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April 1999
 So did you hear about
the new world map? It’s kind of like the Mercator projection only it corrects
all those irritating distortions that make Helsinki look larger and more
significant than Billings, Montana. The Americator Projection
™ does away with such misleading exaggerations and shows the world
as it really is. 94% of the map is taken up, naturally, by the continental
US. Los Angeles, for example, appears as a gigantic “outie” navel on the
swollen belly of America, a representation befitting its enormous global
cultural influence.
Now if you look off to the left of LA you might be able to discern, in the aggregation labeled “Asia”, a tiny khaki-colored country called Korea. We grew familiar with this place in our living rooms beginning in 1972. Its inhabitants are known to most of us by name: Hawkeye, Radar, Hot Lips, Trapper, Charles Emerson Winchester III. Like all good war torn countries, it was by turns zany and poignant. Like all good exotic places, it was only comprehensible as a reflection of our own indomitable culture. The capital of this Korea was the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, better known as the television series M*A*S*H. If not quite the longest running American sit com in history, M*A*S*H. is without doubt the longest re-run program ever. Its first run broadcasts outlasted the war it depicted by 8 years and from Quebec to Sydney to Cologne, 251 syndicated episodes still show up in regular weeknight time slots. This visual abundance begs the question, “Have twenty-seven televised years of the Korean War provided any authentic insight into modern Korean life?” “Horse hockey!” as Col. Potter might say, and he would be mostly right. Although certain memories of M*A*S*H remain amusingly relevant, the series had little to do with the Korea that cracks us up here and now. Based on Dr. Richard Hornberger’s fictionalized memoir about serving at the real 8055 M.A.S.H. unit near Seoul, the program was essentially a running commentary on the Vietnam War still underway at the time of the show’s debut. The irreverent pacifism of the scripts owes less to the surgical humor of the original novel than to the anti-authority sentiment of the 1970 film version. The movie, scripted by Ring Lardner Jr. and directed by Robert Altman, was a big hit for Twentieth Century Fox. With a readymade set and rights to the story, they decided, in creative Hollywood fashion, to produce an inexpensive TV spinoff. Larry Gelbart, the show’s creator, had visited Korea while working as a gag writer for Bob Hope on a U.S.O. tour. Gelbart soon took up the anti-war torch, writing the first three formative years worth of the M*A*S*H brand of prime time entertainment: war is heck with a laugh track. The series was faithful to its Asian setting insofar as it was meticulously researched during several writers’ tours of Korea and through interviews with army surgeons and other veterans of the Korean War. The backdrop, however, was Stage 9 at the Twentieth Century Fox studios in California (the herniated bellybutton of America, remember?) where they now shoot NYPD Blue. A ranch near Malibu provided the location for the outdoor scenes, including the scrubby mountains in the title sequence, dead ringers for anything you’ll see this side of the Bering Strait. Audiences rarely saw much of life beyond the M*A*S*H compound and Korean characters were marginal to say the least. Usually they were inserted for local color, such as the Korean girl Hawkeye won in a poker game and then couldn’t seem to get rid of. Then there was Ho-Jon, the Swamp’s houseboy for the first few episodes. And Whiplash Wang, the Korean who faked jeep accidents in order to extort compensation. Remember Mr. Shin, the highly skilled local jeweler who crafted a special surgical clamp? Or General Pak Sen, the M*A*S*H troupe’s poker buddy? Don’t be surprised if you can’t. Few of these were speaking roles and nearly all of them were played by actors with not-quite-Korean-sounding names like Adiarte, Shizuko and Chao. At least one real Korean locale would be instantly recongizable to the M*A*S*H viewer: Rosie’s Bar. This little G.I. getaway still thrives anywhere within 500 meters of a U.S. Army installation (albeit minus the Hawaiian shirts) and Rosie herself lives on tough middle-aged bar hostesses from Changwon to Itaewon. In retrospect the only time her character ever rang false was the time she ended up hospitalized after a barroom brawl. A real ajuma would never come out the loser in a free-for-all. Cocktails still reign among the great diversions on the Korean scene. Horrified by the gigantic size of his bar tab, Hawkeye vows to give up booze for a week: how many of your acquaintances can you insert into this episode synopsis? Not many would object to building a huge still in the living room either. Why we giggled at inebriated surgeons is a bit of a mystery, but maybe it kept our minds off all the hyperkinetic moralism and “bad army food” jokes. Another popular M*A*S*H pass time which retains its vital position in the expat dayplanner is, ahem, pursuit. Nearly every character fell for a local girl at least once and more than a few nurses were traded or auctioned off over the course of the series. Perhaps one of the many Hawkeye monologues sums up the continuing saga best: “I am the essence of overconfidence! I am speculation, adventure, the spirit of pursuit, the stag howling for its winsome yet anonymous mate. I am the love call of evolution; the perfume and color of the flowers as they offer their pollen to the gentle buzz of the bees. I am sex itself, gentlemen. I am life. I am appetite!” I am at the Dallas, Morrisons, the King Club, baby, and it’s almost closing time! Some of the more commonplace M*A*S*H scenarios gain a certain resonance after you’ve experienced Korea. In one memorable episode Frank Burns suspiciously disinters a “bomb” buried by a Korean family, only to find a redolent crock of kimchi. Heck I make the same shocking discovery every time I sit down to lunch. Another favorite plot had the camp overrun by a large, uncontrollable group of children from a refugee camp. If that wasn’t a foreshadow of hagwon kindergarten, I don’t know what it was. Roommate troubles were also eerily foretold. As Winchester once declared, “You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can torture me with your thrice-daily swill. But you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness, and I shall be delivered from this fetid and festering sewer.” If you’re one of those who marks off every countdown day to contract’s end by drawing an x on the wall, you’ll know exactly how the major felt. The real 8055th Army Hospital was closed with some fanfare in June of 1997. In attendance were writer Larry Gelbart and actors Larry Linville and David Ogden Stier. Said Linville, “It’s an epic event, and I sit here in absolute humility. We were like plastic representations of the real people.” But hey, plastic lasts. And perhaps the most lasting summation of the Korean experience came from an episode where the cast was trying to come up with songs to commemorate the war. After much jocularity, Hawkeye produced this gem of a couplet, which is, of course, absolutely true to this day: How are you gonna keep ’em down on the farm,
How indeed. Where are they now... There are certain striking similarities in the post-series careers of the M*A*S*H gang.
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Alan Alda (Hawkeye
Pierce)
Mike Farrell (B.J.
Hunnicut)
David Ogden Stiers
(Winchester)
Gary Burghoff
(Radar O’Reilly)
Harry Morgan (Col.
Potter)
Jamie Farr (Max
Klinger)
Loretta Swit (Margaret
Houlihan)
Larry Linville
(Frank Burns)
Wayne Rogers
(Trapper John McIntyre)