MASH & women writers

Here’s a Friday Question that became a whole post.

It’s from Dan Harrison.

How do you think M*A*S*H would have been different if there had been more women on the writing staff (that is, if the writing staff had reflected the diversity of the staffs today)? Yes, Linda Bloodworth got her start writing on M*A*S*H, and Karen Hall made significant contributions, but most of the staff were men. Just curious if you think the trajectory of the series might have been different if there were more female contributions? (I realize this is probably a horrible “what if” impossible-to-answer question).

Okay, I will try to answer this loaded question. I can see readers frantically clicking on the Comments section even as I type.

The short answer, that is both a cop out and the correct one is that it depends on who the writer is and what her strengths are. I see no difference in “talent” between men and women writers – in all aspects. Story, emotion, comedy – women are as good or better than men in any category.

That said, I think MASH would potentially be a difficult assignment for a woman writer because of this:

To write MASH well I believe you needed to have some experience in the military. I honestly don’t believe I could have written on that show without it. There is a mindset and a culture in the U.S. military that is distinct and baffling. Without having a clear exposure and understanding of it, I think any writer would be somewhat lost. MASH, at least in the early years, strove for authenticity.

A case can always be made for exceptions, but I feel you needed a command of that world to do MASH justice. And at least during our watch, we would get scripts back from freelancers and know within three pages whether this writer had ever set foot on an army base. And we did a lot of rewriting as a result.

That’s not to say a woman couldn’t have been in the service, or even been an Army brat growing up on bases and being exposed that way, but that narrows the field considerably.

However, as I alluded to briefly, MASH in the early Larry Gelbart-Gene Reynolds years evolved into a different show by the later seasons. One may argue which era was the best, but I think all would agree those early seasons were more representative of the actual mindset of the period. Think MAD MEN but ten years earlier even. In the later seasons the show became much more “enlightened.” And trust me, the US Army was anything but “enlightened,” and my guess is that hasn’t changed.

In later seasons of MASH, Margaret (no longer Hot Lips) had glamorous hairstyles, wore designer sweatshirts that had MASH stenciled on them (not exactly government issued) and had long nails. OR nurses wearing gloves did not have long nails. So you could say a woman writer would do a better job of writing a woman character but not if that character bore little reality to an actual MASH nurse.

In the overall picture, I don’t think you could do MASH today and really do it justice. The TV show, at its best, was a stylized version of the movie. And that was the REAL MASH. Try adapting a version of that in any form that would be both true to the period and acceptable in today’s PC world. I wouldn’t have a clue. So it extends beyond whether more women writers should have been employed. On series that I showran (if that’s now a word) I always had women writers on staff, sometimes 50/50. It’s not that I think women couldn’t write MASH today. I don’t think I could write MASH today.