DECONSTRUCTING MASCULINITY

by

Jason Francois

Padraig Henry

ACT ONE: PARIS ISLAND

"The substance was single-minded: the old and always serious problem of how you put into a film, the living, behaving presence of what Jung called the Shadow." – Michael Herr

"War clearly follows the same movement as capitalism: In the same way as the proportion of constant capital keeps growing, war becomes increasingly a "war of material" in which the human being no longer even represents a variable capital of subjection, but is instead a pure element of machinic enslavement." - Gilles Deleuze 

1. The film begins with young soldiers getting their heads shaven. Their identities are being stripped. During this brief primer scene only two marines have sly grins on their faces: Private Pyle, who finds the whole dehumanising process childishly amusing, and Private Joker, who believes that his "jacket" of irony and cynical intelligence will protect him from the military’s thought reform.

2. During this scene, Johnny Wright’s “Hello Vietnam” plays on the soundtrack. The song speaks of “stopping Communism” and “saving freedom”. The marines are thus willing to give up their hair (a symbol of femininity) and their bodies, for what they perceive to be a noble cause. The verses Kubrick chooses, however, lend the song a far more satirical edge. “Kiss me goodbye” sounds more like a joke (these guys will die) than a dutiful farewell.

3. The opening montage ends with a shot of a floor completely covered in hair. This theme will continue over the next 40 minutes, as the military systematically strips these boys of all traces of femininity.

4. Sergeant Hartman introduces himself to the Marines. He is a figure of power, able to command the movements of the camera. Like Buck Turgidson in Dr Strangelove, his name (heart of man) suggests that he is a strong, hyper-masculinized character. Moreover, the recruits stand perfectly symmetrical and identical, suggesting a loss of individuality. They are virtually undistinguishable, identical in hair, clothing and physique.

5. Kubrick once again links Joker with Pyle by having them replace one another in the boot camp line up. When Hartman passes down the corridor for the first time, Joker is to his right, whilst Pyle is two marines away to the left. When Hartman re-approaches, Joker and Pyle have switched positions. This mirroring will take place throughout the film, as Joker symbolically loses his Self in a suicidal act akin to Pyle's.

6. During his introductory speech, Hartman abuses several marines. The first to be mocked is Private Brown, whom he designates Private Snowball (brown turned to white). Hartman thus has the power to reverse the very identities of these young men.

7. While Hartman is across the room, Joker says, “Is this you John Wayne, is this me?” Joker is questioning his identity. Is he John Wayne (a killer) or is he able to maintain his own personal identity? Joker hopes that his intelligence and cynicism can protect him from the military’s indoctrination.

Note: John Wayne is famous for playing numerous western and military roles. With films such as “The Green Berets”, “The Sands of Iwo Jima” and “Fort Apache”, Wayne became synonymous with the quintessential iconography of heroic, unflinching Americanism, always willing to fight the enemy, be they Vietnamese dogs or Indian savages.

8. By being aware of his duality (aggression and xenophobia vs altruism and compassion) Joker hopes to resist Hartman’s thought reform. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that it is precisely cadets like Joker, whom the military require. It is precisely Joker’s detachment that allows him to become an efficiently functioning, unknowing slave to ideology. As Kubrick states, the marines do not want one-dimensional robots (Pyle). They want killers who can rationalise their violent actions as compassion.

9. Hartman accuses Private Cowboy of speaking. Joker defends Cowboy by accepting the blame and giving himself up to Hartman.

10. Hartman proceeds to assault Joker. As Joker collapses to his knees, Hartman looks down the camera and addresses the audience directly: “You will not laugh, you will not cry, you will learn by the numbers!” This scene echoes the “Viddy well” scene in “A Clockwork Orange”, where Alex urges his audience to watch his violence carefully.

11. Hartman commands Joker to show him his war face. Joker does as told. Hartman isn’t convinced. As Joker says, “The USMC is a place for the phoney tough and the crazy brave.” Joker is the phoney tough.

12. Hartman then proceeds to re-name his recruits. These nicknames are significant. The film’s protagonist is nicknamed “Joker”, signifying his primary trait as a thinking man. He “thinks” everything is a “big joke”. Joker’s Jungian opposite in Vietnam is nicknamed "Animal Mother", very close to the Jungian concept of the "mother anima". Pyle is named after a homosexual character in a TV show, further implying that this childish man is far more effeminate that the rest of the recruits.

13. Throughout the film, all intellectual characters (Cowboy, Joker) are depicted as wearing glasses. This symbolizes their reliance on “sensation”, “rationality” or “visual sight”. For example, Joker aggravates his editor by insisting on a visual sighting of a "blood trail" before writing a story about "enemy kills".

In contrast, Animal Mother relies on his "animal instincts" to make decisions. While the “thinking men” are cautious and prone to life threatening hesitancy, Animal Mother instinctively knows that there is “only one sniper”.

14. We are then subjected to 30 minutes of abuse as Sgt Hartman continually calls into question the marine's sexuality. He calls them ladies, queers, fags, sailors…a single-minded process of masculine purification. Every trace of femininity is then systematically eradicated. “Female” is replaced with “weapon". The whole thing escalates into a pseudo religion where the recruits pray to their rifles, recite chants and make ritual sacrifices so that “the Virgin Mary would be proud to take a dump”.

15. Kubrick draws parallels between religious indoctrination and military indoctrination. Signs throughout the barracks make reference to prayer time and Catholic sermons, the marines are ordered to pray and worship the Virgin Mary, their goal is to be born again and they are constantly told that they are doing God's will. Later, Private Joker is asked whether he believes in the Virgin Mary. Joker says that he does not. He is a freethinker, atheist and cynic. It is his ability to think independently that leads to his promotion.

16. During the first act, Sgt. Hartman brazenly establishes the goals of the boot camp. “You will be a weapon! You will be a minister of death, praying for war!” Here, Hartman all but spells out this theme of religious rebirth. He declares that a kind of evolution will take place on Parris Island, yelling, “Until that day, you are the lowest form of life on Earth! You are not even human fucking beings! You are nothing but unorganized, grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit!”

17. The word “amphibian” quietly conjures up the notion of evolution, as it classifies these young men as subhuman. They are an inferior species awaiting growth. To foster this growth, the military creates two archetypes, the Child and the Feminine Other, which the cadets must be conditioned to view as obstacles, as pieces of shit which must be flushed out. Once the Child (Pyle) and the Feminine Other (sniper) are destroyed, the marine group is free to evolve further.

18. The blood red floor upon which Hartman walks echoes numerous other red floors in Kubrick's filmography, notably the mansion in Eyes Wide Shut and the red floors of the Overlook Hotel. These are places of power in which human's are mere pawns, doing the bidding of unseen overseers.

19. It is Hartman’s job to destroy any weakness within these recruits, and this “weakness” is constantly associated with femininity, infancy and homosexuality (Pyle himself is named after a gay character in a TV show). Essentially, Hartman seeks to replace all femininity with things linked to violence. Notice the not-too-subtle example of this when Hartman forces the recruits to lie next to their rifles while they sleep. “You will give your rifle a girl’s name! Because this is the only pussy you people are going to get! You’re married to this piece—this weapon of iron and wood—and you will be faithful!”

Not only does this replace the feminine with something wholly unfeminine, but it also plays on man’s baser needs. A man must have sex to function. But the film never divides the soldier from sex. It is romance that is replaced with a sexuality that is entirely devoid of love or innocence. Indeed, this is evident when the recruits chant during their morning run: “I don’t want no teenage queen. I just want my M-14!”

20. During a training exercise, Pyle goofs up. He doesn’t recognise his left shoulder from his right shoulder. “You just want to be different!” Hartman accuses him, and slaps Pyle repeatedly.

Note that during this scene, Kubrick’s composition is such that it appears as though columns of marines marching in the background enter Hartman’s mouth in the foreground. Hartman consumes men and spits them back out, but Pyle does not respond well to this brutal training.

21. As punishment for his “refusal to learn”, Pyle is made to march with his pants down and his thumb in his mouth. Throughout the film, Pyle will be portrayed as a baby, twice shown sucking his thumb. He’s a child, an infant. On a symbolic level, it is precisely Pyle’s qualities which prevent the military group from progressing. If the group is to evolve into killers, they must first destroy their Infantile Self. Only after the destruction of Pyle, the ridding of their baby fat, can these men progress.

22. The marines are presented with a series of obstacles. Pyle fails them all. After this training montage, the marines are seen running through a lake of mud. Pyle falls and the entire group collapses. They struggle to pick him up. Pyle is becoming a burden to the group.

23. Joker is given responsibility of Pyle.

Hartman: Private Joker, do you believe in the Virgin Mary?

Joker: Sir, no, sir!

Hartman: Well, well, Private Joker, I don't believe I heard you correctly!

Joker: Sir, the private said "no, sir," sir!

Hartman: You Goddamn communist heathen, you had best sound off that you love the Virgin Mary, or I'm gonna stomp your guts out! Now you DO love the Virgin Mary, don't you?
Joker: Sir, NEGATIVE, sir!

Recognising that Joker is outside the system, and is not being swayed by the military’s mind control (which up to this point has been likened to religious indoctrination), Hartman makes a clever choice. Instead of persecuting Joker for not being part of the group, he promotes him. Joker is slowly and unwillingly being made a slave to the very system he mocks.

Thus, Joker takes over from Private Snowball and inherits the responsibility of Pyle.

24. Kubrick uses “left to right” compositions to highlight the traditional way in which we process information. This is the method of indoctrination used by Hartman on his boys. Hartman, the symbolic Father, uses a tough, dispassionate, indoctrination approach on Pyle. Private Pyle, however, is unresponsive, and so he is assigned a new teacher, Private Joker.

25. Private Joker symbolises the Mother. He uses compassion, love and intimacy to teach Pyle. Joker’s unorthodox teaching is demonstrated using “right to left” compositions. This notion of “Mother” and “Father” (feminised compassion vs masculinized aggression) is highlighted prior to Pyle’s suicide. “What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?” Hartman screams, with Joker at his side. “Didn’t Mommy and Daddy show you enough attention when you were a child?”

Unlike Hartman, Joker teaches Pyle to distinguish between his “left shoulder and right shoulder” in a calm and tolerant manner. Joker is so out of sync with Hartman, that when Joker teaches Pyle to put his gun on his “right shoulder”, we see and hear Hartman in the background teaching the rest of the marines the exact opposite. When tying his shoelaces, Joker also verbally and visually teaches Pyle how to put his “left lace over the right” and the “right lace over the left”. In the next scene, Joker shows Pyle how to put his left leg over the other when climbing the obstacle. This contrasts with an earlier sequence in which Hartman fails to bully Pyle over the obstacle.

26. Under Joker's unorthodox teaching, Pyle seems to progress. Several shots imply that Pyle is shaping up to be a competent marine. He now recognises his left and right and seems to be losing his baby fat.

27. As the marines march, Kubrick dissolves the image and fades into a rifle range. For a brief moment the men are superimposed over the image of rifle targets. The message is clear: these young men are disposable targets, being lined up for potential death.

28. On the rifle range, Hartman says: “Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not CLEAN and STRONG, you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead marines. And then you will be in a world of shit!”

Later in the film, Joker hesitates at the moment of truth. He fails to kill the sniper because he does not have a “hard heart” and a “clean head”. Joker’s thinking, rational, conscious mind has failed him at the crucial moment. This, rather than a “jammed gun”, is the reason for his impotence.

Note: The film is filled with references to “cleaning out the head”. Kubrick links the notion of “flushing out your headgear” and “becoming a killer” to the literal act of cleaning, mopping and polishing the Head (bathroom).

