MASH
This was the best film I’ve seen in
this class. It was set in a very serious
time and place, a medical camp in Korea during the Korean War. Though the surgeons played golf, had crazy
sex, and sometimes operated with the lights off. What a party.
This film poked fun at western medicine, military, war, sexism, American
Football, drug abuse, authority and much much more. The medical camp MASH was a tool used to express
the feelings of citizens in the United States, and what they thought was
ridiculous during these hard times.
Men ran the show. The doctors and army officers seemed to have
sex with whomever they pleased. The women tried hard to make names for them and
tried to help the military, but they were never taken seriously. They were
treated as objects of entertainment and never really did anything positive in
the film. I feel like this was an
attempt to show women didn’t have the rights they should have, but a woman
being in the military is somewhat comical.
The two main doctors literally took
advantage of military rules and funds to go see a patient in Japan. They weren’t really planning on treating the
patient. They were looking forward to
playing golf and taking a paid leave from the war. When the Kernel confronted them, they didn’t
pay any attention to him and continued leisurely to be spoon fed by Japanese
women later in there stay. In my opinion this poked fun of military authority
in Vietnam. How could an army takeover a
communist country, when they cant even control their medical staff?
The film had an underling notion
towards communication deficit. Every
scene either had a speaker saying ridiculous thing over the intercom, or the
personnel in the camp could never get a long or work together due to a lack of
communication. The organization of the
military was so askew they couldn’t even communicate between one another
effectively.
My favorite scene was the football
game. When the doctors shot some
morphine into the African man, and he stumbled and fell between the goal posts
I was laughing aloud. What was ironic
was the general’s team was smoking joints all along the sideline. Once again
poking fun of military authority. The communication between the teams was so awful;
the game didn’t even look like a game.
How can the military win war when they cant even organize and win a
football game? I felt like the football game put the nail in the coffin. It made the audience laugh while in fact they
were laughing at our military getting their asses whipped.
Downright awesome flick.
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