Feminization
As nations become militarized, they also become masculinized. The imagery is clear: the invaded state as the feminine object of masculine desire (Weber, 1999). The desperate attempt at expansion. Boats and planes disgorging soldiers like so much sperm onto exotic, foreign shores. Weapons - guns, missiles, planes, bayonnets, bullets - as phallic, they are made to pierce, to enter the feminine. Soldiers that die are feminine and weak, they have been entered by the weapons, they submit. Those that prevail are strong, powerful, masculine.
These images are not new. British imperialists in the late 19th Century, for example, sought to portray themselves as virile, strong and manly, while its colonized subjects were weak, effeminate, and like children needing supervision - they were racialized and feminized. The conflation of "colonized" with "feminine" provided the rationalization for British "civilizing" policies (Hoganson, 1998), as woman was already seen as irrational and hysterical, in need of rational male control.
In this paper I will briefly discuss how the military constructs masculinity, and how notions of masculine and feminine are altered by militarization. I will then discuss how the 1970 Robert Altman film, M*A*S*H, seeks to problematize the heterosexual masculinization of the military and then demasculinize it with queer moments. Finally, I will describe some of the contradictions in the film that make Altman's anti-war sentiments less meaningful, and why it is important to keep those contradictions in mind, even when trying to find pleasure in the film despite them.
Gender Construction and Militarization
We only need to look at most popular war films to see that the social construction of gender is often an important part of militarization. Cynthia Enloe points to Rambo as an example of the constructed and gendered nature of militarization, and as one of the ways the "ideological symmetry" between masculinity and militarism is made to seem natural (1993:72). Rambo's hyper-masculinity placed against a text of the warrior encourage this conflation. Barbara Ehrenreich agrees, and says the "mystique of the warrior runs deep in our culture and, for that matter, most others. It isn't just about aggression and hate, but about courage, commitment, and the transcendent human desire to be part of something larger than oneself" (1995). Thus ideas of masculinity become entrenched in militarization.
Militarizing nations become masculinized in part because the military is one site of gender construction. In training, boys become soldiers; they become men. They learn oppression from oppressive training, they learn to control by being controlled (by older men), and as boys become constructed as men, women become constructed as other(FIXME: space)(Hearn, 1987). Shepherd Bliss argues that the soldier image is "one of the places men have historically gone to fnd their masculinity" (quoted in Hearn, 1987:17).
This conflation of male with soldier also means that ideas of woman are constructed in ways that support militarization and create a specific gender order that is crucial to maintaining national security as it is understood (Enloe,(FIXME: space)1995; Hoganson, 1998). She argues there is no definition of masculine if there is no definition of feminine for comparison. For militarizing nations, woman is expected to act out feminine roles that are kept ideologically marginal. The masculine then becomes a particularly priveleged construction, and conflict becomes gendered.
In the film M*A*S*H, Robert Altman peels back some of the ideological camouflage that hides the constructed nature of masculinity. As he does this, he is also subverting the authority of the military which relies on the constructions, specifically on such such constructions as the male as warrior, and the unquestioningly obedient soldier. Unlike most war flicks, M*A*S*H's men are not front-line soldiers, but are doctors. In their caregiving roles, armed with suturing needles instead of (FIXME: cap?)m-16's, the doctors become signifiers of a demasculinized military.
Queering the 4077
Try this experiment: tell your friends there are queer subtexts in M*A*S*H. I guarantee you they will immediately think of Corporal Klinger, the cross-dressing character from the (FIXME: TV?)t.v. series. There is no such character in the movie to signal to heterosexuals that Altman is questioning heterosexual norms. Despite this, queer subtext abounds in the movie, to the extent that, once I started to look for it, I began to wonder how I could have possibly not noticed. Because heterosexual norms are intrinsically tied up in constructed notions of masulinity, the queerness of M*A*S*H creates a space for deconstruction of those notions and a demasculinization of the military.The biggest clue that these subtexts exist occurs when we see a line-up of men outside the showers taking turns looking in. It turns out the men are waiting to catch a glimpse of the camp dentist's penis. Captain Walter Koskiusko Waldowski has a reputation for being the "best equipped dentist in the army." His nickname is "The Painless Pole," and on the surface this might refer to his occupation and family origin, but in the context of his endowment (and the other men's desire to look at it), his name takes on new connotations. Through this scene, Painless becomes an object not only of male envy but of male desire. In case we are in doubt of this, one of the men walks away after viewing Painless's member shaking his head and saying, "I'd really love to see that angry!" This scene leaves us with no doubt that there is a queer subtext flowing through the film, and opens the way for us to read other scenes through queer eyes.
