Loretta Swit, who played ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan on M*A*S*H, dies aged 87

the whole Klinger thing was brilliantly done. Very Catch 22 - you're pretending to be insane to get out of an insane war, but only the very sane would spot that so... you stay!

The story line about Klinger was that he wore dresses to try and get himself discharged from the army as a psych case. The joke was that nobody thought he was really a transvestite or a psych case, so he stayed. Trying to get away from the war was a sane response to a mad situation.

That joke wouldn't work in the current environment.

May Loretta Swit rest in peace and thoughts for all who knew her and mourn her death.

As for the programme, remember the time period it was set in, perhaps the characterisation was realistic.

I wonder how they’d handle the Klinger character nowadays. It would never have occurred to anyone then that he should bunk with the nurses just because he wore dresses & if it had, Hawkeye would probably have put a dress on too.

Modern sexism and misogyny are actually worse. No-one was telling Margaret that she had to like her privacy and dignity being trampled on. No-one told Clinger how brave and wonderful he was for wearing dresses.

I think that what gets to me (EDIT: and what makes MASH so much more annoying than Carry On) is not so much the sexism in itself but the combo of being so sexist and so complacently righteous (something that is certainly present in today's version of sexism 😏)

Well, that is like a lot of things. We have a thread discussing Peter Tatchell being arrested, and the trope of "you agree with him about Gaza means you agree with him about PIE, or the "oh you agree with Trump on trans issues? you're a MAGA loving nazi"

it is lazy thinking. MASH was a direct protest, at the time of filming, against the Vietnam war, couched rather cleverly in a humorous take on the Korean war. (tbh to me it's not a comedy, it is a drama with hilarious moments and ridiculous hyperbole to drive a point home)

What Swit did so brilliantly, as Alan Alda has talked about, is making the writers let her develop the character so much that they stopped billing her as Hotlips Houlihan and used Margaret Houlihan instead. The humour/sexism is interesting. IME people in dangerous situations (military) make jokes that are unacceptable in any occasion, but they are a reaction to that stress. Houlihan, as an experienced major, could roll with the punches. That was (still is) how you get on in the military. You get rank, and then change the system from within.

I've watched mash over and over but I can't think of one rape joke. Please could you share one if I'm missing them. I wouldn't watch any of them if this was the case (talking about the series not the film or book).

I could tell you lots of stories about men in left wing politics, and the women who enable them.

@SionnachRuadh

I think you'll find there's plenty of that combination in the Labour Party too (though it galls me to say it).

Well said.

As a young girl, her no-bullshit attitude really influenced me and I loved her. Some of the early episodes have not aged well in terms of misogyny and the glorification of laddish behaviour but there are still some gems.

I was just about to cite this series but couldn’t remember the name, and ‘also ‘Bodies’ before it in the early 2000s.
In fairness tho, gallows humour and de-sensitising from patients as living beings is probably quite important in order to do a good job. It’s also a very intense environment that appear to lend itself to lots of intimate/ interpersonal relationships and boundary crossing - many with gender /staus power imbalances one would assume.

Quite. I think the OP was very respectful of her, recognising her work in a challenging place.

Loved the show for it's anti-war attitude - have to remember how revolutionary that was at the time. They were young men, far away from their families and yes, being sexist pigs. They are portrayed as drunken, dirty young slobs. Their accommodation is referred to as the swamp, while Margaret keeps her tent tidy. Margaret is portrayed as the older, regular army person - more serious. Still remember the episode in which one of the soldiers tries to tell her she isnt a real major and she puts him in his place. A pity she put on the dress, that seemed to me to be out of character.

Yes the role evolved and it became somewhat less sexist but Margaret was always a strong, efficient woman standing up against slobby young men. She represented the army, the young men were always going to react to that.

I think that what gets to me (EDIT: and what makes MASH so much more annoying than Carry On) is not so much the sexism in itself but the combo of being so sexist and so complacently righteous (something that is certainly present in today's version of sexism 😏)

It's the American liberal style, isn't it? Which I've never quite got along with.

I know there's lots in Carry On that's aged badly, but I'll admit to a fondness for it. Because of the actors, because of Talbot Rothwell's scripts, because it captures a time in British culture. Also, when Sid James and Bernie Bresslaw are playing against each other, their characters are never stated to be Jewish, but you can see them leaning into the classic setup of Sid as the fast-talking schemer and Bernie as the nice boy who suffers from involvement in Sid's schemes.

(Also, in certain contexts familiar to FWR regulars, I can't help thinking of the times Bernie wears drag and all the men find him irrestistible)

But I like the times when it's apparent that the women are the clever and capable characters, and you know the lecherous men will come a cropper in the end. It's that British style of humour where desire is always unfulfilled and coitus permanently interruptus, and that's probably for the best.

Also, life hack: if you're in a particularly low mood, it can help to read the Kenneth Williams diaries. Some time with Kenny's hypochondria and self-loathing just might make you feel better.

There was that episode where Hawkeye had a bottle of wine & wanted nurses to compete to share it with him, & Margaret led them in taking him down a peg.

Or the ones that looked at her relationship with the nurses. Looking back, I think they were some of my favourites.

Yes, Mash is very much a diluted version of Catch 22. Catch 22 was horribly misogynistic if I remember correctly, though it's decades since I've read it.

I've also read Good as Gold, though I remember very little about it.

I think the guardian writer is absolutely wrong when it says her character was a one dimensional sex mad bimbo. That does not reflect her character AT ALL.
Her sexual relationship wuth frank is just one element of her.

It's based on the books, which were of their time, and the film was less sexist than the books, and the tv series less sexist than the film.

This is rather like complaining about the Carry on Films, it was part of the journey to get where we are and women like Loretta Swit helped drag culture kicking and screaming towards a better place. Good for her. She made the character of Margaret a very strong one.

Rather than try to dismiss and hide the past it seems more helpful to help women and girls now to notice it, see it for what it was at the time as part of attitudes and restrictions around women, and hopefully then they might realise that while there's a bit more virtue signalling these days, women are still expected for example to hand opportunities and awards to men who want to be women, and to say they don't want privacy/dignity. Which really is no different to expecting women to find it funny when the frat blokes run in to the shower tent, or pull the side of the shower tent down to expose them for a good jolly jape.

Let's face it, these days those nurses would be expected to welcome Corporal Klinger into their showers and shut up. Not that much has really changed at all.

Even the film was just a poor man/poor woman version of the brilliant (and probably also sexist) novel Catch 22, which I think I am due to re-read, having not read it for decades.

A favourite of mine when I was younger, which I haven't revisited for years.

Eccentrically enough, my favourite Heller novel is Good As Gold, which hardly anyone remembers. Maybe it's aged badly by being rooted in a very specific time (post-Watergate) and space (NYC Jewish intellectual life). There are characters who are very thinly veiled versions of real people.

From memory, there's some sexism in it, mostly from the protagonist (obviously Heller himself), but it's mitigated by the protagonist being quite an unsympathetic character to begin with.

Apparently discussing a woman's work, and how she had a positive influence on a phenomenally sexist TV series is not respecting her.

Loved Clinger.

Time for Corporal Klinger?

In what way was she not respected?