If you watched that movie and then thought it was a good idea to join the Marines and hope for war you were already there before the movie started. How you continued on after the movie was over may suggest that you didn't get it, any of it, in the first place. Not a recruitment film. Not a pro war movie at all. Every character is terminally depraved or gets killed or becomes terminally depraved by the end. Ha Ha? Sick.
10
Ermey was a great actor and he helped made it easy to laugh through some rough times, Swofford's sentimentality is almost nauseating...he clearly knows the audience he's writing this column for...I completed "boot camp" in '91... and you would have thought that the instructors were literally reading off of the movie's script each day.
1
I was in college at the time this movie came out, graduating 2 years later. My father had been a Marine in Korea, and I began the process of joining the Marine as an OCS candidate in their "Bootstrap" program. I was all scheduled for a physical, and the whole shebang when my mother caught wind of it. I still remember what she told me, "I have always wanted you to be able to choose your own path in life and pursue what interests you. But I am asking you not to join the Marines or the military. I don't want my son to become a killer." My mother had never asked anything like this of me before, I felt duty bound to honor her request, If I had joined up, I probably would have been in the first Iraq war, and likely would have become a killer, all to return Kuwait to its monarchy, and retain control of the oil lanes. If all mothers made the same requests of their children, not to become killers, perhaps other mothers wouldn't have to see their children killed, by other children. Thanks Mom.
6
The empire needs sheep both in and out of uniform. The Vietnam debacle exposed the demented soul of America. Righto then...peasants in sandals, living in grass huts, living on the other side of the world and maybe eating a bowl of rice a day are somehow my enemy. Sorry, NO SALE. Caveat, my family has sent soldiers to every conflict/war since and including WW1.
4
Saying 18 year old men are too easily persuaded to join the armed forces is only a partial truth. If they didn’t get in at 18, they might get in at 19, 22, or 23, after experiencing the banality of working low-wage, and often soul-crushing, jobs.
1
i'm surprised the author doesn't know that the film DI was building his role on what he and generations of real DIs did in basic, not the other way around. Not life imitating art, but the other way around.
4
It may have been funny and effective in the darkest parts of the author, but it certainly was not funny and effective in the darkest parts of us all. The character and the world he embodied were repellent then and remain so now.
8
When I enlisted there were perhaps 100 or more people at the armed forces enlistment center where recruits reported to be sent off to the different training locations. When they called for the Army almost half got up and went off, the Navy around a third, the Air Force maybe a third, and then they called for the Marines; there were three of us. It is clear that when given a choice few volunteer to join the military, and among them even fewer join the Marines. There were a lot of different people in the Marines when I was in many years ago, city, rural, cowboys, city slickers, just a noticeable lack of Asians except for a few Koreans. Some were barely passing intelligence tests as the military was viewed as way for some disadvantaged to mainstream into society, but one of better friends was a third year college man who was caught dodging the draft and given the choice of 'four in the pen or four in the Corps', which was common at the time. He eventually went into recon. Another friend was a full blood Sioux literally off the reservation for the first time. One our company commanders had an IQ of 160. Hardly subhuman killing machines, just well trained Marines who knew how to work together to project force as needed. Hemingway said "I would rather have a good Marine, even a ruined one, than anything in the world when there are chips down."
3
(1/3): During the early 90s, I served with a ground-level intelligence unit in the U.S. Army. It was an outfit comprised mainly of elite Airborne Ranger Infantrymen. Having worked alongside these men, I learned something that most people who never served in the armed services will comprehend: It takes a certain kind of individual to willingly volunteer for this type of work.
What I quickly discovered is that these highly-skilled infantrymen were wired differently than the average individual. To the casual observer, this mental disposition might appear as an almost insane hunger for euphoria driven by testosterone and fueled by adrenaline. I would go so far as to say it was a characteristic essential to their success and their survival.
We would routinely watch VHS copies of films like Full Metal Jacket, Reservoir Dogs and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for entertainment. Clearly, there was a common thread of machismo that permeated our movie selections. For me and for many of these young men, I think Full Metal Jacket spoke to us in a way more intimate than certainly was intended by Kubrick himself. Sure, we were astute enough to understand that Full Metal Jacket was nothing less than an examination of the atrocities and dehumanization precipitated by war. Yet, there was an unspoken notion that we felt akin to the profound narrative arc of rebirth forged through ordeal.
1
(2/3): I think Swofford raises compelling points not only about the powerful influence of media as a call to action, but also the militaristic rites of passage as fundamental to enlightenment. A film like Full Metal Jacket – with its abundance of bravado and barbarism – can effectively tap into an individual's "warrior mentality" if that mentality exists. But I believe this phenomenon transcends the mere romanticizing of war and violent conflict. Perhaps the allure of odyssey can be attributed to other preexisting conditions like generational angst, repressed masculinity, socioeconomic hopelessness, or even in Vonnegut terms being “contentedly adrift in the cosmos."
People have sometimes asked me why I volunteered for the military years ago. I would never tell anyone that watching Full Metal Jacket was an epiphany, but watching it certainly had an influence. Even as a kid, the one thing that always seemed to resonate with me in great war films – like Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and The Deer Hunter – wasn’t just the action and the heroics. It was the idea of innocent young men leaving home to find themselves with the understanding that the path to true self-discovery was wrought with hellish conditions.
1
(3/3): All I can recall as an eighteen-year-old was feeling confused and not sure of who I was, where I belonged, or who I wanted to be. I was a Generation-X’er from an economically repressed town who had one crystal clear aspiration: to get away. The reality is I didn’t enlist because of some patriotic devotion. I was at least wise enough even then to understand our country had lost its innocence a long time ago. I didn’t enlist because it was my only career option. I willingly bypassed college even when I knew it was the most practical option for long term success.
For me, military service was a rite of passage, a vision quest of sorts, and one that was necessary for personal and spiritual realization. It was a true calling – in a way channeled through the systematic rage of R. Lee Ermey’s masterful performance – and a calling that I could not ignore. My friends were going off to college to live the formative years of academics, growing, socializing, experimenting, parties with lots of drugs and alcohol, and all-around good times; but I didn’t care what I’d be missing.
This is something I had to do.
2
Brother, after 25 short years in the 'gun club' and several more in I-rack + A**crakistan, where I ran private security + large scale medical projects respectively, I have come to well-understand, that everything has happened "for me" and not "to me." .
As a direct outcome of the privilege of serving, where I learned about special operations, logistics, geopolitics, I
personally initiated humanitarian + emergency medical relief in both war zones and post-hurricane disaster areas. The former are the best arenae/permissive environs for doing much good without being encumbered by senseless rules + regulations.
The loss of many warrior-friends and having run more than funeral have made me more compassionate and empathetic than I ever might have been.
Having survived cancer six-times and 15 orthopedic surgeries and procedures, TBI's, loss of job, home, and family, I remain nothing less than grateful.
