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7. Mobile Army Sexual Hijinks
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C h a p t e r 7 Mobile Army Sexual Hijinks “I need a nurse of the totally opposite sex!” Hawkeye, after receiving his monthly check, in “Pay Day” “People thought I was Hawkeye.” Alan Alda, interviewed by CNN’s Todd Leopold, “The Truth about Alan Alda” One of the most significant departures from Hornberger’s novel, reflected in both Altman’s film and the television series, is the change in Hawkeye’s marital status. In the original text, Captain Pierce is married and has two young sons. Also tied down is Duke, a Georgia-born doctor and father of two daughters who was not brought into the television series (owing in part to the character’s racial bigotry). In the process of adaptation, the producers and writers of both the film and the TV program opted to transform Hawkeye from an unfaithful husband into a happy bachelor, reflecting to a degree the limitations of neoliberal attitudes in 1970s America . Hornberger’s lecherous hero expresses no remorse with regard to his many extramarital affairs in a foreign land and 87 88 Chapter 7 even shares his expertise on the so-called sex game with his equally horny colleagues, stating, There are two methods. One is the simple, staid, stateside, hackneyed, civilian approach where you devote all your spare time for a week . . . the second method is quicker and statistically almost as sound. You talk to the broad for a few minutes in some social situation, preferably over a drink, and you say, “Honey, let’s go somewhere and tear off a piece.” . . . The big plus of this method is that you either score fast or lose fast, and if you lose you can go on to the next blossom without further waste of time, effort, and good booze.1 As evidenced in this quote, sex is just another game for Hawkeye—a sport (like golf and football) wherein “scoring” is what matters most. While Alan Alda’s interpretation of the character revels in a fair share of lechery (often disrupted by incoming wounded or other urgent situations), for the most part, Hawkeye’s pursuit of the opposite sex is depicted as playful, innocent, and harmless. For example, in a montage sequence from the pilot episode, Hawkeye is shown sneaking up on Lieutenant Dish—popping up from a sleeping bag in her tent and later handing a towel to her in the women’s shower stalls. His attempts to snag her attention are rebuffed each time by the lieutenant, who declares that she is “trying to be faithful” to her fiancé and that “a girl can take only so much.” However, like Nurse Able (whom Burns dubs “able and willing” because of her apparent readiness to accept sexual invitations in the episode “Hawk’s Nightmare”), Dish is burdened by a name that delimits her agency and defines her as an object of male consumption. The clownish bachelor in the TV series is no doubt a more acceptable hero for viewers than the unfaithful married man in the novel. Moreover, the competition [3.81.97.37] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:31 GMT) 89 Mobile Army Sexual Hijinks between Hawkeye and Trapper (who is married) over the same woman is less a dramatic point of contention than a slapstick routine recalling the wholesome gags in classical Hollywood comedies (in the vein of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope’s ongoing competition over Dorothy Lamour in their Road pictures from the 1940s). In “Requiem for a Lightweight,” Margie Cutler (Marcia Strassman), an attractive new nurse clad only in a shower towel, bumps into Hawkeye and Trapper on her way to the women’s quarters. She immediately grabs the attention of both doctors, who start hitting on her. When the embarrassed nurse hastily departs, the shower towel accidentally falls into the grabby hands of Hawkeye, leaving her completely naked offscreen. Gazing in the direction of the unclothed woman, the mesmerized doctors offer a military salute, something they rarely do even to outranking officers. Hawkeye’s flirtatious overtures continue in the OR, where he asks Nurse Cutler to address him as “Doctor darling,” and orders a kiss in lieu of medical equipment. After the operation, Trapper and Hawkeye begin a mating competition. Holding stolen flowers and stockings, respectively, the two doctors arrive at the same time at the door of Cutler’s tent. Hawkeye declares, “It must be obvious even to a moral defective like yourself that we’re both zeroed in on the...