The scene also creates a moment when context becomes important. Gays were not allowed in the military during the Korean war, the setting for M*A*S*H. Neither were they admitted in 1970, when M*A*S*H was filmed, nor during the Vietnam war. Therefore, a scene depicting army men openly looking at and desiring another man's penis becomes a way for Altman to show that the authority of the military is something to be ignored or contravened. This works especially well because order and authority are important to the process of the construction of men in the military. So by undermining authority, Altman is attempting to subvert the process of that construction.
Context is important in other scenes, as well. In one of the opening scenes we see Duke climb out of a jeep he was sharing with three nurses. One of the nurses hands him his heavy bag, and then Duke turns his back and heads towards Hawkeye. ignoring the nurses as they struggle to climb over the tailgate of the jeep in their long army skirts. In the setting of the 1950's, when gender roles dictated that men hold open doors for women, it is very strange behaviour indeed for a man to accept help from a woman and then unchivalrously allow her to flail about gracelessly. The strangeness of the scene sets the tone for male attitudes towards women throughout the film - with the exception of Margaret (Hotlips) Houlihan who stands in for military authority, they are ignored as long as another man is in the scene. Duke's behaviour can be seen as a signal - a queer code that lets us know the men are more interested in each other than in the women. Duke has slipped while acting out male, and while he spends the rest of the movie attempting to affirm his heterosexuality, we have already seen that this is only a role he is playing.
This preference of the men for male company is most exemplified by Hawkeye. When he is making out with one of the nurses, the two are interrupted by the announcement that Hawkeye and Duke have a new roommate. Hawkeye immediately gets up and runs from the tent, more intent on finding out who the new man is than having sex with a woman. This clearly defines Hawkeye's sexual priorities as being male- rather than female-oriented.
When Trapper John makes his appearance as the new roommate, he codes himself as heterosexual by placing pictures of children (presumably his) and a naked woman by his bed. He opens a beer, but before he can drink it Hawkeye asks him, "are you a beer drinker, sir, or would you like to share a martini with me?" Trapper immediately puts down his beer and exclaims that he would love a martini. In this scene, the beer and naked woman picture are codes for male heterosexuality. Martinis, a less 'manly' drink, can stand in as a code for queer, so in essence Hawkeye is asking if Trapper is queer. Trapper not only responds positively to Hawkeye's query, but he clinches the response by pulling a jar of olives out of his jacket as if he has just been waiting to be asked.
Other characters in M*A*S*H help support Altman's queer military. The character of Radar takes on the role of wife for colonel Blake. Radar is small, effeminate, and always seems to know what the Colonel is going to ask for even before the Colonel does. Father Malcahey is also (FIXME: ef)feminate, and the first time he is introduced to the new soldiers he tries to invite them to his tent. General Hammond's assistant wears an effeminate ascot in strong contrast to his army fatigues, and the ascot, like the martinis, serves as a gay code which underscores the relationship between Hammond and his assistant. The assistant follows Hammond very closely, and seeks moments when he can be touched, placing his hand on the General's arm or shoulder, and in one instance he is posed like a president's wife, standing behind the seated General with his hand on the General's shoulder.
Camp
There are several instances of camp in the film, which further outline the queer subtexts. As Larry Gross says, "camp can be a way to identify and communicate with other 'club members' under the unkowing eyes of the straight world" (1991:39). Camp offers queer codes and highlights moments as distinctly queer (Shillinglaw, 1999). Importantly, Gross says, camp also makes assumptions of normality seem less natural. When Hawkeye and Trapper tease Hotlips, for example, they break into a moment of high camp, lisping and sashaying. It is no coincidence that this moment of camp occurs (FIXME: extra space) around one of the moments of houlihan's disgrace, either, as Houlihan is symbolic of army discipline. So by queering the moment of her loss of control, Altman is playing with the enmeshment of a heterosexual masculinity and authority and subverting military power. The camp also provides moments of excess which allow us to read against the grain and therefore queer what appears to be a heterosexual film.
In a film that relies on the male-buddy relationship for a number of its gags, it is not surprising that there are plenty of queer moments. Anne Shillinglaw says there is a continuum between the homosocial male-bonding and the the homoerotic, but in our society, in part through gender constructions, this continuum is seen as a dichotomy instead. Queer moments in this buddy film allow us to re-envision the continuum as smooth, thus problematizing the naturalness of the masculine construct. When we can see the possibility for other masculinities, then the control of the masculinized military unravels.
When this happens, ideas of a militarized nation begin to lose their meaning. This is one of the ways M*A*S*H became so effective as an anti-military anthem, as it dug at the very foundations of control and submission required to support militarization. Altman revealed the masculine nature of the ideology by showing us alternative masculinities prevailing.