29. Under Joker’s teaching, Pyle seems to progress, but only up to a point. Humans are pleasure-centric animals, and basic human temptation creeps in. Like a dopey baby, Pyle has little personal control, and so his inability to resist food (pleasure), is his downfall.

30. Hartman continually punishes the marine group for their “inability to deal with Pyle”.

31. The marines, motivated by vengeance, pin Pyle to his bed and beat him violently with bars of soap. They want to wash him away. Joker, despite his initial facade of compassion, beats Pyle the hardest. This is the first sign that Joker has some primal killer instinct buried deep within him.

32.  The film is filled with references to “washing”, “cleaning” and “flushing”. While such soap hazings do take place in the military, the idea of washing Pyle away and later flushing him out of the head (his toilet suicide) fits in with Kubrick’s theme of masculine purification (“if your killer instinct is not clean you will hesitate!”). Later, Rafterman is told to “flush out his head-gear” when discussing “freedom”. Rafterman’s ideas of a noble and just war are flushed out of his head and replaced with one of sex and vengeance.

33. In both the “beating of Pyle” and the “killing of the sniper” scenes, the marines are motivated solely by revenge. As Animal Mother says at the end of the film, “let’s get some payback!” The notion of “payback” is present in all 3 acts. In the first act, the marines “pay back” Pyle by beating him with soap. In the second act, a marine called Payback teaches Joker about the “thousand yard stare” and “war face”. In the final act, the marines kill the sniper in an attempt to pay her back for their fallen comrades.

So throughout the film, Kubrick links the notion of “payback” to the acquisition of the “war face”. Jung says this himself in his writings, believing that the Shadow hides out of sight, only appearing to counter man’s virtues with sudden flashes of anger, fear, vengeance and unwarranted suspicions of the Other.

34. The “beating of Pyle” is shot with the same blue hue as Pyle’s suicide. Pyle’s suicide is a direct result of his “beating”. From here on, Pyle ceases to be an effeminate child and proceeds to bury himself in work. He quickly “shapes up”. He is now a bitter killer. He is a one-dimensional psychopath, lacking any sense of empathy, compassion or attachments to the hive.

Note: the marines beat Pyle in a manner which echoes the apes beating one another in “2001” (with femurs), and Alex beating his foes in A Clockwork Orange (with canes and weapons).

35. While storm clouds rumble overhead, Hartman speaks to the men about the Kennedy assassination. Later in the film, the sniper will assume the role of assassin.

36. Though the Marine’s sing happy birthday to Jesus, it’s really Pyle’s birthday. From this moment onwards, Pyle is portrayed as a methodical, competent marine. He has been reborn. The child is now a killer.

37. Like “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Full Metal Jacket” is filled with “rebirth” motifs. The celebration of birthdays is one such example. At Christmas on Parris Island, Hartman leads the men in a chanting of “happy birthday”. The celebration of a birthday is reminiscent of this notion of rebirth. But further still, by celebrating Christ’s birthday, the marines are, in a sense, celebrating Christ’s eventual resurrection. This resurrection is suggestive of their eventual resurrection into killers.

In the second half of the film, the apathetic American soldiers celebrate the birthday of a dead Vietnamese soldier. Here the celebration of a corpse’s birthday seems to be a celebration of death. The irony of celebrating a man’s death day as a birthday is also suggestive of rebirth—signifying the death of the old and birth of the new.

Such resurrections after scenes of death take place twice in the film. Firstly, when Pyle kills himself and secondly when Joker kills the sniper. Both deaths represent the death of specific qualities which result in the birth of a new being. Note that in the original screenplay, during the final narration, Joker implicitly says, “It is my birthday”. The implication is that, after killing the sniper, Joker is reborn. Preferring to keep things ambiguous, Kubrick omits this line from the film’s final cut.

38. Kubrick now gives us two scenes dealing with cleaning. In the first, Pyle cleans his rifle. In the second, Joker and Cowboy mop the Head. Both scenes deal with the budding sexuality of the marines.

39. In the first “cleaning scene”, Joker watches as Pyle talks quietly to Charlene, his feminized rifle. Pyle thinks his rifle is beautiful, perfect, smooth and sexy. Creation and destruction, penis and rifle, gun and girlfriend, fighting and fun, become one.

Note: Charlene is the effeminate equivalent of the name Charlie, the marine's slang for the Vietnamese enemy.

40. In the second “cleaning scene”, Joker and Cowboy discuss Pyle whilst mopping the Head. Though Joker is concerned about Leonard, Cowboy doesn’t care.

JOKER: Leonard talks to his rifle.

COWBOY: Yeah.

JOKER: I don’t think Leonard can hack it anymore. I think Leonard’s a section 8.

COWBOY: That don’t surprise me.

JOKER: I want to slip my tubesteak into your sister. What do you take in trade?

Note: Joker wears blue slippers, Cowboy wears red slippers, and the walls are all white. Like “The Shining”, the red, blue and white colour scheme highlights the notion of Americana

41. The line "what do you take in trade?" echoes numerous allusions to “trade” and “business” in the second act of the film. Full Metal Jacket explores the analogy between war and prostitution, emphasizing the body and soul selling aspect of the military experience. As such, the middle section of the film (ie the Vietnam war) is framed by episodes of Americans making trades with Vietnamese prostitutes. This formally establishes the film's connection between prostitution and trade, between sex and technology and between soldiers and whores.

The prostitutes in Full Metal Jacket symbolize the further, ultimate subjugation of the female-as-feminine to the level of a tradable commodity. They are infertile sex machines. They are
prostitutes of the sex-trade, whereas the soldiers, as infertile killing machines, are prostitutes of the rifle-war-trade, both groups victimised and dehumanised by the one-dimensional collapse and mutilation of their organic identities.

42. Joker’s wish to fuck Cowboy’s sister mirrors a similar scene in Vietnam. The film thus contains dual references to sisters:

Act 1:

"I like you, you can come over and fuck my sister."

"I want to slip my tubesteak in your sister."

Act 2:

"You've been getting any?" - "Only your sister."

"Hey, little yellow sister."

In the third act, the marines realise their wish and finally rifle-fuck the sniper.

43. These two “cleaning scenes” reinforce the association between sexual power and technological power. While Pyle lusts for his gun, Joker and Cowboy have erections whilst talking about Pyle's rifle. They have bulges in their pants, their phallic mops in their hands and a slit even appears in Joker's shorts when he talks about slipping his tubesteak into Cowboy's sister.

44. Joker and Cowboy are beginning to identify with their guns. Joker has linked this sexual desire to his recollection of Pyle delicately cleaning and talking to his "smooth", "nice", "perfect" and "beautiful" M-14. Joker is now sexually aroused by his recollection of Pyle's intimate relationship with his rifle. Aroused by this erotic, identification with his gun, Joker then asks to fuck Cowboy’s sister.

Although these "cleaning the head" scenes foreshadow Pyle being "born again hard" (an erotic, infertile unification with his rifle), they also subtly reveal how the same process is affecting Joker and Cowboy

In short, though both Joker and Pyle are now aroused by their weapons, Joker is still able to make the distinction between “sex” (Cowboy’s sister) and “rifle”. Pyle cannot make this distinction.

45. Pyle is on the firing range. He’s an excellent shot. Hartman is impressed. “You are definitely born again hard!”

46. We’re then given the final of 3 marching sequences. In the first marching sequence, Hartman conditions the men to love physical training. In his chants he makes it clear that, rather than sex, it is physical training that is good for you. In the second marching sequence, Hartman conditions the men to love their country and the Corps. In the third sequence, Hartman conditions the men to love their rifles (I don’t want no teenage queen, I just want my M14).

47. The marines run toward camera in slow motion, screaming and yelling like animals. This short scene mirrors an earlier scene in which the marines ran toward camera, tumbled over Pyle and collapsed in a pit of mud. The difference is that Pyle is now a competent marine. The group no longer needs to carry him. They are finally functioning as a unit. They are no longer stuck in the mud.

48. The group has eradiated all traces of the Infantile and Female Other. They are now hyper-masculinized killers. It is now time for…

49. Graduation Day. Hartman stands before the group and says, “Today, you are no longer maggots. Today you are marines. You’re part of a brotherhood. From now on, until the day you die, every marine is your brother!”

Kubrick cuts to stock footage of a real marine graduation ceremony when the line “You’re part of a brotherhood” is uttered.

50. Hartman designates roles to his men. While Cowboy and Pyle are assigned to the Infantry, Joker is assigned to Basic Military Journalism. Thus, Joker has successfully resisted Hartman’s indoctrination. He is not John Wayne. He is not a killer. He has feigned obedience and pretended to be part of the group. His aloof cynicism has allowed him to maintain a certain level of detachment.

“You’re not a writer,” Hartman yells, “you’re a killer!”

Joker responds quickly. “A killer! Yes sir!”

Joker has learnt to give Hartman exactly what he wants. But it’s all an act.

51. Interestingly, Joker is told to report for “Basic Military Journalism” at 42-12. While the other Marines are given correct Military Occupational Speciality Numbers (MOS numbers), Joker is given a nonsensical one.

Here are genuine MOS numbers:

4300 Basic Combat Correspondent

4313 Broadcast Journalist

4341 Combat Correspondent

Perhaps Kubrick is alluding to Danny Torrance, who in “The Shining” was frequently linked to the numbers 42 and 12. One may view Joker as a grown up version of Danny. Danny survived the oppressive history of the Overlook Hotel, joins the military and, because of his experiences, has learnt to treat such institutions with scepticism. Later in the film, before Joker kills the sniper, there is another reference to “The Shining”. He passes a maze in the rubble. Danny thus escapes the Maze in “The Shining”, only to find himself back in the Maze at the end of “Full Metal Jacket”. Like his father, he’s forced to do the murderous duty of the Mickey Mouse Club. Interestingly, Danny also wore a Mickey Mouse sweater in “The Shining”.

Or perhaps 42-12 was simply a MOS number during the Vietnam era and has subsequently changed.

52. While the other marines sleep, Joker patrols the barracks. This sequence is shot with the same blue hue (and music) as an earlier sequence in which Pyle was pinned to his bed and beaten with bars of soap. That sequence ended with the line “it’s just a bad dream, fat boy”, while this sequence begins with the line “what are you two animals doing in my Head!?”

On a symbolic level, this sequence is all “in the head”. Like a dream, it’s a psychological process which is being demonstrated to us by Kubrick using 3 archetypes: The Father (Hartman), Mother (Joker) and Child (Pyle).

The Father, Mother and Child are all in the Self’s Head. For the marine group to develop further, it must kill the Child, murder the Mother and cut all attachments with the Father. But though Hartman and Pyle are killed, Joker survives. He has resisted the military’s process of masculine purification.

Thus, this particular group of marines can only be fully integrated into the Mickey Mouse Club (where the Mickey Mouse club is symbolic of military ideology) once Joker himself is destroyed. It now becomes clear that, far from being a film about a hero or one character, the central character in “Full Metal Jacket” is really the “marine group”, of which, Joker is merely representative of the group’s self awareness and intellect.

As French philosopher Giles Deleuze states, “Kubrick’s films portray the world as a brain fated to malfunction from both external and internal causes”. Deleuze discusses Kubrick in the second volume of “Cinema” where he divides modern cinema into 2 camps, the cinema of the body and the cinema of the brain. Full Metal Jacket, he concludes, is less about Joker’s personal evolution, than the regression of Joker so that the marine-hive, as a single entity, may further evolve.

Author Bill Krohn expands on this, saying: “Kubrick told Newsweek that he wanted to “explode the narrative structure of film” and in Full Metal Jacket the first casualty of this explosion is the conventional notion of a character. For Full Metal Jacket is a film without a hero; its sole protagonist is a group-mind whose formation is shown in the boot camp scenes, most of which portray the process of indoctrination, with little reference to combat training per se.”