1
Both the author and many of the respondents seem to have missed something central about the movie. It is deliberately unrealistic, almost a parody of anything believable, including someone killing himself and his drill instructor. The movies are chock-full of extreme drill instructors who do benefit their recruits rather than destroy them, by actually caring about them under all the rigor. The drill instructor characters in An Officer and a Gentleman and Glory come to mind. Insofar as Kubrick implied that all wars are as pointless as Vietnam and all drill instructors are psychopaths, he's as simplistic as the adolescents who would be motivated to join up by the parody he portrays. It's an inconvenient truth (as old as The Iliad) that, though wars are never totally righteous, civilizations need defense, someone has to do the sacrificing, and there are better and worse, but always complex, ways in which men (almost always men) deal with this challenge.
This has to be the first time anyone's accused Kubrick of creating a recruiting tool. Mr. Swofford seems to be suggesting that Kubrick and Ermey invented the Marine training program of humiliation, which is weird.
Think of Hartman's tribute to the marksmanship of Lee Harvey Oswald; it's breathtaking in its dark humor, but does that really make it an embrace of his worldview?
This is baffling. I don’t see how anyone could watch FMJ and be seduced into going to war. Just the opposite, in fact.
The idea that Kubrick - of all people! - would make a film promoting militarism beggars belief.
8
Stanley Kubrick designer the movie to be an anti-War picture.
3
FMJ was preceded by three years by An Officer and a Gentleman, which includes virtually the same concept of drill instructor as loud, angry tormentor - a concept widely known and understood long before that. The author is as purely wrong about that as he is about FMJ not being an anti-war movie.
1
Maybe, but just as many were scared off and never enlisted because of him.
3
I was 19, not 17, when I saw it, but I had an entirely different response to the film, seeing it as powerful criticism of militarism and hyper masculinity—indeed of the intertwining if the two. It did not seduce a generation even if it seduced you.
9
I went to Parris Island in January 1970.
My father was a career Marine Corps colonel who served two tours in Vietnam (as well as WWII and Korea), and my brother was a career Navy submarine officer.
I had dropped out of the University of Texas at the end of 1969, having experienced the turmoil then rocking the campuses nationwide. And.,. I was going to be drafted.
My father had soured on the war, having experienced the lunacy exhibited by the high command and politicos, and strongly counselled me to enlist rather than be drafted. His idea was that the contract of longer service might qualify me for some specialized training in MOS's other than rifleman.
He was right, and I spent my years in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. With my upbringing in a military family and culture, I was certainly not against the war. That is until I saw MASH while stationed in Cyprus.
It was then that my worldview began to change.
6
I wasn't a soldier but I find the idea that "coded racism, physical abuse and psychological hazing went hand in hand with becoming a man," and the author's apparent embrace of that, to be laughable at best, obscene at worst. Recruits are subjected to that kind of treatment not to make them men, but to make them machines, programmed to follow orders blindly and react automatically to kill or be killed for their country. During the Vietnam era, I read "1001 Ways to Beat the Draft" by Tuli Kupferberg, the poet and musician whose group The Fugs frequently performed their song "Kill For Peace." In the book, I first encountered the controversial 1916 drawing "At last a perfect soldier!" by Robert Minor, which landed the cartoonist in prison.
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2002/05/16866.php
4
It didn't seduce everybody. We watched Full Metal Jacket the night before my brother left for Marine Corps boot camp, and it terrified him. For a guy who dropped out of high school, and struggled with a stutter his whole life, daily humiliation wasn't so appealing.
My dad was in the city of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. For that reason, the second half of Full Metal Jacket was always more interesting to me.
5
The first 45 minutes of "Full Metal Jacket" are, arguably, the most compelling piece of cinema since... well... ever. Even after 30 years and probably upwards of 30 complete viewings (not to mention literally hundreds of snippets caught while channel surfing or on YouTube), I am incapable skipping past it when I see it on TV somewhere and every time I am as rapt as I was the first time. And that wasn't Stanley Kubrick's doing. Sure, Kubrick can be credited for some of it. It was his call to swap out his original choice for Gunny Sgt Hartmann with R. Lee Ermey, who by all accounts was only on set to act as technical advisor. Aside from that, though, Kubrick should be credited with little more than getting out of Mr Ermey's way. And we are all the richer thanks to those choices.
2
Jersey -
you have put your finger on the top skill of a director.
get the right people into the jobs and get out of the way.
you can fix everything else in post except the script.
2
If you saw Full Metal Jacket and came away thinking “I have to be part of that”, then you missed the whole point of the movie.
12
"The Green Berets" was a LIE from start to finish, made by John Wayne, a coward who refused to fight the Nazis and the Japanese during WWII, but who made a fortune as America's greatest FAKE hero. Like Donald Trump.
17
How can I say this, but I feel sorry for your sir. Imagine a kid saying he watched Triumph of the Will and joined the Hitler Youth and Gestapo because he was seduced by that madman.
9
Um, that actually happened... to literally tens of thousands of Germans. Young people are especially impressionable. Just ask Isis!
6
1969, MCRD Parris Island. Not a "Hollywood Marine" they did not give us sunglasses. Marines will understand the joke. GySgt Ernie was a symbol of times passed. And some are trying to make him look like a mistake. But what the Ernie's of PI taught me how to stay alive ! How to have a higher calling in life. I went on to reenlist in the Army, spent another 30 plus years in the system.. Retired in 2004 as a Major, O/4. So how ?? The recruiters said if I could be a Sgt in the Corps, I sure the hell could be a General in the Army. Semper Fi Gunny, We will stand your watch for now. Keep the Gates Open for us other maggots.
6
Does this mean Anne-Margaret won't be coming?
7
FMJ is a brutal dark comedy anti-military, anti-war movie. What the heck were you thinking?
6
“How is that funny?”
Irony can be very funny, and Kubrick loads his films with irony.
The "duality of man" scene in which Joker explains his peace symbol button and the "Born to Kill" slogan on his helmet is hilarious in its irony. If you watch closely, you will see that Kubrick has Joker and the Colonel who is reprimanding him framing the body-filled grave in the background.
The scene is on Youtube. Search for "full metal jacket joker peace button".
2
Don’t want to be a spoil sport but Warren Oats (portraying Sgt Hulka) preceded Emery’s role by 6 yrs in “Stripes”
While certainly a comedy the first half of the film tells the same story and actually a little better then full metal Jacket,
In fact when I saw FMJ I thought that Emery was copying Sgt Hulka!
If the writer wants to claim that “He was seduced” by FMJ boot camp that’s fine, really who am I to disagree, what he can’t do is project his own life’s journey as the same as all of his fellow marines,
As Joe Strummer (And the Clash) so eloquently sang,
It's up to you not to heed the call-up
'N' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown up?
Who knows the plans or why they were drawn up?