Privileged Dissent
Robert Kolker argues that M*A*S*H provides no real context, and the movie becomes merely a series of episodic gags that depict military order as something to fight against, without any analysis as to why. I think there could be two reasons for that: either Altman felt his target audience already had an understanding of the issues and didn't need context, or, more likely, the film is a symptom of a youth movement that struggled without a very useful analysis of why it struggled (or of the oppression within the movement). Either way, the film is a "gentle massage" (Kolker, 1988:325) that appeals to and even placates an existing youth rebellion without contributing to it or examining it. Kolker states that an examination of the culture of rebellion of the sixties would reveal some important contradictions, including its dependence on the existing oppressive social-political order. I would argue that the success of M*A*S*H as a protest film, too, depends on this order.
While I think Altman's M*A*S*H successfully questions the popular conceptions of a hyper-masculine military, and it illustrates the stupidity of shooting people only to fix them again, it presents a privileged war protest that is blind to the marginalization it re-presents. By this I mean the film narrates bourgeois white-boy dissatisfaction with war and the military. But it never asks whose voices are being heard in those protests, and more importantly it never asks whose voices are not being heard. And by not asking those questions, Altman undermines his own attempt at subversiveness by marginalizing anyone who is not male and white in the film and thus (unintentionally, one hopes) reflecting dominant American ideology after all.
In a dominant reading of the film, we are interpellated as members of the anti-war movement. In 1970 this was a safe interpellation, as in the political climate few people under thirty claimed to be pro-war. However, the hippy revolution tended to privelege middle-class kids, particularly white kids, so the film is interpellating us as such. In M*A*S*H, as in the revolution, issues of race are paid lip service, but the sincerity of this gesture crippled by action. For example, Hawkeye and Trapper push Duke over when he says he is uncomfortable with having a black roommate, and we feel good because expressed racism has been squashed. However, real racism existed within the movement, but was often invisible to those who had power within the movement. This plays out on M*A*S*H when the black roommate, a talented neurosurgeon, is hired because he is a famous football player. He is given the nickname "Spearchucker", and this name remains unproblematized throughout the film. Other black characters in the film provide slapsticky moments of humour through their incompetence, exist only as extras, or in one case, is only seen when he sings a soulfull version of "Suicide is Painless", the theme song. Because of this, we can see that race issues, which were often ignored in the anti-war movement of the late 60's/early 70's, have been given no real place in the anti-war film, either.
The Vietnamese/Koreans are also represented in ways that reflect unanalytical assumptions about the other in the wars, as well as the ways "Asian" was constructed supported the war machine. For example, Ho-Jon is a 'native' who acts as a servant to the doctors. Altman never confronts the race and class issues in this relationship. As well, the Ho-Jon character speaks english without an accent, yet his sentences are stilted: "I go do laundry now." This is one way the other is infantalized in the film. In combination with Ho-Jon's domestic role, the other is also feminized. So while Altman problematizes the construction of masculinity on the one hand, he does not concern himself with the construction of race, class or femininity on the other. Therefore, Altman's demasculinized military is remasculinized because the men in a foreign place remain dominant.
The Problems of Finding Pleasure
These issues of problematic race and class representation in M*A*S*H have barely been touched upon in this essay. It would require another complete essay to discuss the female in the film. It was more uplifting for me to give the text a positive queer reading which supported Altman's attempt to subvert the military than to problematize his marginalization of those (other than queer) already marginalized by a militarized nation.
There are definitely moments of excess which can provide readings against the grain and allow for pleasure even with these representations. Hotlips, for example, screams "strangle me, Frank" in a moment of intense sexual pleasure that is not often allowed to women on screen. A Korean doctor sees through Hawkeye's tricks and demonstrates that, in his own country, he has authority over the American doctors who have never been dominated even by American Generals.
However, I believe that the power dynamics of M*A*S*H are symptomatic of the power dynamics inherent in the anti-establishment struggle in the 60's and 70's. To allow them to remain invisible in order to find pleasure in the film would be to allow the dynamics of that struggle to remain unanalysed and unproblematic. As the struggle today carries much the same dynamic, I strongly believe that analysis of the earlier struggle needs to happen as often as opportunity presents itself. So while I think it is acceptable to find pleasure in texts that would be problematic, I think that finding only pleasure is a way to support the ideology that readings against the grain attempt to subvert.
Conclusion
Altman's M*A*S*H attempts to subvert the overarching power of the military by deconstructing some of the assumptions about masculinity and authority inherent in the structure. While it works on this level, it is only responding to the priveleged white male form of dissent popular at the time. M*A*S*H comes off as a shallow film, which does not offer any analysyis into the dynamics of the movement it was speaking for. In the context of today's political movements, understanding the film in this way can become an important reminder that, as the slogan says, "no one is free if one person is oppressed."