Krohn goes on to say: “Then, in the second section, we follow scattered pieces of the group-mind as they are set adrift in a world where scene follows scene with no apparent dramatic or thematic necessity, so that even Joker, the protagonist, whose acts and motives were starkly delineated by the constricting circumstances of boot camp, seems to withdraw from us, becoming a cipher as the film unfolds”

So from this point onwards, it becomes helpful to view “Full Metal Jacket” as a film in which the central character is the entire “marine hive” of which the “individual marines” are merely representative of the different aspects of this group’s personality.

In other words, the central character of “Full Metal Jacket” is the MARINE GROUP and the mouthpiece of this group’s intellect is Joker. Note that the film begins and ends with groups of men. When watching the film, what we’re really doing is watching a brain process the military’s indoctrination.

ACT 1: The brain is faced with indoctrination and is forced to question’s its identity. Is this you or is this still me? Though the mind is forced to kill its Father and its Child, it retains a sense of personal Self by protecting its intellect and femininity.

ACT 2: The brain is thrown into Vietnam, where it tries to reconcile its training in such a chaotic environment. The mind becomes confused and wayward. It’s been trained to kill and fuck the Feminine, but cannot do so until it locates Cowboy, where the notion of “Cowboys” is symbolic of its warrior nature.

ACT 3: The brain finds Cowboy. It grows focussed. When Cowboy is killed it grows vengeful. It steps forward and takes on the role of warrior. It has not sacrificed its intellect, it has not killed off its Female Self, rather it has learnt how to balance or reconcile these different archetypes. That is, the intellect (Joker) has also become the Cowboy and the Mother. The killer, the mind, the woman and the child, are all one. The perfect killer is formed. Far from being a one-dimensional killing machine, the perfect “marine” is a multi-faceted individual who retains his personal identity and YET is still able to be a dutiful slave or whore to military ideology.

So Pyle does not spare Joker, rather, only Joker has managed to survive the military’s indoctrination process. IE- the intellect has survived boot camp, but the child appears to have not.

53. Joker and Hartman (Mother and Father) confront Pyle in the Head. “What is this Mickey Mouse shit?” Hartman asks Joker. “Why aren’t you stomping Private Pyle’s guts out?”

But Joker is transfixed with fear. At this stage in the film, the intellect is still cowardly.

54. Prior to his suicide, Pyle mimics Hartman and speaks the title of the film: “Seven six two millimetre. Full metal jacket.” A full metal jacket bullet does not explode upon impact; instead it penetrates deep into the target. This bullet is normally used for target shooting, one of the few skills that Pyle excels at. So the bullet that causes Pyle’s death is also the vehicle through which he finally begins to succeed in the military. Recognising this irony, author Mario Falsetto says: “The depth of penetration characteristic of the full metal jacket bullet is symbolic of the depth to which the ideology of the Marine Corps has penetrated Pyle.”

Because Pyle assimilates Hartman’s teachings so rapidly, without negotiating a space for his own individuality, his identity as a Marine is flawed. His mimicry of Hartman, prior to his suicide, makes this failure apparent. Pyle is unable to separate his own identity from the one dictated to him by his drill instructor.

55. Pyle commits suicide. He shoots Hartman in the heart and himself in the head. Throughout the film, Kubrick hits us with continuous “hearts” and “minds” references. To win control of the marine, you have to win the battle of the heart (compassion) and the battle of the mind (intellect). Later in the film, Joker will wear a peace button on his heart and the words “born to kill” on his head.

56. In the first act, the winning of hearts and minds is symbolised by hard-hearted Hartman getting shot in the heart, followed by Pyle sitting down on his pile and shooting himself in the head in the Head.

In the final act, the winning of hearts and minds is symbolised by Rafterman shooting the sniper in the heart and Joker shooting her in the head. When the heart and mind are destroyed, you have total self-destruction. A symbolic suicide or killing of the Self.

Out of this destruction comes the birth of a new identity. As we will see, the two reporters in the group (Rafterman and Joker) will then be reborn and assimilated into the marine hive. With this total conversion, the group now becomes part of the Mickey Mouse Club.

57. Pyle is dead. While Joker manages to distance himself from the military’s indoctrination, Pyle suffers from an over-identification with this brutal ideology. Though the military has finally broken Pyle down and removed all infantile and feminine qualities, his masculinized training was so complete that he was "reborn" as a technological tool, a weapon, where all his feminine qualities were externalized onto his gun. Pyle's gun is "smooth" and "beautiful", every action "slick" and "sliding". He fetishizes his weapon because, unlike the other marines, he is still a child. He cannot distinguish between fighting and fun or between sex and gun.

ACT TWO: VIETNAM

 
"Capitalism decodes and deterritorializes with all its might." - Gilles Deleuze

Kubrick’s films always begin with a self-contained primer scene. These scenes brief the audience on the themes that will be explored throughout the film that follows. Because the second act of Full Metal Jacket is essentially another film with another set of themes, Kubrick chooses to highlight this with another self-contained primer sequence.

THE SECOND PRIMER SCENE

After Pyle’s malfunction, Kubrick fades to Vietnam. Rather than a jungle, we’re thrust into a land of billboards and advertisements. The two most prominent signs sell “Hynos toothpaste” and “photocopying”. As Nancy Sinatra’s “these boots are made for walking” warbles on the soundtrack, a Vietnamese hooker walks into view. We watch her from behind as she ambles up to Joker and Rafterman, sitting alongside a chaotic roundabout. “You got a girlfriend in Vietnam?” she asks. “Not just this minute,” Joker replies. After some bartering, a Vietnamese pickpocket steals Rafterman’s camera. The thief does a little Bruce Lee routine to scare off Joker, but Joker simply mimics the man with a little karate routine of his own. The pickpocket then hops onto a motorcycle and disappears into the traffic.

So during this sequence we're shown several important things:

a. The re-introduction of the feminine (whore)

b. The re-growth of Joker’s hair

c. Kubrick's rigid, military camera symbolically stolen

d. Chaotic traffic roundabout

e. Self-aware actors mimicking or ironically referencing Hollywood "macho" stereotypes

f. Music foreshadows sniper showdown

g. Soldiers replacing guns with true sex objects (Me so horney!)

h. Joker replacing camera with gun

i. Giant Photocopy sign symbolising self-referential nature of this act

j. Giant Hynos Toothpaste billboards

k. A motorcycle

Kubrick's first point is that, in the training environment, removing all infantile and feminine traces results in the perfect killing machine. Too perfect, in some respects. But when this conditioned marine reaches a wayward environment like Vietnam, the system collapses. The marine is no longer a masculinized killing machine because his base human instincts resurface. His hair re-grows and he seeks contact with the only collapsed, one-dimensional version of femininity he can relate to.

The first lines in Act 2's primer scene are thus symbolically important:

"You got a girlfriend in Vietnam?"

"Not just this minute."

Once the conditioned soldier is placed in a real combat environment, he gradually reverts. He seeks not intimacy with his gun, but real pussy. The sudden introduction of the feminine, personifies this.

The notion of a “stolen camera” is symbolic of the film’s sudden shift in tone. Kubrick’s precise military camera of the first act is stolen and replaced with something more wayward and loose. The sterile corridors of Paris Island have been replaced by the messy confusion of circular traffic. This highlights the giant shift in the marine’s psychology. They’re bombarded with stimuli and find the sudden cultural change to be disorienting. Similarly, while the first act is primarily filled with corridor shots (forward/backward motion), the second act is filled with horizontal shots (left/right motion). The marines must teach themselves how to navigate this new environment.

More importantly, the removal of the camera teaches us that this act will be about Joker losing his camera and acquiring his gun. In the first act, Joker becomes a reporter rather than a killer. He shoots pictures rather than people. As such, Joker chooses the camera over Hartman’s rifle. But by showing us a camera being stolen, Kubrick informs us that Vietnam will be about Joker losing his camera, picking up his gun and finally developing a war face. Simply put, Joker learns to reconcile the duality of being both a killer and reporter.

The notion of Joker mimicking Bruce Lee (the John Wayne of Asia) and pretending to be a macho karate star will continue over the next thirty five minuets. Joker pretends to be a “tough guy” by putting on a false persona. This is his full metal jacket, a protective suit which he wears, allowing him to maintain his identity whilst pretending to be part of the group. Though Joker recognises the artificiality of this “jacket”, the other marines do not. They readily assume their false, one-dimensional cultural macho-identities.

Hence all the “photocopy” signs, which let us know that Kubrick’s “war in Vietnam” will be treated as just another “Vietnam the movie”. It’s a self-reflexive copy of a copy. The military machine has given these men cultural identities not far removed from the one-dimensional macho-characterizations of war cinema. Thus, Kubrick doesn’t give us real characters. He gives us abstractions. Self-aware actors trapped in pre-constructed roles. Look at their macho posturing, their stupid notions of manhood (“I want to get out into the shit!”), they can’t talk to one another without puffing out their chests, putting on stale John Wayne accents and spitting out some clichéd characteristic of macho adolescence. They look at the camera, address the audience and grin mischievously. At this stage, their existence as a military product is as artificial as a film cast.

The “Hynos toothpaste sign”, which features a giant smiling head, links back to all the acts of “cleaning” and “flushing” which took place in Paris Island. As Hartman says, to be born again hard, a marine’s head must be clean. But here in Vietnam, the head is literally populated with spinning cars. It’s confused, fragmented and chaotic. This confusion, however, does not last. Later in the film, the “Hynos toothpaste Head” will reappear when Joker first ventures into combat. During this scene, the visual composition is such that the marine squad seems to be marching directly into the giant “Hynos Head”. Significantly, it is from this point onwards that Joker picks up his gun and takes his first steps toward embracing combat. In marching into the “Hynos head” and scrubbing it clean, Joker symbolically begins the process of cleaning his own head.

Another interesting aspect of this scene is the song, “These boots are made for walking”. This odd song sets the tone for the entire second act. We’re still reeling from the shock of Pyle’s suicide, when we’re greeted by the cheery voice of Nancy Sinatra. The contrast is unsettling. But of course the abruptness of this transition mirrors the marines’ state of psychological and cultural dislocation.

The song functions on other levels. Upon first listening, it seems inappropriate as an introduction to Vietnam; temporally distinct and culturally alien. But this is precisely the point. The Americans have come to Vietnam to impose their foreign value system upon it, to “sweep and clear” the faecal detritus of Communism from the streets in order to replace it with movie posters, billboards and product advertisements. It (and other songs in the film) represents a mythic 50’s idyll where Mickey Mouse is president and John Wayne is sheriff.

The subjective tracking shot of the Vietnamese prostitute, sauntering down the road, visually literalises the lyrics. We are actually watching her “boots awalking” as she plies her wares. Superimposed on this scene, Sinatra’s lyrics about simple infidelity take on dark new meanings. The whole song becomes a metaphor for the uneasy, mutually contemptuous relationship of parasitic need which existed between the South Vietnamese and their US ‘benefactors’.

“You keep saying you’ve got something for me,

Something called Love, but confess”

Here Kubrick simultaneously jabs at the confusion between love and sex and on another level, hints that the US force in Vietnam was motivated less by philanthropy than by self interest

"You've been a-messin' where you shouldn’t have been messin'"

This is a pretty succinct description of the entire US involvement in Vietnam. Describing American actions as "messing" humorously inverts their intention to clean up and restore order, and makes a mockery of the philosophy so vigorously espoused by Sergeant Hartman and the Marine Corps.