It's up to you not to heed the call-up
I don't want to die!
It's up to you not to hear the call-up
I don't want to kill!
For he who will die
Is he who will kill
Maybe I want to see the wheat fields
Over Kiev and down to the sea
All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes
There is a rose that I want to live for
Although, God knows I may not have met her
It’s up to you
4
Raymond L,
I disagree with you about Warren Oates preceding Emery. Emery first played they role of a Drill Instructor in the 1978 film “The Boys in Company C”. This film while not high art of “FMJ” touched upon a number of issues more explicitly in the boot camp scenes than “FMJ” such as race and the carnage the men would face in Vietnam.
When people ask me about Boot Camp, I recommend "FMJ" as the most authentic depiction of violence/language and "The Boys in Company C" as the most authentic depiction of humor.
Our empire, like every aspiring empire before it, needs cannon fodder to travel the world, meet interesting people, and kill them. It's so very easy to turn children into killers, and ultimately, murderers. To a lot of the Vietnam generation, The Green Beret song just sounded like Deutschland Uber Alles before the military could get a hold of them.
I'm ashamed that I cannot remember the names of all 3 of the American soldiers who stopped the My Lai massacre but they are my heroes and every dirtbag from the DIs who trained the killers to the president who sent them were traitors to what Washington's army fought for.
11
If Full Metal Jacket seduced you and enticed you into signing up for the Marines, I'd say you were one confused young man. That movie almost more than any other shows the absurdity of war. The total hypocrisy & ridiculousness of it all, esp Vietnam. Almost every scene is filled with irony. Yes it was beautifully shot and very well acted, as with all of Kubrick's work. And it is very funny, big dark humor. Some scenes, like the one with the prostitute ( where the camera gets stolen ) are classics, " me love you long time " But I don't think in any way it's a recruitment tool. I think Stanley Kubrick would be very amused by that, pleasantly so, probably.
9
How can one fall prey to such a ridiculous movie. I found it more than disgusting, kind of a threat to mankind.
5
"…kind a threat to mankind'.
Some reasons for the existence of the Corps can be found in the scene when they are in their bunks with their rifles and are commanded to pray. Below is the 'Rifleman's Creed', which evidently isn't as stressed as it used to be in recruit training:
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will…
My rifle and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit…
My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will…
Before God, I swear this creed. My rifle and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!
1
This article depresses me to no end. So it inspired all the juvenile idiots lacking any kind of conscience? I watched it when I was young man as well and it certainly didn’t inspire me to join the army. I felt incredibly repulsed, but I guess it’s because I value traits like individuality, intelligence, kindness and compassion. I don’t believe that being turned into an unthinking “killing machine” is a good thing. To believe otherwise is to have a very twisted and toxic idea of what strength is and what it is to be a man.
If someone joins the army for the reasons you describe, then it’s morally reprehensible. No doubt many war crimes are a result of this kind of sick mentality. However there are many that serve for more honourable and mature reasons. They shouldn’t be lumped in with masochistic/sadistic group of sociopaths that you describe. You summarize the piece by explaining “It was funny and effective in the darkest parts of me. It’s funny and effective in the darkest parts of us all.” Speak for yourself, buddy. I feel the same as your poor wife.
13
Too many Gunnies playing the wrong roles in the White House.
7
I really enjoyed R. Lee Ermey's portrayal of the DI, but I always have thought it was an amped up version of Sgt Carter from "Gomer Pyle," or Sgt Foley from "An Officer and a Gentleman."
1
Private Pyle is not "disgruntled," he is of very limited intelligence and has no business being in The Corps. If someone joins the Marines, or does anything else, because they saw it in a movie, we have a problem. In a perfect system, Private Pyle would have been evaluated and given a Section 8 discharge--mentally unfit for service. I suspect he would have made mischief in some other part of society. As to Gunny Hartman's sadism and vulgarity, it sounded like a greatest hits compilation from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, 1967, and as I think back on it, most of it occurred in the first two weeks of boot camp...shock and awe, to get our attention, to intimidate us to better control us. I bumped in to Gunnery Sergeant Dennis, my chief drill instructor, two years after boot camp, in Viet Nam of all places. We talked for maybe 15 minutes, and the one thing I remember was his saying that if you can't survive boot camp, you probably won't survive combat, and you definitely won't survive being a POW.
Most of the Marines I served with and have spoken with in the ensuing 50 years enlisted in The Corps to prove to themselves they could do it, they could be one of the best. If the author joined because of this movie, I suppose we should be grateful that Fast and Furious wasn't showing at the cineplex. It's a movie.
5
Glad I finished up recruit training at MCRD SD a year before the release of Full Metal Jacket. I think a bunch of DIs running around acting like wanna be Hartman's would have been pathetic!
3
I also laugh at the boot camp scenes in 'Full Metal Jacket', although I enlisted more than a decade earlier before the film came out. A fair amount of the language was familiar, as was the 'military presence' of my primary DI. Family and friends who have watched some of the movie over the years typically don’t understand it as it is so far removed from anything they have experienced. When asked why such an experience is necessary I try to use Rick's 'The Generals' to explain why. Although it was a book on generals in the Army Rick's included a Marine general who had led the Marines and attached units during the battle of the Chosin Reservoir. The campaign was described as one of the most brilliant examples of divisional leadership in US history and is a remarkable contrast to the 'Great Bugout' of the Army, the longest retreat in their history which was a rout in face of the same Chinese forces that attacked the Marines.
The question is what enabled the Marines to conduct themselves as they did? They had drawn from the same population of people in the US, where the majority of the Marines were young privates, PFCs and lance corporals who end up doing most of the fighting. The difference starts with boot camp.
2
My older brother, soon to be a young Marine 1st Lieutenant in Vietnam, watched his DI nearly choke a recruit to death with his M-14 because he didn't score high enough on the 500-meter range, I think it was.
Different Marine Corps back in the day, I guess. But "the fantasy that once enticed us" remains--fighting for your countrymen, your country, and your Constitution. It's the DNC-RNC Politburos that have turned that "fantasy" into a nightmare. Let's not forget that.
2
Gustav Hasford disliked Ermey. He'd wanted his friend Dale Dye, with whom he'd served in Viet Nam, as technical adviser instead. https://taskandpurpose.com/10-things-probably-never-knew-full-metal-jacket/
1
I was certain I had read that parts of FMJ were filmed in the Phillipines, but a quick check at IMDB, and it's right, the whole thing was filmed in England.
