Media and Music: “Suicide is Painless” Then and Now
The genre-defying TV show “M*A*S*H” has kept its influence in pop culture for half a century, and its sound design plays an important role in its storytelling.
Written by Maren Bell
Not to be confused with the game that frequents teen magazines, the TV show "M*A*S*H" ran during the ‘70s and ‘80s and left a lasting legacy. Its final episode still holds the record for having the largest percentage of the US population watching a single TV broadcast, and for good reason: "M*A*S*H" manages to balance sentimentality, seriousness, and humor throughout its 11 seasons covering the lives of Army surgeons during the Korean War. And yet, if you didn’t grow up with it playing on your grandparents’ TV or happen to see the cast gracing the cover of a one-off magazine in Walgreens, younger audiences may have never heard of it.
"M*A*S*H" transformed the sitcom format. Over time, the show drew more attention to character depth and connection over era-expected sexism and overall shenanigans. That’s not to say it got rid of the general hijinkery, but as the seasons progress, a small strain emerges as the show begins to lean heavier on drama elements and learns to blend them with comedy. "M*A*S*H" had a primetime TV slot during an age when people had a limited number of channels, so studio executives aimed to make viewers more comfortable with tried-and-true formulas. Even so, the writers’ provocative messages managed to find their footing in the narrative: War is hell. Power corrupts. Suicide is painless.
The last idea carried over from a song in the “M*A*S*H” movie that came out two years prior to the show’s pilot. While the film falls short in its social and political commentary, “Suicide is Painless” set the stage for the blend of bleakness, satire, and earnestness the show masters. For the film, director Robert Altman said he wanted the song lyrics to be “the stupidest” ever written, so he put his teenage son on the job. Lines like, “The game of life is hard to play / I’m gonna lose it anyway,” fit the black comedy film well, but the tonal dissonance and shallow messaging overpowers the underlying emotional nuance the succeeding show is able to embrace.
The show uses an instrumental rendition of the film’s “Suicide is Painless” as a bookend to each episode. The intro has a withdrawn, haunting feel, while each episode’s ending transforms with a big-band instrumentation as the episode wraps up and everything turns out all right.
Stripping the lyrics away proved to be the right move, enhancing the hopeless undertones with sensitive, folky guitar, light cymbals, and a blend of warm woodwinds and brass. Whatever antics the beloved characters conceive are snagged by the lingering heartache (or maybe cynicism) the preceding melancholic theme suggests. It sets the episode on a path to confront the brutalities of war that, admittedly, a dramedy can only begin to touch on within each 25-minute block, but nevertheless form the basis of the long-running narrative.
Music doesn’t just bookend the episodes. It also appears within them. As "M*A*S*H" evolved to incorporate more drama elements, its score adapted with it. Early on in "M*A*S*H"’s lifespan, interludes between scenes or during shock-factor moments are almost frivolous, both in their production and duration. They match the lighthearted scenes well. In season one, game show reminiscent music fills the air as the disheveled colonel watches a helicopter carry his prized antique desk away from the compound. Whimsical, high-pitched woodwinds and a marching band snare plays as the characters wait for a general to arrive and decorate an imaginary friend. Conspiratorial notes flutter and puncture the tension as two surgeons work to disable a bomb that turns out to only be filled with propaganda leaflets.
By Season 11, interludes are simple and short, if present at all. Music doesn’t even play in the background over the tag — instead, the final scene tends to give one last quip before the punchy outro music comes in. The comic elements are still deeply ingrained, and necessary for the show’s personality, but the growing absence of music reflects the show’s shift toward drama.
The characters began needing more breathing room so their identities had the space to expand: The cross-dressing deserter becomes a man with guts and selflessness. A nurse evolves from a one-dimensional female counterpart to a woman with genuine aspirations and individuality. The generic, annoying antagonist is swapped for a formidable opponent with pretentiousness and redeeming qualities instead of just plain obnoxiousness. The characters’ initial archetypes aren’t lost in the show’s progression — the deserter still pulls stunts in heels, the nurse continues to crush on top brass visitors, the new antagonist remains just as hateable as the first — but they’re fleshed out in the quiet moments they’re gradually afforded.
However, the non-diegetic sounds didn’t stop at music — "M*A*S*H" is tightly laced with canned laughter. While the creatives felt it didn’t create their ideal tone for the show, studio executives kept it as another method of comforting general audiences.
Laugh tracks were initially made to help people make the transition from listening to the radio, which often had live audiences, to watching TV. That gave executives reason enough to gravitate toward laugh tracks, but in "M*A*S*H"’s case, a laugh track also smooths over potentially provoking content. In the more raw moments, like when the surgeons get drunk out of their minds after a failed operation or when they crash a meeting of government officials to beg them to end the war, a laugh track can cut in and immediately make the scenes more palatable.
It can be easy to find fault in pacification, but the laugh track arguably doesn’t demean the show as a whole. In fact, it speaks to the range of emotions the script balances, where comedy isn’t a distraction, but a witty, grounding core.
As "M*A*S*H" pushed boundaries with its unique approach to entertainment and commentary, its sound design — though certainly not a focus for many viewers — only enhanced it, allowing it to leave a permanent mark on American pop culture.