Synaptic

Emmy enthralled us with her comprehensive analysis of the television show, M*A*S*H. In addition, she connected it to the class theme about environmental literature for children and young adults. We particularly applauded Emmy’s voice and delight in the topic as well as her distinctive style and perspective as she highlights humans as an integral part of nature.

-Dr. Mary Stark

---

M*A*S*H is by far one of the most influential television shows in history, featuring one of the most- viewed series finales ever produced and a powerful anti-war message dressed in sitcom drapings. M*A*S*H, which stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, was a sitcom/dramedy that aired from 1972 to 1983. The show took place during the Korean War, in which the US military supported South Korea in conflict against North Korea from 1950 to 1953. The show followed the doctors, nurses, and enlisted men of M*A*S*H unit 4077 as they cared for patients and fought to stay sane among the gore and horror with a wide array of practical jokes, elaborate cons, and hazing. Throughout the jokes and pranks of the show, the writers wove in a strong anti-war message, using the Korean War as a sounding board to discuss issues of the era connected to the Vietnam War (Vollaro). One of the key ways the writers did this was through establishing the environment of Korea itself as a place no one from M*A*S*H 4077 wanted to be in (save for the overly patriotic, bloodthirsty characters like Major Frank Burns or Colonel Flagg).

As the main cast rotated and the show shifted from a strong war-sitcom stance into a nuanced, genre-changing dramedy, one thing remained the same; Korea. The show may have been filmed in Malibu Creek State Park (Malibu Creek State Park), but the series itself was set in Uijeongbu, South Korea, with a few excursions to other reaches of the country or R&R in Tokyo. While writers stressed that the protagonists didn’t hate Korea just for being Korea, the foreign weather and environment added to the stress of war-time and being away from home. Over M*A*S*H’s eleven seasons, writers frequently returned to a set of environmental tropes they employed for multiple episodes. Cold snap episodes like “The Long-John Flap,” “Crisis,” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” plunge the camp into freezing weather, where they must keep their tents and their patients warm. Heat wave episodes like “None Like It Hot,” “No Sweat,” and parts of “A War For All Seasons,” meanwhile, push the themes of sanity and coping mechanisms as the camp struggles to deal with overwhelming heat. Animal episodes such as “Private Charles Lamb,” “Mad Dogs And Servicemen,” and “The Colonel’s Horse” allow the camp to turn their medical care onto a simpler patient for a comedic examination of their compassion. Episodes like “Hawkeye,” “The Bus,” and “Rainbow Bridge” throw the main characters out of camp and into the Korean countryside, while “C*A*V*E,” “Aid Station” and “Mulcahy’s War,” among other episodes, force the doctors to take operations out of the O.R.

Cold snap episodes view the cold as a force as deadly as the North Korean and Chinese armies that send wounded to the camp. In these episodes, resources become scarce and act as sources of conflict within the camp. Each of the most contested resources are weapons against the cold; “The Long-John Flap” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside” feature the cast squabbling over warm clothing items (a pair of long-johns and a pair of gloves, respectively). “Crisis,” meanwhile, features the burning of whatever the camp can get their hands on. Colonel Henry Blake’s office is raided over the course of the episode, with soldiers sawing the legs of his desk off to burn, until he ends the episode in an empty room (“Crisis”). The cold acts as yet another reason the environment of Korea leaves the camp aching for home; at home, they can keep warm with all the resources they need. With war supply lines and limited resources, however, the cold can only remind the doctors of the 4077th that they are fighting against people and nature alike. Both forces bring wounded to the camp, as “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “It Happened One Night” both discuss people freezing to death.

Heat waves, meanwhile, are not just battles of survival against the elements, but against the mind. Heat has a particular ability to break down walls and remove inhibitions, supplying a perfect comedic effect for this hit sitcom. “None Like It Hot” shows the entire camp arguing over the use of a bathtub while “No Sweat” has everyone slowly going insane due to an inability to sleep through the heat and sweat. While these episodes use the environment more-so as the perfect instigator of comedy rather than as war commentary, these episodes are not lacking either. “None Like It Hot” shows a moment of selflessness when Hawkeye and BJ have to give up their bathtub and trade it for ice cream to soothe Radar’s tonsillitis recovery. Potter lampshades this by acknowledging that it was “not only obedient, but damn nice!” (“None Like It Hot”). Later on, in “No Sweat,” the heat actively interferes with the doctors’ ability to do their jobs, as they are all more focused on their heat- induced mania than the wounded patient in front of them (“No Sweat”). The heat acts as an outlet for the stress bubbling inside everyone due to the war.

The animal episodes are a chance to step back from human guts and embrace innocence. In war stories such as M*A*S*H, everyone is touched by the horrors of war. Animals, however, have an innate innocence to them that comes with a lack of sentience. This is why Radar, the youngest of the main cast, is constantly paired with animals in stories as a way to showcase his youth and the innocence he provides the rest of the 4077th. Radar highlights this in the episode “Hawk’s Nightmare” when he discusses “the war against the war,” the way everyone in camp remains sane (“Hawk’s Nightmare”). Radar’s strategy is to care for his animals. This allows him to retain a sense of innocence that gets shared with the rest of the camp. Nearly all the animal episodes involve Radar asking for the doctors’ help with an animal issue, such as saving a lamb from Easter dinner (“Private Charles Lamb”) or rescuing a horse (“Dear Mildred”). This not only serves as an excellent sitcom plot but a mental break from the tragedy that constantly pours into the O.R from the battlefield. Radar takes the animal plotlines with him after his discharge in season 8, directly leading into “Period of Adjustment”, where everyone admits that the war has gotten harder to handle without that innocence. When animals are around, the war is a little farther away.