Full Metal Jacket is a poem of a movie. It's message is summed up in the scene where the Colonel confronts Joker about his peace badge and the slogan on his helmet: Born to Kill. Joker tells him its a commentary on the duality of man and the Colonel's response is to ask him who's side he's on. Right there we are confronted with the nature of military service. There isn't any room for doubt and questions in that world. Killing another human being doesn't come naturally, so institutions like the Marine Corps have to break you down and build you up again, into a person capable of committing that most heinous act without hesitation. It has to be instinctual. If you think about it, chances are you may not do it. But, of course, most people cannot stop thinking. Like Anthony Swofford, Joker represents the cerebral soldier, one who remains sensitive and questioning despite the brutality he witnesses constantly. Until his good buddy is killed, and he descends into full homicidal rage. This is why soldiering remains the toughest of all jobs, for they alone may cross that line and live with mental and moral torture that comes with it. FMJ showed us that with unforgettable performances and images (and one of the great soundtracks), and was easily one of Kubrick's best films. It really should be required viewing.
11
Never understood why Pyle killed the Gunny.
He had made it through Boot Camp -
had he failed and that was his last night before
he was kicked out of Basic Training.
He was mentally ill and experiencing a psychotic break.
Kim Scipes wrote, "In 2019, it will be 50 years since I went to boot camp. For all that time, I've carried this hole in my soul that I was willing to kill another human being, not to defend family, friends or even country, but because of lying politicians who have this fantasy that the US should dominate the world."
Everything he said resonates with me. I find it almost impossible to understand why submission to such brutality, willingness to subject others to it, willingness to kill total strangers including unarmed civilians, makes you a "real man." The whole concept makes me want to throw up my dinner.
And BTW, I tried to join the Air Force when they were recruiting at my high school, back in 1959. I was all of 15 and wanted to learn to fly so I could join the space program. It never occurred to me that dropping bombs might be part of the job description. However, the recruiter said they didn't teach girls to fly (same thing they told Tammie Jo Shults 20 years later). I left immediately. Five years after that, in 1964, I attended my first march against the Vietnam War.
5
"War is a Racket."
-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC
6
How typical of his generation that the writer was seduced by a movie. First, I was very saddened by the death of Lee Ermey who was a wonderful actor - if you can't handle FMJ, watch him as the grieving father in Dead Man Walking or the cowardly mayor in Mississippi Burning. I watched FMJ twice this week and Ermey almost stole the entire film. The depiction of Parris Island shows how you convert an individual into a part of a fighting team who is willing to risk life and limb for a fellow soldier. I grew up during the Viet Nam era and FMJ captured the zeitgeist of the time better than any other movie. I always thought Apocalypse Now was one of the silliest, most cartoonish of the VN war movies. Don't blame drill instructors or the Marines - blame the lying pols who misled the public into supporting every unnecessary war we have fought which is everything since WWII.
5
If you think WW2 was necessary, then you need to read "HUMAN SMOKE" by Nicholson Baker. 100% verbatim, by many real people, before and during war, on all sides. Necessary? I think not. No war is necessary. Every war is a human failure.
1
Without WWII Hitler would have ruled much of the world and the Holocaust would have been only a fraction of the horrors inflicted.
1
I am in the same generation as Mr. Swofford. I did not feel seduced by Full Metal Jacket, and I protested against the Gulf and the Iraq Wars. I understand that journalism is not social science, but I reject the extrapolation from Mr. Swofford's experience as a young white male from a military family into the experience of an entire generation.
7
He's right - the US Military has a huge budget for psychological operations to indoctrinate and teach young people to kill - but spends almost nothing on helping to reacclimatize people to the civilian world - this is a greater tragedy that we can comprehend because it means we release broken people back into society with no coping skills for a world that does not always resolve its conflicts with violence -
5
I've seen FMJ several times. I still see only one hero, actually, heroine; the Viet Cong sniper in Hue defending her country from foreign invaders.
"Shoot me. Shoot me," she begs in the end as she's bleeding to death. To me she was a metaphore for the country of Vietnam.
And there is the crushing symbolism of the final scene; former raw recruits, now confident, battle-tested veterans, singing the theme of the Mickey Mouse Club; children with a full metal jacket keeping their hearts and souls from interfering with the job at hand.
I knew a few who, after they came home, couldn't find a way to get their hearts and souls back out from that full metal jacket, and it killed them.
7
Even if you're not seduced by this movie (as I am not), an inability to see how it WOULD seduce an impressionable teenager is more clueless than what people are accusing the author of.
3
This guy was and portrayed the psychopaths that trained guy during the Vietnam Era. But some of us didn't fall for or get caught up in it.
1
“It just is,” I said, not really able to explain it.
Really? After the recognition of being lured into war by powerful civilian psyops, unaware/unconcerned about Kubrick's larger themes, but enough awareness, at a 30 year remove, that the net result was "normal American kids transformed into war-ready combatants through barbarism and violence..."
And even when "...friends who came home grievously wounded in body, mind and spirit after being baited by the Gunny" became apparent, your final takeaway is a professed inability to explain to your horrified wife, why it's "funny"?
Inconceivable.
5
I read somewhere that Mr. Ermey was only supposed to be a consultant, but he was so good at consulting they gave him the role.
I didn't serve, and that movie (which I've seen a million times) certainly didn't make me want to sign up- it showed that war isn't glorious, it's horrible and painful and dehumanizes kids. That it had a different effect on the author tells me I probably made the right choice in forgoing the recruiting office.
3
There's nothing wrong with having seven bachelor's degrees or disappearing heel spurs if it strikes your fancy.
2
After Tet, I did not begrudge anyone, by any means necessary (almost), from getting out of serving in Vietnam. Canada, "Champaign Unit" of TNG, anything to not have to go there. They deferred my brother from '67 to '71 for college, so missed most of the worst of it, he was still obligated to serve in '71, he joined for 4 years, served most of it in Germany listening to Russians talking to the East Germans.
Was Lee Ermey performing in "Full Metal Jacket"? Perhaps, in the same way that Marine drill instructors perform every day in front of new recruits.
Although not speaking from personal experience, I always suspected that Mr. Ermey's powerful presence in the movie was as much the reality of who he was as it was a performance. Either way, fantastic and indelible.
2
I suppose the kind of dehumanization depicted in Kubrick's film vis-a-vis Ermey's character is necessary when the people who are being trained and sent to war are not invested in "the cause." That is, it is not personal.
I suppose there are men and women in the armed services who are there because of an abstract notion of "serving one's country." There are, of course, many ways to serve one's country without killing. But the military has moved closer to a mercenary agency rather than a "warrior class." As this writer has pointed out, young men, and some women, enlisted for personal and maybe pathological reasons.
4
Boot camp does change a person. Before and after. I made it through my enlistment. I was trained as a hospital corpsman and x-ray tech and I was immersed in a sea of profane sex obsessed regimentation. I was stationed on the Emory S. Land and sailed around the world back in 1988. On station in the Persian Gulf when the US downed an Iranian airliner. I was a round peg in a square hole. Each time I seemed to have met a chief petty officer or Medical Officer who wanted to kick me out somehow I managed to evade the ax. Strangely to me at the end in 9/1991 the navy wanted me to reenlist and was treated like a member of the team. One good thing is that I received a MA in History while I was in the navy at Old Dominion University. Dr Alfred Rollins was my thesis advisor. I am so grateful for his help on my thesis and his friendship.
