On M*A*S*H, was Klinger a cross-dresser? Was Klinger trans?
I had a long-running discussion about this last year with a trans person on the Fediverse. Before that conversation, it had never even crossed my mind that Klinger was anything other than a cis-het guy desperately trying to exploit a weird Army regulation to escape from a war zone ... who may admittedly have become a bit too attached to his wardrobe in the process.
However, she pointed out that Klinger was the closest thing to a role model she had on TV growing up at the time, and that she had definitely seen and identified a lot of traits in Klinger that strongly suggest he (she?) was a semi-closeted trans character, effectively pulling a double-switch, pretending to be a "regular guy" who was pretending to be a cross-dresser just to get out of the Army, while actually having found a way to be openly trans in the US Army all the way back in the 1950s.
Thoughts?
According to the shows own writers he was just trying to get out and in those days cross dressing was considered a sign of mental illness, As a result he dressed like a woman. With that being said if your friend needs that role model in their life then why would you want to take that away from them? Just let it be, it's only a tv show and some times being right is just not important.
The show had a number of writers, there is no doubt that was the intent of the early episodes.
During the latter shows, Klinger was asked why he kept wearing such fabulous outfits, when it showed no sign of getting him off on section 8.
He simply replied the dresses were more comfortable.
This was when he took on a more serious role within the show, and the dresses were less about comedic value, and more about his unique identity and pushing gender stereotypes.
I'm a huge fan of M*A*S*H. I have watched every episode at least forty times (minimally), and, when I was a teen, I could identify the episode from the establishing shot and repeat the lines verbatim. I still can almost do that, but not quite as well. Nota bene: I am a trans ally, but am not trans myself, so please take what I say with a grain of salt.
Klinger is a favorite character because they take him seriously. If you stop looking at the dresses for a minute, and look at him as a person, he's everything you'd want him to be if you were writing a heroic character. He's earnest. He's compassionate. He's generous. He's not afraid to get upset about things when they are worth getting upset about. And above all that, he's a damn good orderly. The joke is that he's all these things, but he doesn't want to be a hero - he wants to be a civilian.
Consider for a moment, that he is trying his best to get out of the Army - hell he never wants to be in it in the first place - and that during induction he does everything from refusing to cough for the doctor, to locking himself inside a pay toilet at a train station (requiring the draft board to spend $4 in nickels to get him out - 80 attempts!) He tried to trick doctors from letting him in, and then, once in, tried to fly to the coast using a small hang glider(he looked like a big red bird with fuzzy pink feet), to then float across the Pacific in a rubber dinghy. He tries to eat his way out until he was too fat to serve, to sit on a pole in the freezing cold until he catches pneumonia, volunteers to be taken hostage by a gunman, takes up voodoo, claims "half his family is dying and the other half is pregnant" (real quote after his boss reads that back to him - "I'm ashamed, sir...I don't deserve to be in the Army!"), pretends he has forgotten to speak anything but Arabic, gets married in a white dress (then in a black suit at the finale), threatens to self-immolate, and a dozen other canards to escape back to Toledo, his bowling league, and Tony Packo's Hungarian Hot Dogs. He is shameless in these attempts to leave...But he's still a Corporal, not a private or in prison. He was so good at what he did that not only did his draft board say he was okay to send to Korea (despite his best efforts), he also got more responsibilities and was trusted to lead more junior soldiers.
Klinger was living in a world where his best method of escape was conforming with the "crazy" definition of the time, by wearing dresses. The central conceit of the character was that, in the time and place he was in, being transgender was a mental illness. So, because he was the sanest one there (and thus the most desperate to leave), he took the path that was not of self-injury or mutilation, but instead was wearing dresses in the hopes of convincing someone he was classified 4-F, "Registrant not qualified for military service." When he thought he might actually be a woman, when he thought he might (by the standards of the time) be "going crazy," the psychiatrist met him where he was, and gave him comfort. "You're in the crazy business, fashion consciousness is just a tool of the trade." Nobody at any point took Klinger's attempts to get out seriously, because they were so over-the-top and ludicrous that they were impossible to take seriously...but they didn't treat him worse because of it (outside of the obvious "mean" characters of course). He was one hell of an orderly, he did his job, and he made sure that the patients he was helping were never the worse for his actions. Because he's a good human being.