"One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you"

In other words, the ill-treated dog may one day bite the hand that reluctantly feeds it. $10 may buy "every-thin you want" in the short-term, but the price is outright hostility. The theft of Rafterman's camera graphically illustrates this theme. He sanctimoniously declares later: "We're supposed to be helping them, and they shit all over us every chance they get." But as the song demonstrates with brilliant economy, the Americans aren't interested in helping the Vietnamese; they're interested in fucking them.

"You keep playing where you shouldn't be playing,

And you keep thinking you'll never get burned...

But I've just found a brand new pack of matches...

And what he knows you ain't had time to learn"

The pack of matches is the brewing Vietnamese discontent at American meddling. The last line refers to the destructive potential of that spirit, the extent of which the philandering American troops "ain't had time to learn" yet.

“These boots are made for walking,

and that's just what they'll do,

one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”

This very pro-feminist line foreshadows the final sniper showdown. The debased female Other fights back with a vengeance. The very boots that whore themselves out to the Marines, trample all over them in the final act.

The song thus acts as a feminist counterpoint to both Hartman’s hyper-masculinized training and the introductory “Hello Vietnam” song. While Hartman conditions his men to “kill kill kill” the Feminine Other, here we learn that the Female Other does not exist and that young sniper is every bit as capable of becoming a hard-hearted soldier.

Finally, while the first act portrayed the marines as children, learning to pee and tie their shoes, the second act will portray their growth into adolescence. Like budding young men, the marines are now obsessed with sex, haggling over whores and looking for an easy fuck. During this period Kubrick thus awakens their sexuality. It’s here that the paradoxical duality of female identities are revealed: the female prostitute and female soldier- the only collapsed down and one-dimensional versions of femininity that the masculinized soldier can relate to.

So though this primer scene is initially confusing, it serves to briefly spell out the themes and signifiers that Kubrick will explore throughout the next hour.

SCENE BY SCENE BREAKDOWN CONTINUTED

"Because constructions of masculinity and femininity are being used in American mass culture to repress awareness of other forms of patriarchal dominance, it is methodologically important to maintain a distinction between patriarchy and masculinity. Masculinity is the primary mechanism for the articulation, institutionalization, and maintenance of the gendered system on which patriarchy is based ... It is itself constructed and manipulated by interests other than those defined by gender." - Susan Jeffords

58. Joker stands above a picture of Jesus. Though the film links “religious indoctrination” to “military indoctrination”, Joker is still outside the military and yet to be fully converted.

59. Each act contains references to “praying”. In the first act, the marines pray to their rifles (“You are minister’s of death, praying for war!”). In the second act, Joker and the hooker stand above a picture of Jesus praying. In the third act, the sniper prays for the marines to kill her.

The picture of Jesus has a greater significance, which will be explained later.

60. Da Nang Base. Joker and Rafterman walk toward their bunker. Rafterman tells Joker that he wishes to “go out into the shit” and “get some trigger time”. Though Rafterman is itching for combat, Joker is comfortable behind friendly lines. Rafterman complains that a "highschool girl" could do his job. Later, a girl of "highschool" age will slaughter his buddies.

61. During their “trigger time” conversation, a group of soldiers can be seen in the background playing basketball. Later, when Payback mentions “the thousand yard stare”, another marine mentions “rape” and “basketball”. Kubrick will link these semiotic clues later.

62. Rafterman complains that the Vietnamese treat the American’s with scorn despite their helpful intentions. Joker smiles at his friend’s nativity: “You’re thinking too hard, Rafterman. It’s just business.”

63. Joker and Rafterman attend a briefing by Lieutenant Lockhart. Lockhart is the symbolic opposite of Hartman. Like Joker, his “hard heart” is literally “locked”. He chooses to remain safely “in the rear with the gear”.

64. The briefing room features several Mickey Mouse toys. Each act thus includes a reference to Mickey Mouse.

ACT1: “What is this Mickey Mouse shit!?”

ACT2: Mickey Mouse toys

ACT3: Mickey Mouse Club

65. Joker informs Lockhart about a possible attack during the Tet Ceasefire. Lockhart dismisses Joker’s hunches as being fanciful. As the briefing continues, the marines discuss trivial news. Reports are fabricated, truth is distorted and terminology is discussed, all with the intention of falsifying or sanitising the war.

Note the sign behind the marines. It reads: “First to go, last to know. We defend to the death your right to be misinformed”.

66. Lockhart tells Joker that they run 2 basic stories: “Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants- winning of hearts and minds. And combat action that results in a kill- Winning the War.”

Here Kubrick links the notion of “toothbrushes” and “deodorant” with “hearts and minds”. Later, when the marines siege a ruined city, they sweep and clear a building that features a large Hynos toothpaste poster. Similarly, during the sniper confrontation, toothpaste and deodorant advertisements litter the walls behind the marines.

Toothbrushes and deodorant are two products which “clean” and “sanitize” the human body. Full Metal Jacket sees war as a form of physical, geographic and ideological purification. The marine must be psychologically cleaned out before he can sweep and clear “the shit” for the implementation of a more sexy, lean and beautiful ideology.

67. Joker, Rafterman, Payback and the other marines are in their bunks. Kubrick once again uses props to highlight character traits. Joker is writing in a notebook whilst Payback reads a pornographic magazine. Joker’s bed is bracketed by empty cups and books, whilst Payback’s bed is bracketed by beer kegs, pornography and cassettes.

Significantly, Payback is the only marine smoking and reading porn. The others read novels or polish their rifles. Smoking, smoke grenades and Cotab cigarette posters will have greater significance as the film progresses.

68. While talking to the other marines, Joker once again puts on his John Wayne persona. He puffs out his chest and pretends to be tough. Payback sees through him, though, and mocks Joker’s posturing.

69. Payback tells the marines about the “thousand yard stare” and then informs Rafterman that he too will one day have it.

70. Stork mentions “rape” and “basketball” immediately after hearing about the “thousand yard stare”. Murder makes him hard. This echoes an earlier juxtaposition in which Cowboy and Joker had “hard ons” whilst thinking about Pyle and his rifle. We see the marine persona developing here. Erections have been replaced with rape. The marines want to actualise their rifle fucking fantasies.

NOTE: Stork mentions "five black dudes raping a white chick". Later, the film will end with 5 dudes (one soldier will mysteriously disappear) standing over a "raped" chick (the female sniper) who, in a deleted scene, then has her head cut off with a cutlass and played with like a basketball by Animal Mother.

Also notice the subtle "dualism" or "mirroring" echoes in the film. The "black dudes" and "white chick" later become "white dudes" and a "yellow chick". Then there's the fact that Stork, a mythical bird who "brings babies" is talking about rape. The film is filled with these direct contrasts (even its marketing tagline refers to "blowing" and "sucking", opposed actions which also have sexual connotations).

71. NVA troops attack the base. Seconds earlier, the song “Chapel of Love” played on the soundtrack. Full Metal Jacket contains numerous references to rituals of birth, growth and religion. The film treats war as a young man’s ritualistic rites of passage, in which the military attempts to instil a new religion (by the subverting of sexual energy and channelling it into warfare). In this new religion, Marines are holders of a sacred position. They’re “Ministers of death, praying for war.”

During the “Chapel of Love” scene, the marines run toward combat, while the following lyrics play:

“Goin' to the chapel

And we're gonna get ma-a-arried

Goin' to the chapel

And we're gonna get ma-a-arried

Gee, I really love you

And we're gonna get ma-a-arried

Goin' to the chapel of love”

“The Chapel of Love” is combat itself. In this scene, Joker and Rafterman are “going to the chapel”, a place where the two reporters shall finally be married to the guns they so lovingly named in the first act. As Hartman said in boot camp: “You will be married to this piece, this weapon of iron and wood, and you will be faithful!”

Joker and Rafterman thus unwillingly take part in another stage of the military’s indoctrination process. Before this scene, Joker is a reporter, comfortable behind enemy lines. In the very next scene he’s happy to trade his camera for a gun and “go into the shit."

72. “Chapel of Love” is another moment in a long line of religious references found throughout the film:

"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"

“You will be born again hard!”

“God has a hard on for Marines.”

“We keep Heaven packed with fresh souls!"

“Chaplin Charlie”

"Ready! Pray!"

"Marines die, that's what we're here for. The Marine Corp lives on. That means you live on!"

“Chapel of love.”

"I Am Become Death" (religious text quote).

"She's praying." (the sniper)

"Today is Christmas! There will be a magic show at 09:30!” (a Kubrick joke, linking Christianity to silly magic tricks)

“Chapel of Love” has some further ironies in that it counterpoints the Vietnamese “pagan” cease-fire festivities with a song about a Christian ceremony. The fact that the first combat Kubrick shows us is the Tet Offensive, is also another dualism reference (ie- countrywide war during a nationally recognised ceasefire).

73. Joker runs towards combat. He is about to be married to his M14. He sets himself up in a pillbox, grabs a machine gun and waits for the enemy. “I ain’t ready for this shit,” Joker growls nervously. It is at this moment, when first faced with the possibility of murder, that we first see the “peace button” pinned to Joker’s soft heart.

74. The enemy attacks and Joker fires. But the enemy is distant, faceless, well beyond the thousand-yard stare. Though Joker has relished his brief taste of combat, he is not fully converted.

75. Unlike most war films, Kubrick shoots combat with a sense of dry detachment. His camera is static, distant and very un-involving. The audience gets no sense of thrill or euphoria. We simply watch little Vietnamese men running to their deaths. There is no danger, no pleasure, no aestheticization of combat, none of the orgasmic spectacle that we’ve come to expect from war films. Kubrick seems morally opposed to glorifying violence. As the second act progresses, Kubrick will short-circuit our near pornographic lust for decontextualized violence by subverting the testosterone fuelled conventions of most war films.

76. We’re back in Lockhart’s briefing room. The camera circles the room until Joker’s “Born to Kill” helmet is revealed on the table. In front of the helmet lies Joker’s Polaroid camera. Behind the helmet lies a pile of guns and ammunition.

CameraàBorn to KillàGun

Kubrick’s camera circles further until a little yellow fan blocks the words “Born to Kill”. Joker has tasted combat, but, as Rafterman articulates at the end of the film, his head is blocked until the “shit hits the fan” and he “turns to the rifle”.

77. Lockhart orders Joker to “go out into the shit”. Joker grins and accepts the offer.

78. Joker and Rafterman take a ride in a helicopter. What’s odd about this sequence is that it begins with a shot of a helicopter’s shadow skimming across the landscape (right to left). Kubrick then cuts to a reverse shot of a completely different helicopter (left to right). He then cuts to a forward shot of the terrain rolling under us.

Considering the fact that Full Metal Jacket is about Jung’s Shadow, it seems ironic that Kubrick, for the fourth time in his filmography, would yet again goof up and show the shadow of the camera crew’s helicopter. Is this a reference to the famous helicopter shadow in The Shining? Is it a genuine goof? Why not edit the shot a few seconds earlier so that the shadow doesn’t appear? Perhaps Kubrick just doesn’t care. As he said once in an interview, “realism is a hopelessly ponderous way to proceed.”

Anyway, what’s more interesting is the reverse shot itself. The second half of Full Metal Jacket is packed with such dual motions. Our heroes are always travelling in one direction, whilst columns of people, stretchers or vehicles, travel in the opposite direction. These opposing movements are present in virtually all scenes. Consider the Mickey Mouse Chant, which itself features a crowd of marines suddenly switching directions. Kubrick breaks the 180 degree rule, but we don’t notice due to the consistent chanting.

This notion of simultaneous dual motions is only abandoned when the marines are focussed on combat. At this moment, their opposing dualities are reconciled and they fixate on violence.

79. The Huey helicopter has become an important symbol in the iconography of the Vietnam War. In terms of technology, they’re the one signifier which immediately distinguishes Vietnam War cinema from the cinema of other conflicts.