5
I was trained by vietnam veterans who were nothing like "the gunny" (other than their ability to make interesting use of the english language on a parade ground). As a young soldier I was raised on films like this - most notably, Apocalypse Now. The meaning behind that film went completely over its young male audiences head (and in any case, Redux, is a far finer film). I served on based, among infantrymen, where half of my company could recite major passages of Apolalypse Now - no mean feat for your average infantry grunt.
I saw full metal jacket after I had read Michael Herr's magnificent book, "Dispatches" - with FMJ makes liberal use of. In fact FMJ is more or less a montage of separate scenes from Herr's book, all mashed together to form one storyline. It was, without doubt, the most disappointing film that I - a young soldier, in the course of understanding what it was he'd signed up to do - had ever seen. To add insult to injury, my recollection is that the story of the Drill Instructor killed by a recruit was merely an apocryphal rumour that Herr related casually in passing in his book. That FMJ centred on that so much was, to me at the time, a bit of an insult to the many vietnam veterans who trained me and with whom I subsequently served.
4
"In fact FMJ is more or less a montage of separate scenes from Herr's book, ..."
Herr is given his due in the end-credits:
"Screenplay by
Stanley Kubrick
Michael Herr
Gustav Hasford"
The final scene, with the Mickey Mouse song, and the end-credits are on Youtube. Search for "full metal jacket credits".
2
Full Metal Jacket is in fact based on a book called The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford, although much more so for the second half than the Parris Island scenes.
2
Herr worked on the movie with Kubrick. I read "Dispatches" years ago and it is a great book. But I must point out "Full Metal Jacket" is based on "The Short Timers" a novel by Gustav Hasford, a Nam Marine journalist. He shared full screen-writing credit on the film with Kubrick and Herr
Joker is Hasford.
3
Frankly, I liked this article and what the author had to say.
It shows his "take" on the movie and his Marine experience.
Some commentators disparage the physical and psychological aspects of the film, the Marine Corp, and perhaps war in general. However, they produce exactly the kind of men, and now women, that this country needs when the going gets rough.
The concept of someone knowingly going to their death, up a hill for example, may be anathema to some. But, to me, I think it's a remarkable thing. It shows what real willpower in action looks like. These people deserve our respect, but even more importantly, they deserve not to be wasted in "wars of choice" started by leaders who don't understand the first thing about real sacrifice. These Marines, and all our soldiers, are very unique people, with extremely unique skills and attitudes.
If you disagree with a particular conflict this country has engaged in, which for me would be almost all conflicts past World War II, DO NOT blame the soldiers who carried out those actions. Instead, praise them for the incredible sacrifices they made, and save your blame for those that issued the their orders in the first place.
My experience is that it's it usually the weakest among us that start wars, and it's the strongest who end up fighting them, and more often then not, they are the ones who pay a horrific price.
These are human beings trained to do inhuman things. And they should not be second guessed by armchair warriors.
27
>>>If you disagree with a particular conflict this country has engaged in, which for me would be almost all conflicts past World War II, DO NOT blame the soldiers who carried out those actions.<<<
Agree 100%. I was a middle-schooler when my father was fighting in Vietnam. He came home, thankfully, just six months after the Tet Offensive. And remarkably sane. But he was absolutely despondent and angry to witness the anti-war effort being directed, in good measure, at returning vets, rather than solely at the politicians and war profiteers who conspired to send our young, vital men and women into a quagmire that McNamara knew (as it turns out) ahead of time was unwinnable. It was a national tragedy in of itself, and then heaped in double helping on returning veterans. This should never happen again. And as you mention, "wars of choice" started by leaders who don't understand the first thing about real sacrifice seems to be the order of the day. Not to mention wars started for false reasons, and sold to the public on ideological grounds, Iraq being a prime example.
13
Veterans of the Vietnam conflict were some of the most credible anti-war participants and leaders.
5
A Vietnam Vet/Award Winning Poet once warm me ...writing poetry about war one of the most difficult things you'll do. He was right ...as it is almost like writing about love. Many have tried to describe it, draw it, show in movies/books ...but it hardly scratches the surface of what is like to fall madly in love. War/Love takes you to such a raw state of emotion that nearly impossible to put into such an inadequate form of communication such as mere words. Which is where Drill Instructor comes in ...he/she is able to give you enough organize-chaos to teach you no matter what life throws at you ...you'll survive. Is a War against yourself, your fears and strength/weakness melt away you transformed into something different. The reason that Southwest Plane landed intact ...cause the pilot has been taught by someone like Drill Instructor Not to fear ...your Selfless Nature must bring everyone home Alive.
3
No, that southwest plan was landed intact because people who could not have landed that plane were weeded out of the training necessary to fly that plane in the first place. And really, what were the alternatives? To have a panic attack in the cockpit and crash the plane? That pilot did a good job, but she was just doing her job. Sully was just doing his job as well - and he did it well. The difference between the southwest incident and Sully is that Sully had to make an extreme decision under extreme time pressure and he decided well. Thats not heroism - thats just being good at what you do. No such decision applied to the southwest plane incident.
4
Just because you passed the tests doesn't mean you've been tested.
1
The Author hits on the strange truth with Gunny. Gunny is beautiful in his perfection of destruction. "This is my rifle, there are many like it but this one is mine...." could be used as the motto for the current version of the NRA. There is sincerity in the complete relentlessness of Gunny's intimidation. Horrific beauty to behold.
2
If anyone, kid or adult, can watch Full Metal Jacket and come away thinking it is a glorification of and recommendation for war, let alone that Ermys character was anything but a blind sadist, the fault lies in that person, not Ermy or Kubrick.
46
The utter lack of sophistication expressed here has made me very sad.
13
Mr. Swofffard,
Please don't try to blame Mr Kubrick for your seduction by his anti-war MOVIE. It's all on you... as yourself expressed it in this article... "I wanted to experience the brutality and humiliation that “Full Metal Jacket” so fully embodied." Hopefully you got your "experience" without too much damage to others.
21
Do not blame Kubrick for his lack of understanding of how this film would impact the age group the Marines will recruit from? Interesting point of view.
boy did you misunderstand that movie. it lamented how kids are dehumanized and turned into killers, it did not celebrate this process. anyone who perceived this film as you did has something terribly wrong with them, either unfathomable naivete or unfathomable brutality.
37
This is the reason 18 year olds are enlisted in the armed forces. They can be taken in by the “romanticism” of combat.
30
There's No romanticism in eating dirt.
2
Stanley Kubrick would be aghast at the ideas put forth in this article. But he always said film interpretation was up to the individual. He never explained what something "should mean."
