# Posted 11:16 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FILM CLASSICS -- THE READERS RESPOND: Some very interesting comments have arrived in respose to my recent film reviews. Commenting on my review of M*A*SH, EJB says:

Take it from somebody who grew up with the "military life," specifically the United States Army Medical Corps. You don't have a clue, son. There is not and has never been a more dedicated, disciplined, and dynamic enterprise on the face of the planet...Not that we don't enjoy the humor ourselves, but especially after years of TV saturation, the leftist portrayal of "military life" was and is now an extreme disservice to our country and our people.

There is a difference between theater and reality. Your post reveals you don't know one from the other, just like that other Rhodes scholar who "loathed the military."

EJB's comments are pointed but fair. While I meant no offense, my review of M*A*S*H never challenged the film's portrayal of the Army Medical Corps. In retrospect, I should've made it clear that I was approaching M*A*S*H as a suggestive satire about military life, not an actual account of any specific soldiers or units. One reader who speaks to that point is naval officer CL, who writes:

Re: Your point about the US military juggernaut -

I was aboard one of our carriers in the Gulf last spring, and after another planning meeting broke up "requiring better problem definition," [I] remarked that very thing to one of our Royal Navy liaison officers.

I said to him that it can certainly look like a well oiled machine from the outside looking in. From the inside looking out it sometimes resembles a lunatic asylum, with all the inmates rushing around banging their heads on the walls. Through some sort of mysterious brownian movement, at some point all the lunatics bang their head on the same wall, and that one gives way into another room. Where the process repeats, and progress is marked.

The brownian movement metaphor seemed particularly apt to me. Think of the military as an observable, physical object, subject to Newtonian physics. You can gather simultaneous data on position and velocity, and so predict where it will end up.

At the unit level, the physics are closer to sub-atomic levels. It's quantum mechanics. The closer you are to determining position, the further you get from velocity, and vice-versa. One is forced to speak in terms of probabilities.

How does "it all come out fine in the end?" To quote from the movie Shakespeare in Love, "It's a mystery."

I fully agree. Whether we're talking about the US military, the US government or major corporations such as Microsoft and Ford, there is something inexplicable about their ability to function. And yet they do.

Moving on to the cultural side of things, NC remarks that

I recently rewatched MASH myself. What I found interesting was the initial hostility of Hawkeye and Trapper John when they first meet Frank Burns. They come into the tent where Frank is teaching [Korean teenager O-Jon] English [by using] the Bible. This leads to much mockery and the gift of a girlie mag to the kid, continuing as Frank kneels to pray at the foot of his cot, and sometime later [more] mockery of his refusal of a martini. This is all before Frank shows himself as the classic military martinet, perhaps earning the abuse that he suffers. Maybe as I've aged I have become more conservative (yet still agnostic, long haired, etc...) , or just sensitive, but the prejudice against Frank was in a sense shocking.

I fully agree. Most anti-authority films (think Animal House) protect the moral integrity of their protagonists by having the 'bad guys' break the rules first. But there's no mistaking what happens in M*A*S*H. Hawkeye is relentlessly cruel toward Frank Burns and Nurse O'Houlihan.

Perhaps the director wanted it to be that way, or perhaps the novel on which the film is based emphasizes that Hawkeye is anything but a Boy Scout. Either way, if the portrayal of Hawkeye's cruetly was intentional, I think it was a good decision from an artistic perspective. It shows that Hawkeye's behavior is a reflection of his character, not a sudden response to minor provocations by Burns or O'Houlihan.

It also adds sophistication, both moral and analytical, to the anti-authority message of the film. Hawkeye is rebelling against a system, not against one or two bad officers. Moreover, Hawkeye's cruetly suggests that the irrationality of the system may provoke the response it does because it is dealing with humans and not with angels. Of course, the irrationality of the system reflects the fact that it is composed of humans and not of angels.

Now, going back a bit further in time, there have also been some interesting comments made about Blackboard Jungle and To Sir, With Love. WS writes that

I had the pleasure of meeting Ron Clark, a real "To Sir With Love" teacher, last week at my corporate conference, where he was the featured speaker. His story is amazing and he is an terrific speaker. After falling in to teaching in his home town in rural North Carolina, Ron set out to teach in Harlem. He was the only white person in the school and he was given the very worst class. The transformation which took place, and he tells his story very well, was nothing short of fantastic. By the end of the school year he got nearly one-third of his class of 37 into the best junior high in the city. A school which only took 30 kids total by application and interview each year. His secret was teaching respect and civility as a foundation. Check out his website and his book. If you get a chance to hear him speak you won't be disappointed.

No doubt about that. Even those teachers who succeed in more favorable circumstances need tremendous strength of character and often have astounding stories to tell. Nonetheless, I think it is often hard to express exactly how one goes about transforming sullen and dejected students into curious and thoughtful ones. As I mentioned before, both Blackboard and To Sir find it hard to express the cause of that transformation. If Clark can put it into words, he is most assuredly an impressive speaker. Finally, DS writes that

I attended Bronx public schools starting in 1948, so I can report on actual conditions then. Blackboard Jungle was a best selling book before it was a movie. The author Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) has written a gazillion books, mostly mysteries, and remains productive today.

Back when Blackboard Jungle was written, some inner city high schools did indeed have the type of crime problems portrayed in the book. It was also the case that much of the general public was not aware of these problems, so the book was quite shocking. The movie was less shocking, as I recall, since the book had already made its point.

It is striking that after forty years of increased spending and increased attention from state and federal governmental entities, the problems of inner city schools have gotten a lot worse.

If only we knew how to fix them...

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