Full Metal Jacket, however, uses the Sikorsky UH 34D. While this is factually accurate (during the Vietnam War, the marines were the last branch of the service to get new equipment and were, for the most part, still flying the dated UH34 at the time of Tet), audiences were simply not accustomed to seeing anything other than hordes of Hueys in a Vietnam war movie.

The near-mythical Huey is not the only piece of iconography to be rejected by Kubrick. He trades the jungles of Oliver Stone’s Platoon for an urban landscape, he trades the psychedelic, drug induced hell of Apocalypse Now, for a more ordered sense of brutality, and rather than populate his film with rock and roll tunes, Kubrick goes for a more idiosyncratic soundtrack. The result is a film which contains few of the visual or audio touchstones of the Vietnam War genre.

80. The helicopter’s door gunner, a psychotic man with a M60, fires wildly at passing civilians. Joker and Rafterman are disgusted by his actions. Joker’s line, “How can you shoot WOMEN and CHILDREN?”, articulates the military’s dehumanisation process, which systematically seeks to remove all traces of the FEMININE and INFANTILE.

As the door gunner shows, the callous eradication of both these traits results in a one-dimensional killer akin to the malfunctioned Pyle.

81. Kubrick shoots the door gunner sequence with extreme detachment. Rather than demonise the door gunner, Kubrick seems to keep his distance. The gunner’s last line, “Ain’t war hell?”, has an ironic ring to it. Most war films portray the American forces as being young men trapped in a hellish nightmare which they must dutifully endure. But in Full Metal Jacket, the Marines spend boot camp actively praying for hell. They want to go out into the shit, and when they finally get there, they’re largely insulated from hell, safe in their helicopters or marching behind their tanks.

82. Joker and Rafterman touchdown and, coincidentally, meet Lieutenant Touchdown. Joker informs the Lieutenant that he is looking for Cowboy. Touchdown points him in the right direction.

83. Note again the repeated use of dual motion. Even the helicopter that flies over Joker’s head, as he speaks to the Lieutenant, mimics the earlier helicopter pattern. It travels to the left, then to the right, and then directly ahead.

This notion of forward motion, despite conflicting dualities (left/right), is present throughout the film. Joker himself is travelling forward toward a specific fate, despite his attempts to maintain an awareness of some inner duality.

In the first act, Hartman went to great lengths to stress the differences between Left and Right. Once in Vietnam, however, Joker’s lefts and rights seem to be conflicted. Only once his left and his right, his head and his heart, have been symbolically joined (forming a fully wired circle), can he be a fully functioning marine.

84. The film contains numerous references to sports. Marines are told to “jump on the team for the big win”, they speak of “batting orders” “calling the plays”, “playing a little ball for Notre Dame”, are told about “hardballs”, “golf balls”, make jokes about basketball, are named Touchdown and Eightball, and wear football helmets whilst beating one another in boot camp.

The film is thus preoccupied with “ball games”. Before you can get your balls blown off for your country, you must first master the sports ball. As such, the film treats the military as an X rated extension of traditional masculinization processes, both of which are involved in creating or upholding traditional gender identities.

Note: A filmed but omitted scene has Animal Mother cutting off the sniper’s head and playing ball with it. We thus have another linkage between sport, violence and sex.

85. Touchdown informs Joker that the fighting is getting heavier. “Outstanding, sir,” Joker grins, “we taking care of business?”

Once again, war is seen to be a purely economic exercise. A business venture.

86. Joker and Rafterman stand before a pit of lime covered corpses. Lieutenant Cleeves, from Hartford Connecticut, informs Joker that the victims were called in for political re-education and then shot.  For one to be re-educated and made to embrace a new political ideology, the old ideology must first be eradicated, often by the use of military force. It is here that Joker first mentions “the Jungian thing”. “Re-educating” and “helping” is ironically contrasted with “murder” and “corpses”.

87. Cleeves smiles for Rafterman’s camera. Later, Crazy Earl will similarly pose for Rafterman in front of a Vietnamese corpse. Both scenes imply that the Marines are likewise killing in the name of “political re-education”.

88. An elderly Colonel berates Joker. The Colonel is upset that Joker wears a peace button on his heart and a “born to kill” message on his head. The Colonel wants Joker to wire his compassion to his aggression, to merge these two dual instincts and get his shit together.

89. Joker and Rafterman amble up to a pagoda. Inside are the Lusthog squad. Joker is about to wire his shit together.

90. Joker passes through a circular “moon door” and meets Cowboy. Symbolically, the intellect (Joker) has found the warrior (Cowboy). The intellect and the killer are wired together and the circle is now complete. From this moment onwards, Kubrick will abandon his opposing dual motions and the marines will now all flow in the same direction. The narrative itself will now gradually focus on combat rather than aimless wandering.

91. “Here or there, samey same,” Joker says to Cowboy. At this moment Kubrick cuts to another reverse shot. The implication is that Joker and Cowboy are “samey same”. This was made clear during boot camp, in which Joker and Cowboy were always side-by-side and were the only marines to wear glasses.

Thus, Cowboy is the masculinized, fully indoctrinated version of Joker. By “finding Cowboy”, the intellect has symbolically “found” its hard heart. It must now venture out into combat and earn the thousand-yard stare.

92. Joker meets Animal Mother. Pyle and Animal Mother are similar in build and facial structure. While Cowboy is the fully indoctrinated version of Joker, Animal Mother is the fully indoctrinated version of Pyle. We thus realise that the Lusthog Squad is really a reflection of the boot camp squad. Snowball becomes Eightball, Pyle becomes Animal, Joker becomes Cowboy. These are the end products of Hartman’s conditioning. The Marine Group is not completed, however, until Joker (and his double Rafterman) have been completely won over.

93. The song “Wooly Bully” plays when Joker meets Animal Mother. The lyrics in this song echo the confrontation between the two men. It speaks of a “woolly bully”, a bully who is wrapped in soft wool. In other words, the song speaks of someone who pretends to be tough on the inside, but is really soft on the outside. This echoes Joker’s remarks at the start of the film, where he calls the USMC a training camp for the “phoney tough and the crazy brave”. In this scene it is made clear that Joker is the “phoney tough” or “woolly bully”.

“Hattie told Mattie

About a thing she saw

Had two big horns

And a woolly jaw”

Thus, despite his “big horns”, Joker has a woolly jaw. He has no bite. This scene can thus be read as Animal Mother, the leader of the tribe, sniffing out the newcomer and recognising him as a fraud.

Anima Mother: You seen much combat?

Joker: I’ve seen a little on TV.

Animal Mother: You’re a real comedian.

Joker: Well, they call me the Joker.

During this confrontation, the song’s lyrics openly taunt Joker, the singer laughing as he mocks Joker’s underlying cowardice…

“Wooly bully, woolly bully

Wooly bully, woolly bully

Wooly bully”

Animal Mother, who instantly recognises Joker as a fraud rather than a killer, then steps forward and says…

Animal Mother: Well I’ve got a joke for you. I’m going to tear you a new asshole.

Joker then immediately puffs out his chest and pretends to be riled up. He puts on his fake war face and assumes his John Wayne persona. Meanwhile, on the soundtrack, the following words sound…

“Watch it now, watch it now,

Here it comes, here it comes…”

Joker then steps up to Animal Mother and says…

Joker: Well pilgrim, only after you eat the peanuts outta my shit.

The “here it comes” is precisely timed to fit a pause in the dialogue. It anticipates Joker displaying his “woolly jaw” and urges the audience to “watch closely for it”. The other marines fall for this act, but Animal Mother isn’t convinced.

Animal Mother: You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?

But of course Joker does not walk the walk. The lines…

“Don’t you take no chance

Don’t you be L7

Come and learn to dance”

…can be interpreted as Animal Mother challenging Joker to not be a square (L7=square) and to “come learn to dance”. In other words, he’s being told to embrace his killer instincts, merge with the Cowboy, complete his circle, wire his shit together, flush out his head gear, and “jump on the team and come in for the big win”.

94. The phrase “I am become death” is written on Animal’s helmet. This is taken from the “Bhagavad-Gita” (song of God), a Hindu scripture. Robert Oppenheimer, perhaps the most guilt stricken of the Los Alamos scientists who invented the atomic bomb, famously quoted part of it on national TV in the late 50s:

“I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”

That part of this quote would appear on the helmet of a killing machine like Animal Mother, who is utterly free of guilt, is another ironic dualism reference. But more importantly, we now understand that Animal Mother is already dead (ie his “feminine” side is dead). The “birthday” of the dead NVA soldier reinforces this. Only the “dead” survive the institution of war. Pyle refused to remain a zombie and, in his psychosis, shot himself. Pyle thus becomes death and morphs into Animal Mother.

So war is the ultimate instrument of patriarchal natural selection and engendering. Its “survivors” are resurrected or reborn as symbols of society’s manufactured masculine identity. Kubrick is thus arguing that nobody escapes it and everybody- male and female – contributes to it.

95. Crazy Earl tells Rafterman to take a picture of a dead Vietnamese soldier. This echoes an earlier scene in which Lieutenant Hartford had his picture taken in front of dead Vietnamese. The marines see the enemy as their “dead brothers”.

96. Crazy Earl looks down the camera and speaks directly to the audience. When he takes off the NVA’s hat, the word “boo!” is seen on Crazy Earl’s helmet. What’s more, the singer on the soundtrack lets loose a frightened wail. This contrasts with the sound of marines laughing in the background like a canned laughter track.

As the second act progresses, “Full Metal Jacket” will increasingly call attention to itself as being “Vietnam the movie”. Rather than strive for realism, Kubrick calls attention to the artificiality of his film. The Vietnam segment itself ends with a documentary sequence and marines walking off into a cinema.

97. Only when he talks about killing NVA gooks, does Crazy Earl cover the American colours on the corpse’s soldier with the palm of his hand; he cannot slaughter his enemy whilst also viewing them as brothers.

98. With the symbolic merging of Joker and Cowboy, we can now jump directly into combat. Whilst the second act of the film has previously been awkward, confusing, wayward and frustrating, with the merger of intellect and warrior, we can now enter the shit.

The audience gets excited.

99. The Lusthogs march into a city under the command of Lieutenant Touchdown. Note that the authority figures protecting Joker from the big, bad world, become less and less authoritative as the film progresses. At first we have the stern and menacing Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, then we have the cowardly Lockhart, then we have the friendly Lieutenant Touchdown, then the goofy old Colonel, then we have Crazy Earl, who’s hardly much of an authority figure at all, then we have Cowboy, Joker’s best friend. With the removal of Cowboy, Joker is finally under the command of the anarchic Animal Mother. With no authority lording over him, Joker is now free to kill kill kill!

100. As they march into the city, the troops and tanks are arranged like toy soldiers.

101. Mortar rounds hammer the Lusthogs. Lieutenant Touchdown is killed. As the film unfolds, the command structure will systematically be eliminated, killed off one by one, until Animal Mother takes charge.

102. The marines advance into the city. Most Kubrick films feature a “Star Gate shot” which represents a character symbolically “evolving” or “regressing”.

Examples:

2001: A Space Odyssey: Bowman hurtles through a Star Gate and emerges as a new being.

The Shining: Jack races through the hedge maze and regresses into a primal ape.

While the pseudo-documentary steadicam shot, which follows the marines into the city, isn’t as slick as the one that follows Tom Cruise throughout the Somerton Mansion, it nevertheless conveys a similar evolution. Joker is symbolically cleaning out his head and taking his first steps toward becoming a killer.

This “Star Gate shot” is framed so that a giant poster of a smiling head, which advertises Hynos toothpaste, occupies the upper half of the screen. The marines are thus advancing into this Head, with the intention of flushing out its contents. Earlier in the film, Lieutenant Lockhart linked “toothpaste” and “deodorant” to “winning hearts and minds”. Thus, the military is about to clean, to sweep and clear, to flush out and eventually win, Joker’s heart and mind.

