The film and television versions of M*A*S*H were both groundbreaking in different ways. The film version was a dark comedy that took dead aim at America's involvement in Vietnam by targeting the hypocrisy of the people behind the Korean War. The film is caustic and cynical, and its humor sharp and unfettered. The television version, by contrast, also promoted a similar anti-war message but featured a softer, more inclusive sense of humor. This same relationship exists between the film and television show regarding their portrayal of women in general and nurses in particular. The film version of M*A*S*H is wildly misogynistic, while the television show softens its misogyny somewhat with a more nuanced view of the role of women in the war effort. This paper will compare the portrayal of nurses in the film and television versions of M*A*S*H to show that both versions held women and nurses in some measure of contemptùthe only real difference being how large that measure was.
The film version of M*A*S*H is at hear a movie for and about males. However, women play somewhat significant parts in the movie, and they are all nurses. The nurses in the film fall into different broad stereotypes, none of them overly flattering. There are the prissy martinet bureaucrats, who are officious and strict and are cast as villains much of the time. Examples include the portrayal of Nurse Houlihan as well as the nurses that Doctors Hawkeye and Trapper, the main male leads, run afoul of in Tokyo when they barge into a military hospital (Summers). The next broad stereotype in the movie are the sex-symbol nurses, who perform sexual favors for the doctors at the military hospital. The most notable of these are "Hot Lips" Houlihan, who is embroiled in an affair with one of the doctors, and Lieutenant Dish, who Hawkeye persuades to have sex with one the camp dentistùin effect pimping her outùin an effort to stop the dentist from committing suici...