In a recent interview on the OWN network Loretta Swit said she worked the show creators to gradually turn the MASH character into a feminist symbol. Loretta Switt told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview on "O" that she helped shape Margaret into a strong, complex woman long before such characters were commonplace in television. She said the writers kept asking her "what's next for this girl?" And Switt sat down and consciously plotted out a multi-year story arc that would expand the character, make her stronger, and less of a stereotype. It was all deliberate and well-planned with TV show creators Larry Gelbart, Ken Levine and Alan Alda. And it started with ditching Frank Burns. As Loretta tells it, she shaped the trajectory of her character from dating surgeon Frank Burns to moving to Tokyo and falling in love with a West Point graduate (Donald Penobscott) On a conference call with the writing team, Loretta said she felt Margaret had "run the gamut with the relationship with Frank Burns." As they were writing her more intelligent," she says, "they were writing him sillier, and the audience was having trouble finding a way to make that compatible." In a way, she said, the relationship had become "demeaning." Ultimately, Margaret discovered her new husband (Penobscott) is cheating on her, prompting her to leave him. When she comes back to her stomping grounds, she says, she "realizes that she doesn't really need another person to complete her life as she had it there. She was busy, she was ambitious, she was caring, she wanted to be the best damn nurse in Korea, and that was her ambition. She was a real first." If you compare the origins of the character, Hotlips Houlihan, who started in Robert Altman's 1970 movie as being essentially a misogynistic joke; and spent most of the movie being viciously victimized by the male characters in that movie; to how the character ended by the series finale, as a feminist hero, the transformation is as stunning as any character transformation in the history of television.
Scritto da il
05-03-2025 alle ore 07:58
Consiglia
Voto
Nessun dato in archivio
Commenti
Nessun dato in archivio