This notion of “marines marching into a Head” and “flushing it out” echoes the scene in which Pyle sat upon a toilet and shot himself in the head in the Head. Both scenes deal with literal violence, but also symbolic indoctrination.

103. The first time we saw the “Hynos Head”, it was hanging above a traffic roundabout, numerous cars and people darting about in busy circles. The second time we see the “Hynos Head”, we’re confronted with the skeletal remains of burnt cars, an unnatural amount of discarded car tyres, empty streets and dilapidated buildings. If, as Deleuze says, the first scene conveys the idea of a brain, busy and confused, the second scene shows a mind that has been violently pulverised into submission.

104. The marines advance into the Head. Hand Job gets shot by enemy fire. In retaliation, the marines pepper a building with ammunition, firing incessantly at walls and windows. There’s a sense of overkill, of profound uselessness, in this sequence. When the marines finally stop firing, a trickle of Vietnamese soldiers run out like ants.

Note: The building is called Leyna, another feminized symbol.

105. Crazy Earl reloads his gun and waits for the Vietnamese to reappear. They scurry across the horizon. Crazy Earl shoots and bags himself 3 or 4 kills. He smiles.

106. Kubrick sexualises Crazy Earl’s kills. Not only does Animal Mother have a cigarette in his helmet and Crazy Earl a smoking pipe in his, but the “kills” take place before a giant “Cotab cigarettes” poster.

So what we have here are a gang of men symbolically raping Leyna (the Female Other), and then lighting a smoke after sex. These sexual metaphors, linking violence to intercourse, will be repeated throughout the film. Later, while a Cotab poster looms over his shoulder, Animal Mother will light up a cigarette before fucking the second hooker. Similarly, the marines light up smoke grenades prior to hunting the sniper. Likewise, the Vietnamese pimp offers a hooker to the marines with the line: "Suckee, fuckee, SMOKE CIGARETTE in the pussy, she give you everything you want. Long time."

107. The song “Surfin Bird” kicks in. The song is infections and funs and conveys the euphoria and orgasmic pleasure of getting a “confirmed kill”. Joker and the audience are high on violence.

As the song plays, Kubrick then cuts to a column of tanks marching into the city. The pleasure of one man getting a couple kills is expanded to the sheer joy of an entire military killing and dominating with hardware.

“A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word

A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word.”

The lyrics also resemble the sound of helicopter rotors, the staccato beat of the song mimicking the sound of chopper propellers. The cryptic line "the bird is the word" also alludes to the only other "bird reference" in the film, the character of Stork, who's sole purpose in the film was to introduce the linkage between "rape" and "war".

Moments later, the repeated lyrics…

“Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow

Papa-oma-mow-mow”

....convey the sound of gunfire.

But this pleasure and militaristic enthusiasm is undermined by framing the sequence with a shot of a medical helicopter evacuating injured soldiers. The joy of combat thus degenerates into the quirky sight of corpses being packed into a chopper. The scene then degenerates further into a shot of a director (who looks like Kubrick from behind) filming troops hiding below a wall as American tanks hammer a city from afar.

Thus, with each cut, Kubrick distances us further and further from the orgasmic introduction of the song. To further distance us, the cast then acknowledges that they are actors in “Vietnam the movie” and liken their heroism and actions to that of a “Cowboys and Indians” flick in which the “gooks play the Indians”.

What started out as a moment of pleasure degenerates into a critique of films which abuse such pleasures. Kubrick distances us from the joy of violence, until we’re forced to process what we’re seeing as dryly as possible. The orgasmic pleasure of Crazy Earl’s kill, the audience’s joy of finally experiencing combat, is removed, quickly followed in the next scene by a documentary sequence which further short circuits the narrative.

The notion of a “director within the film”, “birds”, “helicopters” and “surfing” also serves to deconstruct “Apocalypse Now’s” famous “Ride of the Valkyries” sequence. In Coppola’s film, American muscle is flexed in order to clear a beach for surfing. It’s a fun sequence in which we cheer at the killing of Vietnamese. We get caught up in the cinematic spectacle of American helicopters assaulting a coastal village. But for all its bravura, Coppola’s surfing bird sequence plays more like the Death Star Trench Run. Kubrick’s surfing birds, however, acts as a deconstruction of such war movie clichés, hence why his earlier helicopter sequence is filled with such abrasive, dry detachment:

“How can you shoot women and children?”

“Easy, you just don’t lead them as much. Ain’t war hell?”

The irony is that in Kubrick’s film it is the little figures on the ground who are in hell. While Coppola urges his cast to “don’t look at the camera, just run on by! Don’t look at the camera!”, Kubrick’s stand in director has his cast address the camera directly. The result is complex, calling into question how films see war, how warriors perceive themselves and how audiences themselves interpret the myths of combat, as sold to them through TV etc.

108. The marines look down at the corpse of Hand Job. Rafterman points out that at least Hand Job died for a good cause. Animal Mother mocks Rafterman’s naivety: “Flush out your head gear, new guy. You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I’m going to get my balls blown off for a word, my word is poontang!”

109. Hand Job’s death is another symbolic killing. The point here- in military training/colonisation- is that marine recruits are only permitted to have hard-ons when in the company of their rifles. Kubrick makes explicit this association between adrenaline provoked testosterone levels and rifle-related combat exhilaration at many junctures during the course of the film.

But Hand Job, now lying dead before the circle of marines, was “jerking off at least ten times a day”, including a further performance outside the “head shrinker’s office”. In military demagoguery, only a marine’s rifle, as a techno-phallic substitute, is allowed to be jerked off. Anything else and the head shrinker flushes you out of the Head.

As Hartman says about the marine’s rifles, “this is the only piece of pussy you maggots are going to get!” It is Hartman’s job to merge violence and sex by associating the rifle with sexual pleasure.

Note: With typical Kubriclian symmetry, each act ends with the marines facing a corpse.

ACT1: Pyle

ACT2: Handjob

ACT3: The sniper

110. The marines are interviewed by a documentary crew. Each marine conveys a different view point on the war. Animal Mother is practical and thinks purely in terms of military objectives. Rafterman is naive and itching for combat. He talks about “turning to the rifle” when the “shit hits the fan”. Crazy Earl does not know whether America belongs in Vietnam but says that he belongs in Vietnam, implying that such a military persona can only comfortably exist in combat. Eightball makes a strange distinction between being “alive” and “free”. He sees death as freedom. Doc Jay believes that the Vietnamese should take care of their own business and that America has no right to be interfering. Cowboy, who seems a bit confused of himself in the interviews, complains that there are no horses in Vietnam. Donlon naively thinks that they’re doing good in Vietnam but complains that the Vietnamese don’t appreciate his efforts. Joker, of course, mocks his own duality, talking about the magnificence of Vietnamese society but also stating that he wishes to kill “people of an ancient culture”.

Far from being one-dimensional killers, these marines are all distinct, supremely individual, entertaining different viewpoints despite being slaves to a very singular ideology.

THE SECOND PROSTITUTE SEQUENCE

Full Metal Jacket is broken down into 3 distinct parts.

ACT ONE:

PRIMER: Skulls being shaven

PARIS ISLAND BOOT CAMP

ACT TWO:

PRIMER: Joker and Rafterman denied the whore

VIETNAM THE MOVIE

ACT THREE:

PRIMER: Marines finally win the whore

SNIPER SHOWDOWN

CODA: Mickey Mouse Chant

The second act of the film is bracketed by scenes in which the marines barter with whores. In the first “whore scene”, sex is INTERRUPTED by a stolen camera. In the second “whore scene”, sex is INSTIGATED by the promise of trading guns. Significantly, only Rafterman and Joker are present in the first scene, whilst all the marines are present in the second. It is the very act of entering the cinema for the purpose of “paying” and “fucking” the hooker, which leads to Rafterman and Joker becoming part of the Marine Group. This unseen act of “paying” and “fucking” the hooker in the cinema, is then symbolised as the Sniper Showdown, a sequence in which the marines “payback”, “kill”, “rifle-fuck” and “rape” the little girl.The film makes implicit the connection between the hookers and the sniper in several ways. Throughout the film, Full Metal Jacket equates sex with violence, guns with cocks, fucking with murder. Consider how the ARVN officer uses the phrase “boom-boom” to describe sex (“no boom-boom with soul brother”), a phrase which is repeated during the showdown with the sniper (“no more boom-boom for this baby-san”). “Boom-boom” is also the sound of gunfire. Similarly, the term “baby-san” was used by Eightball during the prostitute scene (“This baby-san looks like she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.” Eightball also refers to the prostitute as “meat”, after showing her his “meat” (“don’t get between a dog and his meat”). Later, the sniper is referred to as “meat” (“she’s dead meat”). The sniper is also linked to the first hooker (“be sure you only fuck the ones that cough”), when she coughs on her death bed. Joker even comments that the dying sniper is praying, whilst earlier, in the first whore scene, the hooker stood beside a picture of Jesus praying. Similarly, when Joker asks “what should we do with her?” when gazing down at the sniper, he gets the reply “Fuck her”, which we assume is exactly what the marines do the hooker in the theatre.

With the killing of the sniper, Joker also acquires the thousand-yard stare. Earlier, this stare was linked to “ball games” and “rape”, and we already know that Kubrick deleted a famous scene that featured Animal Mother playing ball with the sniper’s decapitated head. The killing of the sniper itself is filmed like a sex scene, the sniper sprawled on the floor, panting, her body jolting gently. Kubrick shoots the scene in medium close ups like a sex act, and has Rafterman rock his rifle before his cock, whilst the other marines let loose a chorus of “hardcores” and “fucking hardcores”.

So Kubrick links the hooker and the sniper numerous times (meat/baby-san/sister/boom boom/coughing/praying/fuck her). Thus, whilst in the first “whore scene” Joker is thwarted in his attempt to fuck the hooker, in the second “whore scene” he has evolved to the point where he can fuck the hooker, whereby the act of “fucking” or “raping” is symbolic of the “killing” of the Feminine Other, an act which itself is suicidal.

121. There are two long fades in the film. The first occurs after Pyle’s death and the second occurs after Animal Mother leads the whore into the cinema. These fades serve to separate acts 1, 2 and 3.

122. Silence. The marines walk through a bombed out city. They travel from right to left. Using reverse shots, however, Joker is seen to be travelling in the opposite direction.

122.b. Next to a Shell Oil Logo, the words "Tiep tuc phung su quy ngai" appear. This could mean: "To always serve satan, your excellency", "Always humbly serving you faithfully", "Always serving and laying down (literally: to lay prostate) before you faithfully", "To always serve and lay down before your excellence" and "Continually and faithfully serving the banks".

The various translations all depend on where diacritical marks lay. So as you can see, the phrase is either a rather innocent corporate logo ("Always serving and protecting you faithfully" etc) or something more cynical (literally "serving fiends/devils/the banks" etc) depending on where the diacritical marks lay.

Shell controlled half of Vietnam's oil supply during the war, and some books mention the way the company fuelled and funded both sides of the conflict and helped mobilize the less developed South (after the war, most of the oil rich off-shore fields went to Standard Oil). Whether Kubrick is alluding to all that, I don't know. It's quite far fetched. But then, the film was filmed on an abandoned gas works, linking the film, in a way, directly to fossil fuels.

123. Crazy Earl picks up an innocuous looking child’s toy. The toy explodes and Crazy Earl dies. Later, a seemingly innocent young girl will likewise pick off the marines.

123b. Cowboy calls Murphy at “Hotel One Actual”. Cowboy is given command of the Lusthogs.

