Sitemap
MASH Cultural References

The TV program MASH is beloved around the world. But many long-time viewers, not to mention new fans and foreign viewers, have not idea what the characters are referring to.

MASH Cultural References Style Manual

--

Here are notes on how each page of this project will be formatted. That way I have something to refer to and readers will know where to go to find what they want (hopefully :).

The title of the page is the name of the episode in quotes and the phrase “cultural references” all in bold; e.g. “Back Pay” Cultural References

Next comes a screen shot from the episode in question:

Press enter or click to view image in full size

The subtitle contains the title of the episode, the season number, the episode number and the number of cultural references; e.g. MASH Season 8, Episode 24, 113 cultural references

The next paragraph is an explanation of what the title means or refers to. It also gives the average of references per minute; e.g. This episode has 113 cultural references in 24 minutes — 4.7 per minute.

Press enter or click to view image in full size

The second page has a running time occasionally, to help you know where you are in the episode.

Get DavidEzell’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

At the end, any websites used as reference are listed under “Works Cited” in bold and the name of the entry, along with the url; e.g.

Works Cited

Francis X. Bushman https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0124279/

Syntax

The cultural references are in order of appearance. Each is listed in bold. If it is a spoken phrase, it is in quotes. If it is an noun, proper or improper, it does not have quotes. The definition and notes follow after the bolded text. There is not a hyphen!

Date ranges always have one hyphen, e.g. 1973–1974

The end of each page is a bibliography of works cited in constructing or confirming information. For general references, the source is Britannica.com.

If an explanation involves terms that may not be common knowledge universally, that word or words is in parenthesis, e.g. (game show)

If a term is repeated in an episode, every mention is noted in chronological order.

The page is final when all the definitions have been verified, proper nouns recorded on the spreadsheet and a final count of cultural references.

--

--

DavidEzell
DavidEzell

Written by DavidEzell

Founder of the NYC-based Meetup Big Screen 30s! and author of the blog with the same name.

MASH Cultural References
MASH Cultural References

Published in MASH Cultural References

The TV program MASH is beloved around the world. But many long-time viewers, not to mention new fans and foreign viewers, have not idea what the characters are referring to.