This sequence points to both the good and the "bad" of MASH the movie (though the "bad" was pretty good for its time.)
It traces to somebody's review blurb which was put on the posters for MASH after awhile in 1970:
"MASH is what the new freedom of the screen is all about!"
That new freedom -- to show nudity, to hear cusswords, to simulate sex, to show the goriest of gore -- was granted by the MPAA at the end of 1968 and it took 1969(The Wild Bunch, Midnight Cowboy), 1970(MASH) and 1971(A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, Straw Dogs) to "get it out there."
MASH is a "military comedy." Well, in the movies of the 50s and 60s, a "military comedy" would be something like "Operation Mad Ball"(with Jack Lemmon and Mickey Rooney), or "Operation Petticoat"(a submarine movie with Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and some curvaceous Navy nurses), or "Wake Me When Its Over" -- a WWII comedy set on a Pacific island base.
In 1964, the military comedy took a "tough step forward" with "The Americanization of Emily." It starred James Garner and Julie Andrews and Garner called it his favorite movie of his. It had an overarticulate script by Paddy Chayefsky(years before he wrote The Hospital and Network) and it focussed in hard -- even in a "sympathetic WWII context"(the Nazis MUST lose) to the slaughter and carnage and heartbreak of war. We didn't SEE any carnage, but it was a step away from Operation Petticoat.
Came 1970 and MASH, all those previous military comedies looked...pretty damn tame. The blood gushing out of one soldier's jugular vein provided the gore; the rest of the movie provided the sex.
Hence...Painless. With other men LINING up to go into a tent to LOOK at his giant penis. (Gay? Not necessarily. Just curious and impressed.) With the photos of THREE woman in his tent because -- you want to get women, get a big penis. And with ...impotency. Not "hidden or alluded to" as in old censored films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
CONT
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roger1 (4046)
2 months ago
The "bad" element (seen through today's PC eyes) is how Painless, in deciding that his impotency with a woman must mean that he is "homosexual" (gay or queer just wouldn't cut it)...seeks to commit suicide to avoid the shame of it all.
And indeed, as has been posted above me, the scene just keeps going and going and going, with our very sympathetic buddies staging a "last supper" with a fake cyanide pill, the singing of the truly poignent "Suicide is Painless"(which is trul great in both the opening credits here AND the singing by the actor...and NOT good in the cutesie-pie TV sitcom intrumental of the song.)
As a capper, the married Hawkeye convinces his married mistress (LIeutenant Dish) to forego one last sex session with him before going home the next day -- to service Painless instead.
"Line 'em up" in terms of "what the new screen freedom is all about":
A focus on a man's penis as his prowess.
Impotency (as a specific issue.)
Homosexuality(as a controversially dire plight.)
Suicide(as an acceptable way out.)
Blasphemy (that "Last Supper" spoof would not have flown in the church-controlled Hollywood of the 50s.
Adultery(in which the married mistress of a married man takes direction to service ANOTHER married man.)
1970 was a new time at the movies. The Painless sequence had all of the above but was -- let's face it -- both quite funny and quite sexy, too.
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