124. Silence. The marines walk through a bombed out city. They travel from left to right. Joker is now travelling in synch with his comrades.

125. The marines are lost and confused. They’re humping back and forth, left and right, and have no idea where they are.

126. Cowboy and Eightball consult a map. “We’re here, and we should be here?” Cowboy asks, pointing to the right and left of the map respectively. “That’s right,” Eightball nods.

(Note Cowboy’s incompetence throughout the third act. He’s always calling for instructions and during this conversation, subtly leaves it up to Eightball to make the final decision.)

127. Eightball is sent ahead to scout a safe path through the city. Signs labelled “MY TOAN” and “TAMPHUON” protrude from the surrounding buildings. These are phonetic jokes, “MY TOAN” meaning “my town” and “TAM PHUONG” resembling “tampon”. Like the “LEYNA” sign seen earlier, this is another humorous symbol of the Feminine Other.

NOTE:

From Tuttle compact Vietnamese/English dictionary:

"My Toan" may mean "All Mine", "all good" or "Perfect little beauty"

Tam Phuong" may mean "Cleaning Squad" or "Cleaning Merchants"

Note that "My Toan" appears above the Sniper and "Tam Phuong" above the marines.

128. A sniper shoots Eightball in the leg. Eightball collapses. The marines instinctively fire into the city. Like the earlier battle, there’s a sense of profound uselessness. For all the ammunition spent, for all their gear and technology, they hit nothing.

129. The sniper shoots Eightball in the arm. She hopes to lure the others in. Cowboy, still cowardly, calls for tank support. He is denied tank support. Too scared to venture into the city, Cowboy orders the men to stay put. Doc Jay disobeys Cowboy and runs off to help Eightball.

131. The sniper shoots Doc Jay. The marines once again pepper the city with fire, and rockets. They hit nothing. Cowboy orders the men to abandon Eightball and Doc Jay, but the other marines protest. Animal Mother breaks free of the group and ventures into the city himself. He instinctively knows that there is only one sniper.

132. During the interview segments, Doc Jay and Eightball were the only two marines to question America’s involvement in Vietnam. These two “weak” marines are thus “flushed out” of the Lusthogs. As Cowboy says, “Doc Jay and Eightball are wasted”. If Kubrick portrays the military as being obsessively concerned with ideological and masculine purification, these two men are seen as inferior waste products who must be flushed out, leaving behind a clean, lean, beautiful squad.

133. No-Doze, Stutten, Dunlon, Rock, Joker, Rafterman and Cowboy head off to help Animal Mother. However, when the camera rises and the marines leave the safety of the wall, we see only six marines heading out. One’s missing.

In the horizontal tracking shot that follows, we then see 5 marines linking up with Animal Mother. Two marines are now missing.

So with each cut, the number of marines decreases by one. This number changes in the subsequent reverse shot, where Kubrick pauses and shows us eight marines. The payoff of these subliminal shots occurs during the film’s climax, when only five marines stand over the sniper’s corpse. Two marines are once again missing.

As author Padraig Henry writes, “The two missing marines are an intentional omission on Kubrick’s part: the sniper is the sixth “marine”, and Pyle is the seventh, and their destruction by Joker represents Joker’s destruction of what remains that is feminine, innocent and infantile in his own brutalised identity. All that remains of the hollowed-out Joker is his “full metal jacket”, a soul-less retrogressive zombie in a metallic shell. Hence the appeal of the Mickey Mouse Club song in the final shot (and Joker’s banal articulation in voice-over of his pre-adolescent sexual fantasy): a hopeless yearning for the safety of childhood feminine/motherly nurturing, an emotional nurturing which boot-camp and war have obliterated.”

134. For the fourth time, the uncertain Cowboy contacts Murphy for guidance. Before Murphy can respond, the sniper shoots Cowboy in the heart.

135. The sniper fires at Cowboy from a dark hole shaped like the state of Texas. As Cowboy looks up, the camera zooming in on the distant fissure, we know that he has seen not just the sniper, but also his very own destiny.

Hartman mentions Texas twice in boot camp, first when praising JFK’s assassin, and secondly when deriding Cowboy with the lines, “only steers (cows) and queers come from Texas.”

The implication is thus that in Hartman’s eyes, Cowboy, in being both “cow” and “queer”, in being an “effeminate cowboy”, deserves to be slain by this unseen, but obviously superior, male warrior.

(Note: JFK was assassinated in Texas, sniped from an overhead window)

136. The marines drag Cowboy to safety and huddle over his dying body.

Cowboy: “Ohh, don’t shit me, Joker! Don’t shit me!”

Joker: “I wouldn’t shit you, man. You’re my favourite turd.”

Like Doc Jay and Eightball, two other “wasted” marines, Cowboy is about to be “shit” out of the squad.

137. As they stand around Cowboy’s corpse, a tall pillar can be seen directly behind the marines. The composition strongly resembles several scenes in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, in which apes and humans cluster around the monolith. And like those scenes, this compositions conjures up a feeling of evolution, of some profound change taking place within Joker.

It is at this moment that Animal Mother walks up to Joker, hellish flames dancing across his face. “Let’s get some payback,” Animal says. Joker agrees with his Shadow: “Okay.”

138. The marines toss smoke grenades. This isn’t Vietnam anymore. This is a Dantesque hell; metallic sounds, primitive shapes, dark shadows and smouldering flames.

139. Animal Mother shouts, “Watch that hole!” To the left of the screen is the famous “Nixon Hole”, carved into the wall by Kubrick’s art department with special acid. The hole resembles the iconic silhouette of Richard Nixon. Nixon successfully negotiated a ceasefire with the North Vietnamese, and was responsible for ending American involvement in the Vietnam War.

140. Before spying the sniper, Joker slowly creeps before a maze-like grid in the rubble. He is entering the labyrinth. But though Danny Torrance enters the maze and defeats the Minotaur at the end of “The Shining” (thereby breaking free of history’s murderous chains), Joker’s defeat of the sniper will result in his enslavement (in his propagation of the very horrors he attempted to resist).

(Trivia: Kubrick’s first production company, on Killer’s Kiss, was “Minotaur Productions”)

141. The music in this scene, written by Kubrick’s daughter, is a subtle juxtaposition between clanking technology and mournful flutes. This contrast between a mechanised America and a Third World Vietnam, suggests not so much a conflict, but a predestined eradication. Coupled with the abstract landscape, these primitive shapes and sounds suggest something more than war. This is destruction and preservation on a more basic and primal level.

142. The sniper sits and waits in her perch, daring, somewhat sadly, these men to attack her. And attack they do. But why? What is it that drives these soldiers to hunt her? What motivates them? Well, as far as Kubrick bothers to attribute psychological motivation to his characters, he seems to be saying that it’s nothing more than vengeance. The marines beat Pyle because they want basic revenge. He has tortured them and in turn they have tortured him. As a result, Pyle malfunctions. What does he then proceed to do? He enacts vengeance on the man who abused him, Sgt Hartman. Likewise the marines, in the third act, propelled by a need to avenge their fallen comrades, resolve to hunt down the sniper. It's nothing more than PAYBACK. A monetary transaction. As Joker says: “It’s just business.” Significantly, it’s also a marine called Payback who first mentions “the thousand yard stare” and it’s rape-like connotations.

So in each case, the marines are essentially lashing out because the “Mickey Mouse Club” is fostering anger and redirecting it toward an enemy for it’s own personal gains. Is Jack Torrance not similarly mismanaged in The Shining, the upper class lords of the Overlook Hotel directing Jack’s insecurities and tensions towards ethnic and sexual minorities (Danny, Wendy, Halloran). In each film, violence is deliberately bred and directed outward toward the Other…toward racial minorities and lower classes. The irony is that it’s only the Overlook Hotel receiving pay and profit for the payback it’s droogs facilitate.

143. Joker enters the sniper’s lair. He attempts to shoot the sniper in the back, but his gun jams. This reveals Joker’s impotency, his failure to absorb Hartman’s conditioning and his resultant inability to commit cold-blooded murder.

144. The sniper is a young girl: both Infantile and Feminine. She is everything Hartman tried to eradicate within Joker. But as this scene shows, she is every bit the soldier that Hartman’s marines are. She is both heart-hearted grunt and effeminate child.

Note: Kubrick’s screenplay describes the sniper as a “beautiful fifteen year old Vietnamese angel WITH the hard eyes of a grunt”.

145. Rafterman comes to Joker’s rescue. He shoots the sniper in the “left”, the “right” and then the “heart”. This “left-right-forward” motiff is present throughout the film.

146. As Kubrick’s screenplay states, Rafterman then “sweeps and clears” the room like a “super-grunt”. He now has the thousand yard stare, reloads his gun in the shadows, is always separated from Joker by a vertical column and holds his rifle upright whilst Joker’s tiny pistol is always pointed to the floor.

Throughout the second act of the film, Joker and Rafterman are constantly portrayed as opposites. But now their dual is identities are complete: Rafterman, the warrior who kills mercilessly and Joker, the journalist who will only kill out of compassion.

147. With her ponytails and chequered scarf, the sniper strongly resembles Wendy Torrance. Such intercontextual visual quotes are nothing new in Kubrick’s filmography. Consider these similar examples: The Lolita and Delbert Grady figures in Eyes Wide Shut, a cane waving Alex dressed as Lord Bullington, Peter Sellers calling himself Spartacus, the Lord and Lady Lyndon mannequins in Eyes Wide Shut etc. But though the sniper strongly resembles Wendy Torrance, she is hardly a figure of subservient femininity.

148. Joker and Rafterman hear the other marines approaching. Joker hides cowardly behind a pillar.

149. As Animal Mother and the gang appear, Rafterman rocks his rifle before his cock, thrusting back and forth sexually. Like a teenager who has just lost his virginity, he views his first kill to be a declaration of manhood.

Rafterman: “I fucking blew her away! (kisses rifle) Am I a life taker? Am I a heart breaker?”

150. The sniper prays on her deathbed. While in the first act the marines pray to their rifles, here the sniper is effectively praying for the men to shoot her. The irony of course is that the “minister’s of death, praying for war” have enemies who are themselves “praying to be killed”. This is American propaganda at its most pure: killing Vietnam to save her, Vietnam praying for a freedom which only American ministers can deliver.

151. Kubrick once again links the sniper to the Vietnamese prostitutes by having The Rock say: “No more boom-boom for this baby san. She’s dead meat.”

152. Possibly unimportant, a trick of the eyes: Animal and Joker then have a short conversation. What’s interesting is that Animal speaks to his left, facing Rafterman, whilst Joker speaks to his right, again facing Rafterman.

Animal Mother: Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here.

Joker: What about her? (said to Rafterman)

Animal Mother: Fuck her. Let her rot.

Joker: We can’t just leave her here.

Animal Mother: Hey asshole, Cowboy’s wasted. You’re fresh out of friends. I’m running this squad now, and I say we leave the gook for the mother loving rats. (said to Rafterman)

Joker: I’m not trying to run this squad, I’m just saying we can’t leave her like this.

Animal Mother: If you want to waste her, go on, waste her. (to Rafterman)

It's almost as though Animal is telling Rafterman to kill the sniper, whilst Joker is addressing Rafterman as Animal. Later, at the end of the film, we see Animal, Rafterman and Joker marching side by side. The implication is that they are now all one?

152.b After her prayer, the sniper chants "đầu quân" and "chieu mo". She then says "shoot me"."đầu quân" is a command meaning "Go to the Army! Enlist!". "chiêu mộ" is a verb meaning to "recruit" or "to enlist".

It's unlikely that the sniper really says "shoot me" in English. Joker is, in a sense, willing himself to kill her. Joker's (disavowed) desire to shoot the sniper is not just pathological because he might be imagining her 'order' to shoot, it's pathological even if the sniper does give the order, even if he rationalizes it as a 'mercy killing'.