Countryside adventures are the perfect opportunity for the show to touch on its key theme of “foreignness.” As a Vietnam War commentary, one of the most important elements of M*A*S*H was acknowledging the beliefs held against the other members of the war, both allies and enemies, and how they stem from racist, ultra-capitalist views. While the 4077th is based in a foreign land, the wilds of Korea exasperate that feeling and project a sense of both real and imagined insecurity. When characters take jeeps out of camp, they are frequently surrounded by shell fire and snipers. The threat of enemy attack is very real. However, the non-white communist leanings of the Chinese and Koreans on both sides of the 38th parallel create an imaginary layer of panic in ultra-patriotic characters such as Frank Burns. In both “The Bus” and “Rainbow Bridge,” Frank is terrified of a North Korean attack. He does everything he can to maintain a position of superiority over the Koreans. This almost causes him to ruin an exchange of wounded in “Rainbow Bridge,” as he breaks the meeting’s terms by bringing a gun. Meanwhile, when he takes a North Korean prisoner in “The Bus,” he puts on a cinematic air of superiority and claims he is more than happy to kill the wounded prisoner. In each of these episodes, the Korean countryside is another catalyst of anti-war messaging with a specific anti-racist lean.

The O.R is one of the most stressful places in camp, which makes operating outside of the O.R one of the worst experiences the doctors go through during the Korean War. The O.R itself is a sanctuary from the environment, as surgery requires a clean and sterile location. The environment can never be clean, making it the opposite of surgery. When the camp is shelled, such as in season 3, episode 15, “Bombed”, the most common threat is not a shell landing on the O.R but of shells blowing out the windows, forcing the doctors to frantically cover their patients’ open wounds and sterilize the area (“Bombed”). However, when you have to operate in the middle of a ruined aid station or care for patients in a damp cave, you have to not only fight the wounds you’re treating but the bacteria and harmful conditions of the surrounding area. The episode “Aid Station” is one of the most stressful of the early seasons because Hawkeye and Major Houlihan have to save lives in a half-destroyed building while dust and shells actively fall on top of them (“Aid Station”). The situation forces them to confront how the 4077th camp is a place of relative safety in a war-torn environment. If there is ever a moment where the characters are brutally reminded that they do not want to be in Korea, it is when the land itself puts their patients’ lives at risk.

Through the cold and heat, after shifting through thousands of miles of human guts, after facing all the horrors war-infested Korea could throw at them, there is one element that keeps the group together, and that is one another. It is easy to forget that humankind is itself a rich topic for ecocritical analysis, but our need to form packs and support each other may be our most important trait. Humankind’s ability to treat medical issues sets us apart from other species. B.J highlights this perfectly in the infamous series finale, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” As he says goodbye to his best friend Hawkeye, he says he “can’t imagine what [Korea] would’ve been like if [he] hadn’t found [Hawkeye there]” (“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”). Without the human element, the environment of Korea would have been unbearable for any one doctor or soldier. The camp survives cold snaps by sharing their resources with one another. When heat waves pass, they apologize for the crazy things the weather made them do. They find their own humanity as they share in the company of animals. They keep each other safe in the countryside and go to war against the environment when they have to leave their O.R to save lives. The camp’s relationship with the environment in M*A*S*H is contingent on their relationships with one another.

Works Cited

“Aid Station.” M*A*S*H, season 3, episode 19, 20th Century Fox Television, February 11, 1975. Hulu.

“Bombed.” M*A*S*H, season 3, episode 15, 20th Century Fox Television, January 7, 1975. Hulu.

“Crisis.” M*A*S*H, season 2, episode 21, 20th Century Fox Television, February 9, 1974. Hulu.

“Dear Mildred.” M*A*S*H, season 4, episode 8, 20th Century Fox Television, October 24, 1975. Hulu.

Gelbart, Larry, creator. M*A*S*H. 20th Century Fox Television, 1972-1983.

“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” M*A*S*H, season 11, episode 16, 20th Century Fox Television, February 28, 1983. Hulu.

“Hawk’s Nightmare.” M*A*S*H, season 5, episode 14, 20th Century Fox Television, November 30, 1976. Hulu.

“M*A*S*H Lives On!” Malibu Creek State Park, www.malibucreekstatepark.org/MASH.html. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

“No Sweat.” M*A*S*H, season 9, episode 11, 20th Century Fox Television, February 11, 1981. Hulu.

“None Like It Hot.” M*A*S*H, season 7, episode 7, 20th Century Fox Television, October 23, 1978. Hulu.

“Private Charles Lamb.” M*A*S*H, season 3, episode 14, 20th Century Fox Television, December 31, 1974. Hulu.

“Rainbow Bridge.” M*A*S*H, season 3, episode 2, 20th Century Fox Television, September 17, 1974. Hulu.

“The Bus.” M*A*S*H, season 4, episode 7, 20th Century Fox Television, October 17, 1975. Hulu.

Vollaro, Daniel. “It’s a M*A*S*H World Now.” The Smart Set, 15 Sept. 2022, www.thesmartset.com/its-a- mash-world-now/.