#margaret mash

[marley-manson]

Comrades in Arms has so much gender role stuff going on and I'm very into it.

Brief preamble, masculinity and femininity aren't 'traits that men have' and 'traits that women have,' they're socially prescribed attributes that can vary from society to society and are forcibly assigned to men and women. I feel like I should mention this because in addition to good things I describe a few pretty negative things as feminine and that's because they are. Because most societies, especially 50s military society, want women to have traits such as passivity. Not because they're inherent to men and women.

So anyway, I'm just gonna dive right in. A lot of Hawkeye and Margaret's bickering in the first episode revolves around Hawkeye not being masculine enough. Margaret calls him a coward when he doesn't press forward through the shelling, Margaret gets angry when he can't fix the jeep ("How can a grown man be so mechanically incompetent?"), and she asks, "What kind of man are you?" in the next scene.

Hawkeye's attitude in return is wry self-awareness. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go into a mild panic," after the coward remark. Pretending to know what he's doing with the jeep with an exaggerated casualness ("Oh sure :) no problem :) I'll have this thing going in no time :)") before kicking it and then going "that's this right?" when she tells him to open the hood. Singing a jingle and joking that it's a civil war marching song and he's just trying to be military. And my favourite, Hawkeye's answer to Margaret's what kind of a man are you is, "Certainly not a serviceman," followed by, "There's a YMCA over here. Act like you got a moustache," and topped off with calling the hut he found "cute." There's also a moment where he is aware of something military (strategic significance of the hut), which surprises Margaret, and he pointedly downplays it by claiming he saw it in a movie.

My point being that the vibe is Margaret being consistently irritated that Hawkeye isn't performing a certain kind of military-flavoured masculinity, and Hawkeye knowing it and poking fun at her frustration. Margaret wants Hawkeye to be more military and more masculine in ways that go hand in hand, Hawkeye is resistant to that and plays up the opposite, both to bug her and because it's more genuine for him. He doesn't know how to fix a jeep, he is scared of bombs, he does cruise at YMCAs, etc

There's the fun scene with the debris and Hawkeye's injured leg, where they begin the sequence with Hawkeye on top of Margaret, shielding her, and Margaret mistaking Hawkeye's injury for an innuendo when he says he can't get off of her. Then they swap positions when Margaret examines and dresses the wound in his leg, complete with deliberate innuendo this time ("Margaret, there's no time for that now, look at my wound.") Which again, kinda highlights, advertantly or in, Hawkeye being more comfortable the less he has to conform to masculine standards. Not literally ofc, Hawkeye's obviously got no problem fucking women lmao, but as a joke that serves as a continuation of this gender role stuff I think it's fun and works well.

You can make a case that they start to get along when Margaret acts more accepting of Hawkeye's nonconformity. When Hawkeye says he's tough when he refuses morphine for the stitches and Margaret sarcastically says "uh huh," before he starts screaming. When Margaret opens up to him about the letter when he finally asks sincerely and Hawkeye listens and tries to be as genuinely supportive as he can. And when they start making out after Hawkeye commiserates with her about being scared and joins her in screaming his head off about the shelling.

The next morning this gets exaggerated in an interesting way. In the first half Margaret was outwardly tough and cold the majority of the time, insisting they drive through the shelling instead of running back where they came, checking the jeep herself, arming herself before going to bed. Even when telling Hawkeye about the letter, she insisted she was fine and that she prides herself on being able to adjust to anything. Hawkeye may not be masculine, but she is.

When they wake up, she's the opposite. Warm and affectionate, exaggerating her femininity in some ways (insisting on "making breakfast," fishing for compliments on her looks by being self-depricating, sudden passivity when they see a North Korean soldier and she irrationally insists they'll be fine and he won't come in), and emotionally "open" to the point of blatantly lying about or at least exaggerating how she feels (eg saying she loves his sense of humour after not getting a joke and before castigating him for making too many jokes a few scenes later).

She's playing an overly feminine role that doesn't suit her, but that she sees as the natural state of affairs for a man and a woman in a relationship, and she tries to shove Hawkeye into the appropriate type of masculine counterpoint. Most egregiously while treating him like one of her soldier boyfriends while she's panicking about being discovered ("Oh my brave soldier, you're wonderful, you're my inspiration," and, "I love to see a strong man who takes charge like that," lol), but also when she says she'll buy him a new shirt, assuming commitment and monogamy on his part, asking if he ever shaves ("Just my legs," says Hawkeye pointedly.)