Good thing we all didn't become Pentagon brass after watching Dr. Strangelove.
37
I agree with Jeffrey, who said that art imitates life: I heard all of this and much more while going through Marine boot camp in the summer of 1969. I lucked out and was never sent overseas, a fairly unusual situation for a four-year Marine. I had volunteered for the Marines at age 17, as I wanted avionics (airborne electronics) instead of being a grunt, an infantryman, but I drank the cool-aid; I later volunteered to go as a door-gunner in helicopters, about the most insane thing one could do. Like I said, though, I wasn't sent, and that's probably one reason I'm still alive. But I read the "Pentagon Papers" later, which said not only did our governmental leaders lie, but everything they told us about the war was a CONSCIOUS lie.
In 2019, it will be 50 years since I went to boot camp. For all that time, I've carried this hole in my soul that I was willing to kill another human being, not to defend family, friends or even country, but because of lying politicians who have this fantasy that the US should dominate the world.
We've allowed the military and their political supporters to kill around the world, and they've used dumb kids like myself to do such. Then, afterwards, they discard their trained killers--more than twice as many Vietnam vets have killed themselves after getting back than died during combat. I'm sure many couldn't handle what they did at our "leaders" command.
I guess I'll get my final relief when I die. I hope so. It wasn't worth it.
64
You pain touched me. It definetely isn't worth it. The waste of war isn´t just the victims, it's in all those living with the aftemath. I hope you find peace.
4
Thanks, Kim, for sharing your story: an essential counter-point to this article.
3
Kim Scipes*** Reading what you wrote here .. the beauty and brutal honesty, I'd say you did alright. Keep on my brother, Keep on.
4
It is beyond my comprehension how someone could see the boot camp scenes in Full Metal Jacket as an alluring model, seducing one into militarism.
There is a basic narrative tension between the two characters played by D'Onofrio and Modine: one is truly, utterly broken by boot camp-- the other is unbroken, stoically refusing to have the inner core of his being molded into a "killing machine".
One presumes that Kubrick brought these two front and center for a reason. These two were, in opposite ways, exceptional, one unusually weak the other exceptionally--truly--strong.
Left unstated is where that leaves the rest of the recruits... I think the implication is perfectly clear: they are the common herd, neither so weak as to break utterly, nor strong enough in will to retain their individuality. Not contemptible, but hardly admirable either. Modine's character is the protagonist for a reason, for crying out loud!
It frustrates me and frankly baffles me that, apparently, many people watch this film without comprehending its central theme. Kubrick practically beats you over the head with it!
25
Went through far tougher training in the Army. LPC school, Airborne, SERE. Jungle survival in Panama.
2
So what?
5
I wasn't thrilled when my son joined the Marines, but once he'd done so, I had no objection to the shouting and duress he'd voluntarily signed up for. If a nation is going to send young men into the extreme stresses of combat, soft training and a civilian mindset are likely to get them killed.
I don't know if the extreme practices of USMC boot camp training are the best way to produce hardened combatants. Army elites appear to get the same result without the bullying. But recruits must somehow acquire mental and physical toughness far beyond the demands of ordinary life.
6
I enter Marine boot camp on March 1, 1961. My drill instructors were every bit as profane, poetic and clever at the Gunny in Full Metal Jacket. The idea that some how that gunny in FMJ invented the stereotypical D.I. is laughable. I only had one preconception about the Marines when I joined. That it was the best, the toughest and the most admired.
4
The author's perspective is interesting since I saw the same movie and was not "seduced" but horrified by the same scene. I saw raw unnecessary cruelty which crystalized my aversion to joining the military.
19
Well.....exactly!
2
"That kid who entered the gates was forever gone." This is a wonderful line.
As an aside - from the "salad bar" on Gunny's chest - his character is showing a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, a Presidential Unit Citation (upside down), a Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, a Marine Corp Expeditionary Unit Medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korea Service Medal and a Vietnam Service Medal, a United Nations Medal, a Vietnam Campaign Medal and a couple I can't quite make out from the photo.
3
I was married to a Marine. He served in Korea and was part of "frozen Chosin" Both feet frozen on the March south. He told me the DI who took him through basic training saved his life by making him tough, too tough to fail. That's what it's about; that's why gunny is tough on the recruits.
3
The US Marine Corps is a borderline cult in the way that it traditionally has treated recruits and they instill an unfounded belief in many that they are somehow an elite force despite drawing from the very same pool of American youth as the other branches of the Armed Services.
In the US Army, Drill Instructors train you to "become a Soldier" where the Marine Corps they "make you a Marine". There is a difference and I have seen it up close and personal having served in the US Army and having worked with and trained alongside Marines.
I seriously doubt the brutality, the hazing and all the rest accomplishes much in the long run. The calling card of the Marine Corps is amphibious warfare and during World War 2 the US Army invaded North Africa (Operation Torch), Sicily (Operation Husky), Southern France (Operation Dragoon), Normandy (Operation Overlord), Leyte/Mindoro/Luzon Philippines (Operation Musketeer I II & III) with the US Navy. It joined with Marines under Army Command (10th Army under General Simon Buckner, Jr.) for Okinawa (Operation Iceberg) which was comprised of the Army's XXIV Corps and the Marines III Amphibious Corps- about 100,000 Soldiers and just under 90,000 Marines. The planned invasion of Kyūshū, the southernmost Japanese Island, was planned for November 1945 and was planned for 11 Army and 3 Marine Divisions, following that Operation Coronet in the Spring of 1946 would have used 22 Army and 3 Marine Divisions.
They both accomplished the mission.
10
Sorry. There is nothing like a marine.
Re Deirdre LaMotte:
I worked with, trained with and alongside Marines during my 8 years of service. There is nothing special about Marines past the inflated sense of self worth and carefully crafted public image.
Marines are Naval Infantry. They shoot the same weapons, bleed the same, are paid the same and use the same tactics. Other than the carefully crafted PR, they are Soldiers serving in the Navy Department as a second Army that we do not need.
In past times they were used as shore parties and boarding parties and have been allowed to morph into something well beyond that. We do not need and really cannot afford a Prima Donna sub-service with it's own planes, ships, ground forces and cyber command.
The Marine Corps should be reduced from a Military Service back to an operating Corps of the Navy in small numbers and turn in the Tanks and Planes.
1
The film portrayed perhaps a different time..a time when towards the end of 1967, most who went to Vietnam were draftees. And despite the Marine Corps assertion of no draft into the Marine Corps...many were (research this issue for validation)-but, most were voluntary enlistees That said, in my mind..tough training builds confidence and a sense of team effort that most young men (and that rings true today) did not have...many were from lower income families who could not afford college nor could afford (or the opportunity) of marriage.
It should be noted that the Marine Corps had the highest KIA percentage compared to the number in county...and that was just in I Corps..the northern province of Vietnam (RVN divided in corps..I thru IV Corps). The drill SGT's at that time knew the importance of the various metrics which would keep many of these young kids alive..or perhaps save another life while in combat.
