Blog 6 FY

Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film Full Metal Jacket is split into three distinct parts all focusing on the experience of a soldier named Joker.Part one of the film takes place on Parris Island the marine training center. From the start of the film you can tell that the army wants every soldier to conform to the entire group. In the very first scene all the marines have their heads shaved taking away their individuality and instilling a sense of unity with fellow troops. They are told that even if they die on the battlefield they can never truly die because they are part of the marines and the unified spirit of marines can never be killed. Parris island is hell for all the new marines because of its tyrannical command. In particular we are introduced to Sergent Hartman who is cruel and incompassionate to all the new recruits. In particular Private Pyle has a hard time with his training. Pyle is shown as a character who is clearly slow mentally and physically fat. He cant do the exercises as well as the other marines and faces much abuse about this from Sgt. Hartman. At one point Pyre screws up and the Sergent made the rest of the recruits do exercises while Pyre gets to rest. As revenge the rest of the marines beat Pyre with soap in the night. I think that this shows the cruelty of war. The filmmakers used the kind and ignorant Pyre, a character that the viewer should sympathise with, and showed that these recruits felt no remorse for their actions. Even among your own comrades you can be picked on if you are different. After this incident you can clearly see a change in Pyre he no longer smiles in a goofy manner but instead carries a maniacal grin and becomes obsessed with his rifle. Joker, who looks after him, calls him a class 8 mental case. At the end of the first part Pyre takes his rifle and shoots Hartman without mercy and then himself. I think this whole part is meant to show how drastically war can change a person. Pyre came in as a gentle giant and died portrayed as a crazy gunman capable of killing.

The second part of the film took place in Vietnam itself this time with Joker as a journalist at a base with other journalists. In this section Joker has a hard time writing what his commanding officer wants. His leader wants him to write one of two kinds of stories: a story about a soldier who killed one of the Vietnamese, or a story about some soldier who gave up his own comfort for the sake of others. This second section demonstrated how the journalists at the time were ordered to boost support and moral for the war. Any article that went against that was not printed. At the time the US citizens were starting to lose interest in a meaningless war and the army was clearly trying to regain confidence in the war. The end of this section occurs during the Tet offensive and Joker is sent into Vietnam to write about a unit that was actually participating in the fighting.

In the third part of film Joker and Rafterman go into Phu Bai to cover a military unit with one of Jokers former friends from Parris island Cowboy. In this section the film introduces us to the character of Mother who is the Rambo type soldier in the unit. He seems to love fighting and killing the Vietnamese. This is clearly demonstrated because he carries around the largest gun of anyone which he fires constantly. Near the end of this part of the film the troop encounters a sniper who shoots down two of the companies men. Eventually they find and shoot the sniper. It is revealed that the one who was attacking them was actually a young woman. I think that this shows how transforming this war was. The fact that such a young woman would be so mercilessly killing the Americans demonstrates how the Vietcong used anyone to fight no matter what. This young girl who otherwise might be still in school is the face of the enemy. After they catch her she is shot and wounded and begs for someone to kill her to put her out of her misery. Joker shoots her in the head which is the first time we see him fire a gun at another person, let alone kill someone else. This part shows how merciless this war was. In this situation the best way to be merciful is to kill another. This part also signifies Jokers loss of innocence more than any other part in the film. While before he was protected from the brutality of war because of his expertise in journalism, now he finally kills another and gains the "thousand yard stare".

To me the Mickey Mouse song that they sang at the end of the movie demonstrated how inside they were really just kids. They were sent off to war to become killing machines at such a young age that they will probably never be able to recover and still act like very young men who were trained to kill. It also shows the ironic contrast that we saw with Pyre. The goofy child in all of us vs the instinctive and cruel killer. The film brings this issue up very often and we see it again with Jokers uniform that on one hand has a peace sign and on the other has "born to kill" written on the helmet.