Hawkeye is still Hawkeye - unmasculine, unmilitary, unable and unwilling to be the man Margaret invented for him. As he awkwardly goes along with it at first for whatever reason, he constantly looks like he's staring down a poisonous spider, and eventually he starts getting actively sarcastic in response.

Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, after an argument Margaret reverts back to her usual self and drops the feminized roleplaying, and when Hawkeye comes to her tent after the welcome back party, she finds a happy medium in genuine emotional openness, begun and encouraged by Hawkeye.

Essentially this episode explores Margaret's relationship with gender performance with Hawkeye as a counterpoint and, in the brief moments when they connect, mainly when they're screaming in terror together and in the last pre-tag scene, a parallel. Margaret starts off the episode as her usual masculine of centre, closed off, brusque self to Hawkeye's pointedly feminine-of-centre, emotionally open self. Halfway through, to Hawkeye's terrified bewilderment, she puts on a performance of femininity that doesn't reflect how she really feels, and in no way complements Hawkeye's gender expression, which isn't masculine enough to suit her and not saccharinely feminine enough to parallel her.

But at the end she finds she can still be herself, while adopting a little of Hawkeye's more healthy femininity in her newfound attempt to be emotionally open, and that's the place where she and Hawkeye click as friends. When they're sharing their feelings and commiserating and supporting each other. When she's not trying to be something she's not, and not trying to force or berate Hawkeye into being something he's not, and they can both just be a little gender non-conforming in their own ways that complement each other.

[opossumfury]

I love Margaret but I didn't care for some of her hair styles in the last couple seasons

[radarsmenagerie]

bonus:

mashgender pt 3.

[hawkeyeslaughter]

hey , don’t cry . 256 episodes of mash to watch . many enjoyable . all with hawkeye . okay ?

[sadboyclown]

some studies that I ended up fully rendering just to feel something lol

[vampir-el]

me when im judging people's psyche at the 4077 MASH but i also have to serve cunt

[cuepickle]

“Oh blow it out your ear!”

[francisjohnpatrickmulcahy]

M*A*S*H F*M*K!

Spin the wheel

I tried to include as many characters as I could think of and find through research, though I'm sure I'm missing a lot of recurring characters.

Please share so we can see how many and which characters were selected!

EDIT: The genie's out of the bottle now, can't put the original version back in the bottle, but I've removed Ho Jon from the wheel, if only from the original post. Apologies again, there's no excuse.

[maelarkin]

Never gonna forget showing my roommate MASH after explaining it as a Korean War drama/comedy, then watching it in silence till the end where she turns to me and says that wasn’t a K-drama

[choccy-milky]

I can imagine Clora reading the "Final Problem" where Sherlock "DIES" and being depressed for like a month and sending hate mail to Conan Doyle while Sebastian tries to cheer her up.

THATS SO FUNNY YOU SENT THIS BECAUSE I LITERALLY DECIDED THE SAME THING A WHILE BACK BAHAHA i plan to mention it in my fic too

seb would 1000% find clora crying during their seventh year when "the final problem" is published LMAOO and he'd freak out wondering whats wrong. and when i read about how tons of doyles' fans sent him hate mail and were outraged i was like yup, clora would've been one of them BAHAHA. ["Obituaries for Holmes appeared everywhere. Petitions were signed and “Keep Holmes Alive” clubs were formed."] CLORA WOULD HAVE FORMED ONE OF THOSE CLUBS TOO LMFAOO

all the outrage made doyle resurrect sherlock a decade later, so that also means when they're older + married + have kids, clora's just gonna burst into the room one day and be like "HES ALIIIIVEEE!!!!!!!" BAHAHHAA clora's hate mail to arthur conan doyle is what brought back sherlock, CONFIRMED!!💯💪✨

[stars-bean]

M*A*S*H | 3.19 - "Aid Station"

[marley-manson]

margaret triaging patients and assisting in the OR in her wedding dress is hands down one of the best images of the show

[loopnoid]

more mash nonsense i've been accumulating. yes i can draw things that are not bj and hawkeye sometimes. that being said nsfw(?) beejhawk under the cut

[merchantphoto]

upscaled photo of the M*A*S*H crew :)

[xavier616]

"You wanna know something?"

Hot Lips and Empty Arms || Episode Fourteen || Season Two

[hitrone]

trying figure out how to draw them ..