stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2015-05-03 11:18 am
stevenpiziks) wrote2015-05-03 11:18 am
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M*A*S*H*
M*A*S*H* is now out on DVD. I got the first disc from Netflix.
Couldn't even get through the first episode.
The show hasn't aged well. I found Hawkeye annoying rather than funny or poignant--funny, perhaps, twenty or thirty years ago, but not now. The show was heavily sexist and even misogynistic. Sure, you expect a certain amount of that from a show set in the 50s and filimed in the 80s, but when they did the montage of Hawkeye stalking a nurse he likes by hiding in her tent, in her duffel bag, in her locker, and even going after her in the shower, and she accepts this with a sigh and a shake of her head rather than a butcher knife, I became disgusted. Major Houlihan was actually looking like a voice of reason, calling Hawkeye out on his bad behavior, but she's portrayed as a shrill harpy--and also a slut. In fact, all the women are on the show to smooch it up or sleep with the men. The stupid-ass laugh track, a staple of sit-coms from the period and accepted back then, grated on my nerves. And when the main plot of the pilot settled into raffling off a nurse as a fundraiser, I had to stop watching.
I know the show got better as it went on. I know that once Colonel Potter showed up and they got rid of dull, wimpy Blake, the show picks up and that once Frank Burns goes away and Winchester shows up the show improves further, but there are so many other shows to watch, and I realized this is one I don't really need to revisit.
Couldn't even get through the first episode.
The show hasn't aged well. I found Hawkeye annoying rather than funny or poignant--funny, perhaps, twenty or thirty years ago, but not now. The show was heavily sexist and even misogynistic. Sure, you expect a certain amount of that from a show set in the 50s and filimed in the 80s, but when they did the montage of Hawkeye stalking a nurse he likes by hiding in her tent, in her duffel bag, in her locker, and even going after her in the shower, and she accepts this with a sigh and a shake of her head rather than a butcher knife, I became disgusted. Major Houlihan was actually looking like a voice of reason, calling Hawkeye out on his bad behavior, but she's portrayed as a shrill harpy--and also a slut. In fact, all the women are on the show to smooch it up or sleep with the men. The stupid-ass laugh track, a staple of sit-coms from the period and accepted back then, grated on my nerves. And when the main plot of the pilot settled into raffling off a nurse as a fundraiser, I had to stop watching.
I know the show got better as it went on. I know that once Colonel Potter showed up and they got rid of dull, wimpy Blake, the show picks up and that once Frank Burns goes away and Winchester shows up the show improves further, but there are so many other shows to watch, and I realized this is one I don't really need to revisit.