the Man

gregory he/him 21

[princip1914]

Having some feelings about the most recent MASH episode I watched (season 4 ep 20 “some 38th parallels”). It’s just so tightly written? And so well structured?

In this episode, Radar gets attached to a patient after catching a mistake (IV not connected) that maybe could have killed him. Radar gets to know the guy, he gets sicker—BJ operates on him again—he gets better, they talk about home, and then he dies anyway. It’s clear from how the episode develops and the foreshadowing that this guy is gonna die, but it’s not shown on screen. All you see is Radar doing a puzzle with him to pass the time, the episode cuts to the B plot, and then you see Radar dejected sitting on the bench outside Post Op and you know clearly what happened without it being spelled out. Then BJ and Radar have a conversation and Radar is like “he was just talking with me, how could he have died?” And BJ is like “sometimes people just die. I could explain it medically but it won’t help.”

Ugh, it’s just so understated, so good, so succinct, and captures…I don’t know…an extremely real feeling of what these moments are like without any need for realism (no shots of medical heroics, no discussion of what procedures were tried, just two people sitting on a bench). It works so well.

The cherry on top which really makes this episode transcendent, is that the B plot is about Hawkeye’s dick not working. BJ’s lowkey teasing him about it, gleefully being a bit of an asshole, and then a few minutes later, he’s having that conversation with Radar about a young guy he couldn’t save. The whiplash of it, the profane to the sacred, is just so good, so compelling, again so real without being realistic. (Incidentally, putting these two plots together also makes Hawkeye’s sex problems more poignant—of course the issue is not that he needs a hobby, it’s that kids are dying for no reason and he can’t fix it, but that never needs to be said explicitly because the A plot makes it obvious.) The juxtaposition shouldn’t work, but it hits JUST right. And it’s something I feel a lot of modern shows wouldn’t be brave enough to try.

[thefuttureman]

More little paintings

[keenbugg]

peace and love on planet jork

[jeahamkrle]

''He can't be that angelic-''

Bet.

[nnebuchadnezzar]

[silkclove]

[craftythebitch]

The Martyr of Saint Michael

{10/15/2024}

[beejwatch]

U know whats crazy abt bdaddy jissues. Theres all the stuff about BJ never mentioning his parents or writing to them and the Interesting Jokes he makes about them while referring to pegs dad as ‘pa’ and the lashing out at hawkeye for having a good relationship with his dad. Theres also like everything about the way that he is. The burying and repressing and smiling. The flinching. The LYINGGGGG the projecting. Lets go back to childhood. What is it about the house you grew up in that made you the way you are. I know what it is.

[beejwatch]

AND the obsession w being a good husband and father AND the obsession with following rules and life will reward you AND the way he initially adheres to strict army policy before being opened up like a beautiful gay flower by another beautiful gay person WHILE ALSO being so mixed up in his own head about being a good husband father following rules so life will reward you strict upbringing policy that he sometimes still treats said beautiful gay person like hes a crazy slut from hell not that hell is real or that im scared of going there at all hahaha anyway.

[beejwatch]

And they did this on purpose by accident in classic american sitcom mash

[breya-etherium-shaper]

You ever think about how the only reason Samuel l Jackson got into acting is because he was a radical activist and his mom got threatened that he’d end up dead so she sent him away to school to save him

[postmarxed]

Literally the FBI told her to get him out of Atlanta or they were going to murder him

[pretentiouslimericks]

[yourkpopidolsucks]

UMMM???? CAN WE GET SOME ELABORATION PLEASE?????

[breya-etherium-shaper]

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

the fbi literally threatens people fighting for racial equality with death without a trial and people still think theyre the good guys

[mrclownery]

even bigger things are happening

[mrclownery]

big things happening

[rabbitscreams]

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

[rabbitscreams]

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

[rabbitscreams]

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

[gay-milton-quotes]

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

[vforvalensa]

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

[ozzybutweirdthistime]

wind up man au x perfect blue…..

[homoidiotic]

Max (1992) This documentary is probably the first cinematic portrait of a trans man - one of numerous pioneering works by Monika Treut. In this work, Native American Max Wolf Valerio discusses his journey transitioning. Displaying an extraordinary capacity for self-analysis, he proudly recounts his experiences with the hormone testosterone and talks about the queer community’s hostility towards transsexuals and the adventure of becoming a heterosexual man after having been a lesbian woman.

watch here for free (starts at around 54min)

[artaudmatic]

GOODBYE

[appleseed-butterfly]

my vocal stims from the monkees tv show

in no specific order

[leonardcohenofficial]

If it’s okay I would love to hear about In Love and War thoughts?

okay okay so. i think that “in love and war” is one of the best episodes of season six and that viewing it solely as the love story between hawkeye and kyung soon is actually a very limited read of the episode. when watching that episode i think that it’s way more about hawkeye having to confront his naivete when it comes to actually recognizing himself as part of the american imperialist war machine, however unwilling a participant he is. hawkeye’s up on his good liberal soapbox from the moment he meets kyung soon, and it’s only when he sees her living conditions that his feelings begin to change and he realizes that he’s being a huge asshole to someone whose living conditions have been DIRECTLY caused by the actions of the US military

and then the naivete continues the whole time!! hawkeye is trying so hard with her, and he’s being so kind and genuine, but only an american would say without a trace of irony, “you know, you have a fantastic attitude. that you can go through all of this and still smile is wonderful. i guess nothing is all that bad unless you think it is” and THEN he romanticizes all the labour she has to do because of the war (“kyung soon, i'm touched by you. by the way you sit in a bombed-out house and make jokes in french. even by the way you yank vegetables out of the ground and carry water from a mile away”) like. hawkeye her family is suffering. everyone is suffering. this is a nightmare scenario and it’s heartbreaking that you think that taking her on a date in a bombed out building is enough to distract from that/save her/etc.

hawkeye showing up in his class A’s to kyung soon’s mom’s funeral is such a haunting/almost horrifying image. the nicest clothes he has in korea are a specific symbol of imperialism, and of course he wants to be respectful and dress nicely, but the fact that ultimate peacemonger hawkeye looks so out of place among everyone else at the funeral because he looks like a good little soldier is fucking intense

and then it ends, because it has to end, and he says, so sadly, so genuinely, “you sold the phonograph?” which breaks my heart because it shows that he’s still not entirely getting it; of course she sold the phonograph, and traded the car, and got rid of her possessions to take care of her family. of course it can’t last, and they won’t write letters, because it’s a war. and things are fucked up in a war, which is why hawkeye tells margaret that he has to let her go. beyond the obvious trauma of working in a MASH unit, he finally is starting to get the impact of the war on the personal level and how impossible and horrible it makes everything. 

TL;DR “in love and war” is a great parable about how american imperialist ideology affects hawkeye and how he’s forced to confront his part in the war machine and how it impacts those he cares about