Course
Home

Film
Schedule

Resources

Assignments

50:169 Doctors in Film

Film Notes

M*A*S*H

Richard Hooker, the pseudonym for Richard Hornberger, M.D., wrote the novel M*A*S*H, published in 1968. The film was directed by Robert Altman and became widely known as the movie set during the Korean War that was "really about" Vietnam. Donald Sutherlan, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman and Robert Duvall starred in roles re-created by other actors in the long-running TV series.

"M*A*S*H - As It Really Was" is an on-line selection from a book (The Medic's War, Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1987) by Albert E. Cowdrey. It provides useful background for understanding both the novel and the film, especially in contrasting conditions in Korea with those in Vietnam. The conditions for the Moble Army Surgical Hospital shown in the film were much more like Korea than for the later conflict, while the long hair, pot-smoking and irreverant characters resonated with a 1970 movie-going public. The primary point in a M*A*S*H unit was to stabilize as many of the wounded as possible, to perform quickly rather than elegantly and to leave reconstructive efforts to surgeons in hospitals away from the front.

Discussion questions:

• What terms characterize the physician-heros in M.A.S.H.? what actions are depicted as heroic - in the sense of brave and self-sacrificing?
• What elements/scenes in the film illustrate stereotypes of race and gender of the late 1960s?
• One of the obvious themes is many of the doctors' refusal to follow military discipline -- is this depicted as a quality of medicine? do the values of the medical profession conflict with those of the military? or are the problems depicted as due to a handful of particularly difficult physicians and their personalities?

UI Home

Carver College of Medicine

Hardin Library