I dispute your friend's assertion that the character did a "double-switch" or anything like that. While she is likely inspired by Klinger and the good acts he did (and the unrepentant manner in which he presented himself, which is certainly worthy of praise) I don't think the text of the show would support that. The strongest negative analogies come later in the show, around season 8, when he is promoted from Orderly to Company Clerk - a position of substantial responsibility. At that time, he goes to being masculine-presenting (except for when generals come by, or if he has a particularly nice set of earrings he wants to wear as a disguise against "sanity"), and works his butt off. He even gets promoted (proudly) to Sergeant near the end of the show. At other times, he is shown to have a profound psychological response to wearing Army fatigues, and the docs recommend he wear a slip underneath his uniform. But the truth is that much of the time, he's wearing masculine clothing and comfortable with his gender assignment at birth. He even takes offense when a Swedish doctor (who mentions that sexual reassignment surgery is being developed contemporaneously) suggests he could undergo surgical transition to correct his gender - "You're crazier than I am!" If he was really a "double-switch," character, that would have likely received more time and consideration - instead, he stormed off, profoundly disturbed at the revelation. Sorry :/
The fact that your friend found him so inspirational is a tribute to the care and seriousness with which Jamie Farr took the role. Klinger could have been a simple punching bag character, a one-trick pony who didn't contribute anything but some "cheap" laughs. The show could have punched-down, and made him seem insignificant (or worse) but it didn't. Jamie took a character who wanted out and gave real heart and pathos to him.
That said, I can absolutely see an argument for Klinger as a trans icon. By our modern standards, if we took him at his word, Klinger would likely be considered gender non-conforming or trans of some variety. In the context of 1950s Korea, he was just a normal guy in an abnormal situation, who was trying to escape and was happy to compromise his personal characterization to do so. By becoming a transvestite in the hopes of escaping, he lived the experience of being trans, of having to pretend to be a gender he's not due to social situation, and he did so with grace, beauty, and humor. He showed the profound resilience of the human spirit, and the ingenuity that we should all strive for.
Klinger may have been cis, but he lived the trans life in a hostile culture, and he never gave up. May we all be so brave to pursue our most genuine self.
Disclaimer at the start: I have never seen M*A*S*H, because I was born in the late 90s and my parents weren't into it (at least not enough to show us kids).
In general, stories that include crossdressing often speak to trans people. Tons of trans guys my age have had mini "awakenings" from watching stuff like Mulan or She's the Man. Especially when the crossdresser is displayed sympathetically rather than as a deplorable monster, it's easy to take a story about mostly the exterior changes in performing gender and have that resonate with your own interior discomfort with your gender identity. Especially when you're an egg (i.e., you haven't realized you're trans yet), these types of stories can really affect you even when they explicitly define the characters as cis crossdressers in the text.
On trans headcanons more generally, I think it's less important whether the character in question is really trans or not. What matters is how reading them as trans or not affects your experience of different scenes, whether it enhances them or contradicts their emotional message. You also don't have to decide a "correct" interpretation -- you can say "this scene is beautiful in one way if you interpret the character as cis and beautiful in another if you interpret them as trans" and live in the limbo of enjoying both. All that remains is what's on the page (or, well, screen) and what's in your mind.
ETA: Also should I watch M*A*S*H? I know its name by reputation but don't know much about it
The show is circa 50 years old now; nothing in our culture ever ages perfectly, going back that far.
That said, the show was legendary for being ahead of its time, and challenging so many basic tenets in society back then. It was also just plain funny and touching and endearing, with fleshed-out, interesting, original characters everywhere. The final episode was a cultural phenomenon, that held the record as the most-watched broadcast on TV for almost 30 years.
Frankly, I kinda want to go back now and rewatch with this new perspective in mind.
It was officially about the US involvement in the Korean war, but under the hood, we all knew it was actually about the Vietnam War, which hadn't even ended yet, when the series began.
As a cis-het guy growing up in a time when homo/transphobia was utterly normal, the thought that they would have made a character in the US Army who was gay, and/or trans, and/or a cross-dresser ... and hide him under the storyline of "he's just faking it to get out of the army" ... that's exactly the kind of thing the writers of that show might have done.
I definitely entertained the idea that this trans person I discussed it with, was just looking for anyone to identify with in a world that pretended people like her didn't exist ... but at the same time, I also began to entertain the idea that yeah, the writers actually did intend Klinger to be a second-level joke on all us cis-folk who wouldn't "get it".
Edit to add -- Single episode spoiler
They did one show where everybody else was putting together a Christmas party for the local orphans, while in a back operating room, one of the surgeons spent the entire episode, trying to keep a guy alive long enough so that he wouldn't die on Christmas Day and they could at least spare the family that added heartbreak.
He failed, and the guy died 15 minutes before midnight.
Hawkeye (one of the assisting surgeons) walked over to the clock on the wall, turned it forward to 12:05 am and said "Oh look, he made it."
That's the kind of show it was.