Today's Soldiers and Marines are all volunteers..the 4500 KIA were volunteers...the 2500 KIA in Afghanistan were all volunteers...and of both, some 45000 had to be evacuated due to combat related wounds.....all volunteers.
We do these things (sometimes I wonder why) because of the feeling of initially excitement and adventure with a mix of duty, honor..country. But, when things get really tough..it is all about those on your right and left. In reality, the character of those who serve then and today have not changed..just the times!
6
My basic training was over 20 years before "Full Metal Jacket" Former Gunnery Sgt. Lee Ermey uttered the same stock phrases I heard then. Over and over and over again.
Many pictures have been made about basic training and "Full Metal Jacket" is the gold standard of movies depicting basic military training. It's the same open bay barracks with unpartitioned latrines where DI's hollered at us for the better part of 3 months.
I must confess the DI's found out I could type and I was spared many hot afternoons marching in the sun by that skill.
1
In my eyes also he turned those young kids into, lethal killing machines. In my mind, however, that's the same thing as turning them into monsters. Any romance I might ever have held about the armed forces ended right there. Wars, even the most necessary ones where one side is clearly in the right, destroy lives by the multitude and there is no glory to be had.
17
Yup. I volunteered for paratroops after seeing "The Longest Day." I thought there were no badder guys in the world than the Airborne.
When I was serving on Okinawa with the 173rd before we went south to RVN, they showed it in a theater, and everyone went nuts at the airborne sequences of the Normandy invasion. We laughed a lot. That was then.......
Many seventeen-year-old "knuckleheads" see and misunderstand many things, including Kubrick's film. Humans often learn the hard way.
19
A Kubrick fan, I wouldn't have missed it, but I was horrified during almost every second. Those were the days of big movie screens, and the size of the image intensified everything. I can't begin to imagine finding any character in it worth emulating. Sometimes I say to myself "I can hack it, I can hack it, I can hack it" when things are tough....
3
I suppose its generational. When I watched full metal jacket, the drill sergeant was a representation of everything wrong with the establishment and the War it storied: Mission without concern for humanity.
26
Really? They were there to train us, so that we could do the work of Congress. Do not blame the Ernie's . They did not make the call, they made us into something bigger then we were.
9
Kristin, I think that you do the DI an injustice. All of that nasty, seemingly mindless discipline has one, single purpose - to help keep people alive by having them react reflexively rather than take an extra second or two to have to figure it out.
2
I think we put too much emphasis into films influencing our foreign policies or any other aspects of our culture! As if everyone of a generation actually saw a movie or the movie! Too many other factors are involved.
2
Full Metal Jacket was an anti-war film. It was the heroic movies such as The Green Barret, that sent us to war by glossing over the truth of killing that war inflicts on its soldiers.
19
Well said. Not just art, but major influences in any culture have interpretations and consequences that depend on who we are when they reach us. Law. Technology. Race. Wealth. We all know that just because the people who imagine and drive ideas intend them to be understood as ‘x’ doesn’t mean they won’t be received and acted on as ‘y’, z’, or alphabet soup. As for film, Kubrick (Tarantino leaps to mind too) didn’t break the bronco of his villains being irresistibly appealing. But that’s the whole idea, innit? And Ermie was right up there with HAL, Jack Nicholson, and Malcolm McDowell in draping a dark character in eerie charm.
1
I attended bootcamp in San Diego in 1980, seven years before Full Metal Jacket was released. I can say that Ermey's character in the movie used nearly identical language that I had heard. I say this to make counter the point made by Mr. Swofford that the Drill Instructors he met a year after the movie came out were likely not imitating Mr. Ermey but simply imitating the language of Marine Corps Drill Instructors. Either way, it was profane, shocking, frightening and hilarious to hear those words come out.
29
I bet the writer and and very few readers recall that the classic cinema character of the tough-as-nails-and-blood-and-guts drill sergeant who turns boys into Marines, that all other drill movie sergeants are only an echo of was originated by Lon Chaney in "Tell it to the Marines" (1926).
TCM notes, "...Perhaps even more complimentary than the positive critical reviews was the response from the United States Marine Corps' own magazine, Leatherneck: "Few of us who observed Chaney's portrayal of his role were not carried away to the memory of some sergeant we had known whose behavior matched that of the actor in every minute detail....""
The Marines loved it so much they made Chaney the very first honorary Marine.
11
"For my generation and those to come, the Gunny secured the already-supercharged drill instructor stereotype into one of the most recognizable characters in movie history."
For the writer to claim that his generation, and successor generations, were affected as he was by the brutality of the drill instructor in the movie says more about his psychopathic tendencies than about his statistical knowledge.
16
I think you’re missing the point. I remember my friends and I being fascinated by the brutality and obscenity of that film. How we imagined being so tough and strong. I’m a pacifist now.
I also know the author personally (we were neighbors years ago), and through his writing. He is a man who went through a significant and traumatic ordeal and came out the other side a more introspective and insightful person who is asking important questions about how we get suckered into war. I don’t see psychopathy here, except for our American obsession with social dominance.
9
As a veteran who went through basic in 1972 and advanced infantry training in 1973, I can say I found the drill instructor character in that movie to be completely outrageous, albeit not totally unbelievable. My own drill instructors were tough but fair, and only one of them that I ever met was cruel. One saved my life on a grenade range when the recruit in the next corral tossed his live grenade into our corral - he jumped on my back as the grenade rolled into a trench and exploded. We loved our drill sargeant at Ft Polk, Louisiana. He was hard as nails, drove us hard, had scars all over from wounds received in Vietnam, and made us all feel incredibly proud of ourselves. I would have gladly served in combat under such a man. Oh and one of the assistant DI's was an ex-Marine. Nobody liked him.
11
“Full Metal Jacket” wasn’t the only reason I joined the Marine Corps, but it was a major one. " I am almost speechless. That is one of the most incredible admissions I have ever read. Repeat after me 1,000 times: "It's a movie!"
36
To say that Full Metal Jacket is, in and of itself, responsible for "seducing" young men into the military flies in the face of enlistment statistics which trended downward in the years after the release of the film until an upsurge after the first Gulf War in 1991. Full Metal Jacket's release was also sandwiched between the releases of multi Oscar winner Platoon (1986) and Hamburger Hill (1987) both of which are searingly anti-war and together likely had a greater effect on the American viewing public. While there is no denying the great effect that R Lee Ermey's Gunny had on military culture, to claim "seduction" is hyperbole at its finest.
33
FMJ is 20 times the work of art that either Platoon or Hamburger Hill is. And if you want to see a real anti-war film, I would suggest Paths of Glory. Kubrick had already made one of the best anti-war films ever so he didn't need to do it again. Quite frankly Oliver Stone is a B movie hack compared to Stanley Kubrick.
