Blog 6 - AEE Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam War movie made in 1987, follows Private Joke, a Vietnam soldier, through his experiences as a marine. The movie is subtly divided into three different parts, more specifically three different environments. From Joker’s perspective, we see the Vietnam War in training, under fire and in the “safety” of the barracks. These three parts come together to primarily portray the chaos that is the Vietnam war.
On the island, where the marines were trained, we only begin to get acquainted with 3different soldiers, Pvt. Joker, Pvt. Cowboy, and Pvt. Pyle. Cowboy plays Joker’s friend while Pyle is the overweight burden of the entire squad. Every time he can’t complete a task for the drill sergeant, the entire squad is punished. His incompetency isolates him and gives the other soldiers a reason to bully and physically torment him. Eventually, Pyle begins to adapt and succeed in training, specifically after all the others each take one swing at him with a bar of soap. The monotony and the stress of basic training wear deep into Pyle, and he becomes the movie’s first example of the toll Vietnam took on the young boys. On the last night at the training island, Pvt. Joker finds Pyle in the bathroom with a loaded gun. When Hartman enters the bathroom Pyle shoots first Hartman and then himself. The suicide marks the end of the first section. It shows us the magnitude of the war; that the insanity of it had even trickled down to training camp.
The middle segment of the film revolves mainly around Lieutenant Lockhart and Joker’s position as a writer for Stars and Stripes. At one point Lockhart instructs the writers to refer to “Search and Destroy” now as “Sweep and Clear”. He wants the writers to use language which will make the war more appealing than it is. When Joker and Lockhart are discussing Joker’s piece, Lockhart persistently asks Joker if he saw any sign of a death (“drag marks”, blood smears”, etc.). Lockhart won’t accept the article if it doesn’t refer to any deaths. This middle segment’s main significance lies within the conversation at Stars and Stripes because it lays out a lot of shared ideals of the war. People wanted to hear about deaths because it created the illusion that something productive was being done. There was also a lot of sugar-coating in the details of the Vietnam war as some common behaviors in-country were not fit to be communicated with the rest of America.
The final segment of the film is the piece most similar to that of other Vietnam (or any) war movies. Joker and Cowboy reunite when Joker and Rafterman, Joker’s photographer for Stars and Stripes, go out to report on and assist Cowboy’s rifle squad. In this piece we are finally introduced to other soldiers, such as 8-ball, Mother, and “Crazy Earl”. In this piece we begin to become familiar with the soldiers, something that we were not open to earlier in the movie. There is much more emotion connected to this segment as we see 8-ball writhing in pain as a sniper oppresses the platoon. The platoon overrides commands from Cowboy and move in in attempt to both save their friends as well as seek avengement. There is a strong suggestion of brotherhood and comradery. When the platoon finally discovers the sniper, they find a younger Vietnamese girl. This final piece of the story line represents the disorder and bedlam found throughout the Vietnam war.
At the very end, the soldiers are shown marking through a destroyed Vietnam city at dusk all singing the Mickey Mouse song. Once again, this element adds to the illustration of complete chaos and dysfunction, and the soldiers seem to be connecting through this. When interviewed on camera, all the soldiers expressed a desire for killing individual Vietnam, both North and South, not necessarily a want to stomp out communism. The Vietnam war is infamous for having a difficult defining its purpose and goals, and the Mickey Mouse song represents that tie to mayhem. There was no reason to be in Vietnam, there was no reason to be singing the song, but both are being done anyways. Also, the Mickey Mouse song connects to the Joker’s voiceover where he talks about past fantasy because both relate back to a time before he knew war. The men’s song reminds them both of where they came from and where they want to go, which is home.