Blog 6 JCP

The first part of the film Full Metal Jacket, takes place in the marine training camp on Parris Island. The film starts with with the physical change in the soldiers as they enter boot camp, the shaving off of their hair. This physical change represents the emotional change they will face through boot camp and being in country. Sergeant Hartman commands the unit through boot camp, physically and emotionally pushing them to the breaking point to turn them into killers. Killing is drilled into these boys throughout boot camp, being instructed that marines live to kill and there is no other way to survive. In their time at boot camp one soldier stands out in front of the pack, Joker. Joker is given the assignment to teach everything he knows to Pyle, who has been struggling throughout camp. One evening the company decides to haze Pyle for all of his mess ups which have lead to them all being punished. They hit him with bars of soap until her cries. Pyle wakes up that morning a new person. He is a hardened killer. Pyle ends up completely snapping killing Sergeant Hartman and then himself. This shows that the soldiers are not the boys who entered boot camp, they are desensitized marines, programed to kill. Not everyone can handle that assignment as shown by Pyle's suicide.

The second part of the film takes place in Vietnam, however not in country. It details Joker's time on a base, who is a journalist for Stars and Stripes. The soldiers on the front lines would consider Joker's work to be R&R. Joker spends his time on the base picking up prostitutes and glorifying the war. For one story Joker's superior officer instructed him to make up kills of Vietnamese officers, because that's what the Americans like to read about. This shows how the government and its people were not in line during the Vietnam War. Americans were lied to about the progress in Vietnam so the government could save face. Joker wore a peace sign on his jacket, yet his helmet said "born to kill." This represents the duality the soldiers faced. They themselves did not understand the war and would be happy with peace yet it was their job as marines to kill.

In the third and final section of the film Joker is finally in country, with the platoon of one of his buddies from boot camp, Cowboy. At this point of the film Joker is experiencing death, in one of the first fire fights he faces, the company commander Touchdown is killed. Now everything Joker has been reporting about is real. He is now a part of the harsh reality of war. In another battle, Joker's friend Cowboy and other marines were killed by a sniper. The rest of the company and Joker go to get revenge on the sniper. Joker is the one who finally shots her dead. From that moment forward Joker has changed, his is no longer an Innocent reporter running around in Vietnam, he is a killer. Sergeant Hartman's transformation finally took place in Joker.

The three sections of this film are all very important individually representing the different aspects of the war, but when combined they represent the struggles the soldiers face. They depict the transformation from young innocent boys, to men born to kill on the front lines of Vietnam.

The film ending with the Mickey Mouse song shows the youth of the soldiers. As much as the government would like them to be hardened killers, they are simply boys. The Mickey Mouse Song brings them back to their childhood, and away from the fires of war burning in the distance.