152.c In the FMJ script, the sniper does not speak any English, but, variously, French and Vietnamese, and none of the marines suggest that she is 'praying'; rather, the script simply asserts that she is praying:

"The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese."

But later, and just before Joker shoots her, this changes:

As Joker lifts his grease gun she is praying in French."

While this moving between indigenous language and the language of the colonialist is cryptic, all of this occurs while Joker rationalizes his 'mercy killing' via the following (existentially narcissistic) internal monologue:

"I try to decide what I would want if I were down, half dead, hurting bad, surrounded by my enemies. I look into her eyes, trying to find the answer. She sees me. She recognizes me - I am the one who will end her life. We share a bloody intimacy."

This is standard fetishistic disavowal, Joker deluding himself that it isn't 'really' him who is shooting the sniper, but the sniper herself who is really shooting the sniper (that he is only channelling her, that he is really doing it for her), allowing him the subjective appearance that it's a 'mercy killing'.

It could be that those phrases "to enlist", "to join", "to recruit", are equivalent to "shoot me" in this context, Joker becoming 'hard core' (a fully constituted grunt, now a fully castrated member of Mother Green and her Killing Machine, the military symbolic order) when he shoots the sniper.

153. Joker shoots the sniper in the head. His peace button disappears from view when he pulls the trigger, leaving only “Born to Kill” visible on his helmet.

154. As the thousand yard stare drifts over Joker’s face, the marines spew another sexual remark: “Hardcore man, fucking hardcore!”

155. As explained earlier, the “killing of the sniper” is structured and shot to resemble a sex scene, Kubrick linking the hookers and sniper numerous times. Thus, whilst in the first “whore scene”, Joker is thwarted in his attempt to fuck the hooker, in the second “whore scene” (and by extension the “sniper scene”) Joker has evolved to the point where he can fuck the hooker whereby the act of “fucking”, “shooting” or “raping” is symbolic of the “killing” of the Feminine Other.

156. We’re then led to believe that Joker’s “mercy killing” is the final step in the men achieving purity. The Child and the Feminine Other have been destroyed, leaving behind, we assume, a one dimensional, hyper masculinized killer.

But Kubrick exposes this duality as a myth. The female sniper is as much a soldier (man) as Joker is. She’s been through the same conditioning, and is every bit as capable of being a hard hearted grunt. What Joker intended as a compassionate mercy killing to ease her pain, is thus suddenly mirrored onto Pyle’s suicide in the first third of the film. This is not merely a case of further rejecting the feminine, it is a case of soldier killing self. It’s another suicide.

157. Joker dies and is reborn. Once again Kubrick hits us with the left-right-forward motif. The marines walk off into the night, but using reverse cuts, Joker, Rafterman and Animal Mother are seen to be walking in the opposite direction. They are now part of the Mickey Mouse Club, but mistakenly do not view themselves as being members of the collective. Unlike Pyle, they have negotiated a space for their own individualities.

As philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues: "The second part of the film ends with a soldier (Joker) who, throughout the film has displayed a kind of ironic "human distance" towards the military machine, shoots a wounded Vietcong sniper girl. He is the one in whom the interpellation by the military Big Other has fully succeeded; he is the fully constituted military subject."

Zizek continues, "The lesson is therefore clear: an ideological identification exerts a true hold on us precisely when we maintain an awareness that we are not fully identical to it, that there is a rich human being beneath it. 'I am also a human person' is the very form of ideology, of its 'practical efficiency'."

In other words, ideology cannot function if its members do not have a trans-ideological view of themselves. One cannot be a member of the Mickey Mouse Club, unless one sees himself as an individual, capable of free thought and an existence beyond ideology.

And it is this fact which allows Joker, the watchful cynic, to be drawn into the Mickey Mouse Club. Joker, unlike Pyle, successfully keeps his distance. While his buddies are “cowboys” and “animals”, Joker is able to rationalise his killing of the sniper as an act of compassion. He mistakenly does not view himself as being part of the group, which is actually systematically shaping him and gradually drawing him further in. It is precisely this detachment which allows him to be an efficiently functioning, unknowing slave to ideology, but without fatally destroying or compromising himself at the same time. Hartman is intentionally exploiting a fundamental lack or vulnerability in adolescent males, scatologically 'substituting' the institutional Mother Green for its supposedly biological, localised maternal precedent.

158. Significantly, Kubrick ends the film with Animal Mother, Joker and Rafterman walking side by side. These are the final products of military indoctrination: Joker, the effeminate intellect, Rafterman, the naïve child, Animal Mother, the psychopathic killer. Child, Feminine and Killer, all occupying the same space in the head. There is no duality here. No comfortable right and wrong, left and right, compassion and aggression. The subject is split, fragmented, the easy moral splits of Platoon and Apocalypse Now, exposed as myths.

The military has successfully colonised another jolly green giant. All the erroneous shit has been washed away, cleaned and flushed out, leaving behind the perfect marine.

159. Pyle may conclude the first part of the film, but it is Joker who ends it with a voiceover at the end: “I’m in a world of shit, yes, but I’m alive and I’m not afraid.”  Not only does his rejoining of the group and the defeat of the sniper elicit Joker’s full belief in himself and his strength (his voice dominates over those of the other men), but it also posits an alternative to Pyle’s narrative. Right before his suicide, Pyle tells Joker that he is in a “world of shit”. By co-opting Pyle’s language, by acknowledging that he is indeed in a “world of shit” but that this world does not necessitate suicide and in fact teaches him his own strength, Joker successfully rewrites the narrative that Pyle can never successfully complete. Joker is able to retain his individual identity within the system in the same “world of shit” that prevents Pyle from accomplishing the same goal, confirming that it is not the “world” that prevents Pyle’s successful negotiation of his own identity, but Pyle himself.

160. But the biggest horror is that the “dead” think of themselves as being “alive”. Joker articulates this at the end of the film when he states that though he is in a “world of shit” he is lucky to still be “alive”. Eightball criticises this way of thinking, though, when he mocks the enemy for wanting to be “alive” rather than “free”. The implication is that only actual death provides freedom in a world where those “poor dumb bastards” don’t recognise their lives are being held captive.

161. The very last line of the film (“who’s the leader of the this club that’s made for you and me?”), makes it clear that though the marines are happy and at home in their new club, even encouraging others to join in with their song, they are still utterly clueless as to what they are here and who exactly are the leaders that now control them.

162. Paint it black. An appropriately angst-filled song, containing references to: “new born babies” (Joker), “riddles” (“something about the duality of man, sir!”), “looking away”, “looking inside myself and seeing my heart is black” and lines like “maybe then ill fade away and not have to face the facts” and “I could not foresee this thing happening to you”.

The song loosely mirrors Joker’s narrative, but also, it’s sense of introspection, it’s desire to “paint it all black”, an act which goes against Hartman’s obsessive desire to clean, whiten and sanitize his men and his world, is a direct contrast to Joker’s passive, zombie-like acceptance of his new role.

SNIPER AS VIETNAM

by

Padraig Henry

It is precisely the “Jungian thing” that now needs to be critiqued further. There are no “archetypes” of the unconscious. There is no “inner” precious self, dual or unified, to appeal to or to find. This is because the Subject is constitutively split, is a Void, a “barred subject”, is, indeed, defined by the very tension of that shattered “self” and which is why appeals to some “psychologising interior” in Kubrick's films is almost always redundant.

Kubrick is not asking the audience to take Joker as a realist concoction and attribute to him the invisible psychological interior which would permit the viewer to conclude that Joker shoots the little girl out of “compassion”. No, the illusion of such a depth within Joker is not something that Kubrick has taken pains to create or sustain. Kubrick, instead, seems to be flirting with allegory and fable, in the spirit of Brecht, forever encouraging the audience to resist that trained impulse to endow fictional characters with a facsimile of human psychology. The astronauts in 2001 and HAL, for example, function more or less equivalently as textual elements conveying ideological content.

In Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick is up to something far more disquieting; he dares the audience to put that comforting, self-justifying construction - "Joker" is an individual who commits a war crime out of “compassion” - on the stalking and murder of a rather magically, fabulously appearing little girl they witness - a sequence of narrative wholly implausible were the diegetic plane of the film adhering to Hollywood's standard realist mechanisms, whether of the timbre which rules MASH or that more rigid structure governing Officer and a Gentleman.

Kubrick continually thwarts efforts to accept his narrative as bourgeois drama. Instead, he goads his audience to desire a war crime and to react with relief (now they too, are safe from the vengeance of the mighty little girls of Vietnam), in order to expose and poison that pervasive ideological position to which American audiences are so inured as to be oblivious. Killing Vietnam to save it, to put it out of its misery, was, Kubrick dares the audience to try to soothe itself, after all the only decent thing to do with it.

This section of the film is romance. A pack of grown men are observed lost in the traditional wood/desert, witnessed in peril and fear, beset by an invisible, lethal monster which permeates their environment - the landscape itself is killing them. Their fate is the concern of the camera. The invisible monster who threatens these armed, grown men with destruction becomes visible in the form of one lost little girl.

This has no mimetic justification - there were no 9 year old girl snipers who massacred American GIs in Vietnam. She is a metaphor for Vietnam. For the life of Vietnam - she is like a little fée. The invaders stand around her after they wound her, though she is completely helpless, and are still frightened and vengeful; this pretty young dying girl who had attempted to defend herself is surrounded by these grown men incapable of recognizing even then, when the monstrous threatening force's true numbers, size and strength are revealed to them, the asymmetry of the conflict and their own culpability.

Joker kills her because there is no easier way to complete the sequence now that they have disabled her - they don't want to help her, they are not disposed to repent and repair - and he manages to experience this choice as “compassionate”, just as the official US ideology considered withdrawal compassionate and governed its forgiveness of Vietnamese wickedness and cruelty to its GIs as generous and merciful. "Joker" the executioner who doesn't bother with gratuitous torture, who knows when enough is enough, who may even be more frightened of the wounded child's capacity to hurt him if he turns his back on her still alive - the characters in this film are not quite the sort endowed with faux-personal 'motivations' and we are allowed a range of interpretations none mutually exclusive - is the official US ideology at its most self-congratulatory and beneficent. This tortured, weak little girl is both menace and protectorate of the compassionate Pentagon, the Vietnam who has to be murdered to be saved (from herself).

Joker's “motivation” is neither important nor strongly implied at all. I think the film discourages the attribution of one. The narrative is opaque in that way - no apology, no analysis, no explanation, no holding the audience hand and having a therapy session, no looking for the moral of the story nor a lesson, no catharsis, no redemption, no revelation. Just telling an appalling narrative which in some way captures and manages to represent an appalling history that nauseates and horrifies you. Without being sort of methodical/forensic, it was completely destitute of the romanticism which is such a central part of the genre into which it overtly fits. Very eccentric.

The thing I appreciate most in Kubrick is his ability to confront randomness and meaninglessness (or highly complex over determination, which amounts to the same thing). Without a willingness to take that in - and this is very un-American, as perhaps the most important pillar of US regime apology is the idea that everything is secretly for the best, that everything happens for a reason, that every cloud has a silver lining and every horror is a 'learning experience' - I'm not sure his films can be fully understood. His brand of radical anti- spirituality is a pretty harsh experience, and the majority of his consumers I think just read it away, just impose what they prefer.

So the “reason” Joker murders the girl is simply because that is the truth of Vietnam. That is the truth of what happened. The US destroyed Vietnam, rationalised their actions as being “moral” and “compassionate” and then withdrew into the night. That's the historical content of the actions portrayed. If there is “psychological” content vis a vis the “characters”, its ambiguous and marginal in significance at best.