I do think this quote from Stanley Kubrick's interview about FMJ in Rolling Stone from 1987 is probably truer to what the film is trying to say (you can read the full interview online and it's fascinating):
"Aside from the insults, though, virtually every serious thing he says is basically true. When he says, "A rifle is only a tool, it's a hard heart that kills," you know it's true. Unless you're living in a world that doesn't need fighting men, you can't fault him. Except maybe for a certain lack of subtlety in his behavior. And I don't think the United States Marine Corps is in the market for subtle drill instructors."
8
You don't know what the enlistment statistics would have been if FMJ had not existed.
Mr. Swofford's column reminds us that the armed forces want men as young as possible to mold. They can be easily fooled and have no conscience. They can only be molded because they are unformed.
41
Average age in WWII was 27. Average in Vietnam 19. See the problem.
2
In the United States of America if you want a really traumatic boot camp experience don't go to the Marines, go to a serious jail.
The tyrant Sergeant appears a problem, but is actually the keel that keeps the ship upright and in the end makes the recruits feel safe. To really stress young men out, remove the stabilizing influence of that authority and replace it with the sickness of criminal peer review, in a subterranean mafioso environment of steel walls, shivs, and stink.
The sociological model for that real life horror movie is Lord of the Flies, where the evil in the human mind rises naturally. It is not heavy professional discipline and loud quirky insult, but the vagaries of a mob and the quietly whispered death threat that are truly intimidating. A Gunny might push you to a limit that you don't know you can overcome until you do, the prison mob will target you for erasure or simply tear you apart without recourse.
44
I'm a Vietnam War Marine veteran. John Wayne was our Ermey. Watch "The Sands of Iwo Jima" to see Ermey without the language. I've experienced exactly the same reactions watching FMJ with my wife.
3
Same here. PI 1969 Plt. 2023. Our movie was "Sand of Iwo Jima." Brutality was inherent in our training, Looking back, one forgets the initial shock. This from, at the time, a 20 year old Jewish kid from the City.
I don’t get the idea that an anti war movie starring Private Joker could seduce anyone into joining the Marines. But it happened to one of my sons. As a Vietnam war protester I was shocked when he said he wanted to join the Marines. Years later he and his best friend told me they had seen Full Metal Jacket and after watching it, they looked at each other and said, “We have to do this.” Both volunteered. I still don’t understand it. But there is an element of self selection here. As the author said in Jarhead, to a real Marine, there is no such thing as an anti war movie. There are just war movies. That’s why only 5% of Americans will volunteer. The 95% of is who refuse to volunteer are immune and unresponsive to the seduction of violence.
68
'... they had seen Full Metal Jacket and after watching it, they looked at each other and said, “We have to do this.” Both volunteered. I still don’t understand it.'
People commonly take away only parts of a work of art.
It would be interesting to know how they felt about the scene in which Joker struggles to shoot the wounded, female enemy sniper as she is begging to be shot.
The scene is on Youtube. Search for "full metal jacket sniper scene". (NB: Some clips don't include the part with Joker shooting the sniper.)
Thank goodness for that 5% or we wouldn't have the freedom to promote ourselves as virtuous pacifists.
2
Sir, with all do respect, I was a recruit at San Diego MCRD in May till July of 1979, Platoon 3040. Full Metal Jacket was in no way “life imitating art”, it was art imitating life. From my Senior to the most Junior Drill Instructor, they were all Vietnam combat decorated Marines with nobody to kill but us. Full Metal Jacket was the truest depiction of what was Marine Corps Bootcamp. I’ve heard every line used in FMJ and a ton of others. We were broken or our nasty civilian mindsets and given a great gift, the gift of God, Country, Corps, undying honor and loyalty. Because if the Marines, even as an old man now, I’ll defend the constitution and my nation against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, until the day I die!
50
Been able to sleep comfortably every night of my life, because people like you were willing to forego that for a time...
Thank You...
3
My late father, who joined Carlson’s Rader Battalian in WW2, was at Chosin in Korea and fought in Vietnam Nam, has a big smile on his face now!!
1
I hope you feel the same way about defending the Constitution against what Trump wants to do with it.
BTW, my two sons were also Marines.
3
Kubrick's film, "Full Metal Jacket," is based on Gustav Hasford's novel "The Short Timers". Hasford served as a Marine combat photographer throughout the Tet Offensive, the Battle of Hue and part of the Siege of Khe Sanh.
This is to take nothing away from Ermey's career as a Marine or as an actor, or to diminish the impact of Kubrick's film or Ermey's performance. But everything Swofford writes so eloquently about begins with Hasford's book and his experiences, both as a Parris Island boot and a Marine at war in Vietnam.
The character of Private Pyle is there for a reason and he has his own eloquence. I just thought Hasford and the characters he created (because without them there is no movie) should be mentioned.
22
“How is that funny?” she asked. It's funny in that I was trained to go kill others whom I'd never met and didn't know the first thing about, guys who acted similarly towards myself. Ha-ha.
19
The author presumes too much - one only needs to read the Iliad to see the siren lure for young men to prove themselves in the crucible of combat. Increasingly - America knows no one who is actively serving - for those of us who have endured a Basic Training - we can laugh at Full Metal Jacket - the sad part is that even fewer Americans can understand why we laugh.
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds.
46
Which translation is that? I prefer ‘many souls of “heros” ‘ for the Greek ηρώων as the most direct translation, one that leave bare what hero means, not necessarily sturdy or a great fighter, maybe just someone like Odysseus that simply yearns to return home to his wife and child.
2
Young men, in general, crave discipline, to be disciplined. To be, as they say, broken down and built up. My bootcamp experience -- Navy and therefore, for sure, milder -- did that. It was still tough, we still got 'beat' (made to do PT till extreme fatigue). And by the 11 week you had a bunch of 18-25 year olds from highly disparate backgrounds and of highly disparate abilities running their company, getting guys to medical or security interviews and drill practices etc. Pretty amazing all in all.
11
Speak for yourself. As someone that dreaded the lottery draft during the Vietnam war I had no cravings to be disciplined by anyone, much less some load mouthed, war mongering, blood thirsty drone of the military industria! complex.
3
I remember going to boot camp 10 years after the film came out and not a day passing without quotes from it being issued at least a dozen times. As you note, it did leave an indelible stamp on military culture. In fact, it was probably the best recruitment tool the U.S. military ever had, and it didn't cost a dime. It should be an effective anti-war movie, but you're right, it touches the darkest parts of the American male's mind. I re-watched the film with my teenage son last year, thinking it was useful as a historic document, but what was remembered most were the Gunny's quotes, the jelly-donut scene, etc. Despite the film's second half painting a putrid picture of a senseless war, that's what resonates most. Surely not Kubrick's intent, but perhaps the first act was too perfect for it's own good.
43