Matt Baume does a good job of looking at older shows and talking about how they portrayed queer people - what was allowed past censors, what the writers were aiming for (which was often groundbreaking) vs what they were allowed. Mixed in with the "this was the language used at the time and we wouldn't use it now."
I know he's covered MASH in this video: MAS*H's Revolutionary Gay Episode, but I haven't watched it yet. Highly recommend his work over all though when looking at older sitcoms in particular.
MASH is a series I loved as an older child and teenager. The finale was a television phenomenon. I cried as did many. I cried in several intense episodes over the years.
It became more serious over the years. I'm not sure I would recommend the earliest episodes. Hawkeye started as primarily a womanizer and there are some aspects of the early series I now find uncomfortable. But there is genius in this show. The characters are part of my psyche and I loved them.
One way to approach it might be to start when Colonel Potter arrives. A decision whether to visit the earlier show can be made later. Klinger's best episodes are interfacing with Potter if I remember correctly.
Edit, I would highly recommend MASH with the caveat that early episodes are silly and sexist. Alda became a director because of that show. It really grapples with war and conscription and tells some amazing human stories.
I really like this interpretation, of a double-switch. It's a fascinating approach, and one I've seen repeated elsewhere as a valid interpretation. Contextually to his time, can the character's stated reasons for his behavior be trusted if a more "honest" reason would have had him ostracized or worse? Can we say Klinger wouldn't be trans now? Of course not. There's no way to interpret his could-be-would-be behavior when the only evidence we have of him is bound to his context.
And if there's no textual support against it, then why not? Keep in mind, for it to be a "valid" interpretation, one merely needs to have textual support, either in its presence or lack. My usual example for this is that if there is no textual evidence of a character ever reading, one can assert they may be canonically illiterate. (To be fair, I usually use this example to annoy my friends.)
And I'm with Dangerous_Dan_McGrew on this: why not? People identify with so much in media.
Not to be too personal on main about this, but anecdote in support: growing up, there was an extremely soft boy in an imported show watched by me and literally every single child of my age-group. He was soft, he was gentle, he read as explicitly feminine to me in my context: long hair, a soft voice, a gentle demeanor. He meant so much to me as a young gay who was still closeted and still very, very Catholic. I imprinted hard on him, and I wasn't the only one.
Years later, I found out that in the original domestic context, his long hair and gentleness was "meant" to be read as a form of intense heterosexual masculinity. It was incredible to me that anyone could see him and think he was straight, or even "masculine"! And yet there it was. He was a manly man, where he came from.
That knowledge of his original contextual meaning did not take away the truth of what he'd meant to me, and to so many others. Without him, I don't know I'd have had a single rôle model for a soft-spoken gentle effeminate man still being appreciated and capable by his friends, and not an automatic laughingstock. It may not be contextually supported. It still meant so much.
Ehhhhhhhh. I mean look, I'm on team (I have a non-cis identity) but even I'm not willing to go that far.
I appreciate the other person saw someone that was breaking social norms of the time and worked as an ad-hoc role model figure for them when society was desperately lacking representation but Klinger was a desperate man who tried a multitude of things. (hang glider back to the states, body suit during a heatwave, enrolling to West Point and cheating to get expelled - this one is before the dressing I think, etc etc)
There's an argument, I suppose, for "well when the dress didn't work why didn't he just ditch it and try something else?" and I'd say to that that in fact he did. His interactions with Sidney were rife with back and forths about how he can and should switch up his game and Klinger did try various things. In fact he was examined by Major Freedman (Sidney) in a later episode after he replaced Rader, and when Sidney told Klinger that the Section Eight he'd give him would "remain on his permanent record" and that "you would have to stay a transvestite for the rest of your life", he refused to accept it.
Now you could argue I suppose that Klinger was afraid/aware of society being unaccepting and wanted to keep his options open, decide on his own terms, etc. but he was given the chance to live his life with the women's clothes and he rejected it.
There could be any number of reasons but in the spin-off series AfterMASH Klinger can once again be found only this time he's in more traditional men's clothing image 1 image 2 image 3 image 4.
So, as I said I don't think the evidence is there for Klinger to be considered trans full-stop at least and of course all of this is discussing a fictional character so there's death of the artist stuff to consider as well but for me, no, Klinger isn't trans.
But really, does it matter? It's art and people interpret as they see it and get what they want and (in this instance especially) need from it.
I mean, I don’t think the writers (or most of them anyways) intended that. But I think that’s a perfectly legitimate reading of Klinger. Especially later on. And it wouldn’t be crazy to think that some writer at some point in time did write him from that angle but who knows.