*H succeeded because Americans left and right felt sick of Vietnam and lost all respect for the military in the process. If you were a scruffy male hippie or a polished Ivy League preppie, you could still identify with Duke, Hawkeye, and Trapper John because by and large they reaffirmed your particular prejudices that people like you (but especially you) should Be In Charge And Get What They Want.
Altman did a masterful job directing M*A*S*H, no denying that, and re/introduced several interesting cinematic techniques that literally hundreds of film makers emulated for decades to come.
But seen 50+ years later, its ugliness is readily apparent.
And the ugliness has nothing to do with war.
. . .
If you want a better / worse example of entitled white preppie male attitude, 1978’s Animal House should fit the bill.
Based on short stories by Chris Miller that originally appeared in National Lampoon, with additional material by Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney, and directed by John Landis, Animal House follows the misadventures of a bottom feeder fraternity that is prosecuted for their egregiously offensive and often criminal behavior by the college dean. After the entire fraternity fails their midterms, the school justifiably expels them, and in revenge they launch an attack on a college parade in the middle of town, endangering hundreds of people, many of whom are children who pose no threat to them nor did them any harm.
It should be noted that four years later director John Landis killed actors Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le (age 7), and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) in an illegal helicopter stunt for The Twilight Zone movie in which he, producer Steven Spielberg, and a host of other so-called movie professionals who damn well should have known better put the three in the middle of a river directly under a helicopter with large explosions going off all around.
Rather than rely on trained stunt crews or miniature effects, Landis opted to shoot the scene full scale illegally at night, without trained stunt doubles for the actors.
Hope it was worth it, John.
In 1968 British director Lindsay Anderson made his film, if…., which features a virtually identical plot to Animal House only instead of playing it for cheap gross out laughs, it offers a morbid, sardonic, and ultimately nihilistic climax honest enough to have its protagonists killing dozens in a school massacre without whitewashing their own evil sense of entitlement.
Kudos for Anderson having the courage to follow his premise through to its logical conclusion instead of the ha-ha-only-kidding ending of Animal House that exonerates and rewards the Delta House for their behavior.
Needless to say, if….
is almost impossible
to find today.
Because make no mistake about it, Delta House is just as / if not more evil than the rival fraternity they’re pitted against. They’re from once upper class families slipping back into middle class status; had they maintained their higher economic standing, they would have been doing unto weaker fraternities what their rivals the Omegas did to them.
Oh, and did we mention the rape jokes and sexual abuse and racism the Deltas display all through the film, not merely display but are celebrated for?
To justify their characters’ antics, the makers of Animal House claimed it was an allegory of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, which apparently the film makers were still fighting in 1978.
Problem is, the story takes place in 1962, which the film makers themselves have cited as “the last innocent year” for America.
A very telling remark, because it reflects the privileged white entitlement attitude so prevalent in their work on screen and in print. Of course 1962 was a good year for them, they weren’t getting their heads caved in trying to vote or integrate lunch counters.
The conflict of Animal House is not one of principle, it’s of spoiled brats throwing a tantrum because they’re not allowed to act like spoiled brats anymore.
Nation Lampoon was sired from the loins of the Harvard Lampoon, a one and a half century old tradition at Harvard.
Like the Harvard Lampoon, National Lampoon worked best when skewering contemporary media with devastatingly accurate parodies.
And to their credit, National Lampoon took shots at everybody, even those in their own camp.
At their best, they were hilariously on target with superlative writing and art, launching literally dozens of careers in print / radio / film / television / music. Animal House is linked to two other National Lampoon projects, the National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody and the National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, both of which are breathtakingly astonishing in wit, execution, and attention to the minutest details.
Their shadow falls long and heavy on comedy even to this day.
But even at their best, their masthead was populated by monsters, and the contents show that.
Like M*A*S*H, Animal House celebrates privileged white male entitlement and glosses over their crimes by claiming everyone they struck back at was so much worse.
No, they weren’t, but it’s no surprise many alt-right types use that same defense to justify their own bad behavior against innocent people.
. . .
Sandwiched between M*A*S*H and Animal House sits Blazing Saddles.
Like M*A*S*H and Animal House, it sets out to be a deliberately offensive comedy and to that degree succeeds
Unlike M*A*S*H and Animal House, it doesn’t celebrate entitled well-to-do white males lashing out when the world doesn’t kowtow to their wishes, but rather follows its African-American hero as he strives to overcome bigotry and prejudice, rebuilding the community he’s been sent to defend.
It’s not a National Lampoon type of movie, it’s a MAD Magazine type of movie, and if you don’t get the difference, I’ll spell it out: It’s not about the entitled, it’s about the oppressed.
As such, it remains watchable to this day.
But offensive? Oh, lordie, yes! Director Mel Brooks set out to hoist as many petards as possible, but he did so not from the point of view of a well-to-do college kid who was irritated he couldn’t do everything he wants, but from that of a Jewish-American kid from the poorer parts of Brooklyn who led a hard scrabble life, learning comedy as a teenager working the Borscht Belt, drafted into the Army during WWII, before finally breaking into television as a writer in 1949.
A far cry from the makers of M*A*S*H and Animal House.
Along with writers Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger, Brooks set out to skewer not just old Westerns (which he does with great affection) but racial prejudice as well (no affection there).
Remarkably, despite his hero constantly facing rejection and bigotry from the very people he’s supposed to defend, Brook’s sheriff Bart (played by Cleavon Little) never strikes back at them but instead strives to find some way of getting his message across.
And it works! He successfully bands the community together to defend itself by the end of the film, a far greater accomplishment than the self-centered climaxes of M*A*S*H or Animal House.
Make no bones about it, it’s an eminently cringe-worthy film, with characters dropping the N-bomb with gleeful abandon.
I blame no one today who refuses to see it for that reason; that’s a perfectly reasonable response.
But unlike M*A*S*H and Animal House, it is possible to argue the offensive parts were not self-justification, but in service of a higher goal.
Unlike the other two films, at least it’s watchable with the proper frame of mind.
© Buzz Dixon
* Any character/s initiating action are a story’s heroes, regardless of how illegal / immoral / fattening said action is. This is why Hercules, Robin Hood, Jesse James, and John Dillinger are almost always portrayed as worthy of admiration even if they possess serious personal flaws.
