Full Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick starts off with the training of a group of men set out to become US Marines. These Marines were under the charge of Sergeant Hartman who particularly did not like like the man in training Leonard Lawrence, or as nicknamed, Gomer Pyle. Pyle had a very hard time with training due to his weight as well as what appeared to be a lack of education. He was put under the wing of Private Joker, who later discovers the Private Pyle has gone mad while Joker was on watch during the night, Pyle chooses to take his own life. The film continues on into life in the war zone during Vietman, while there we follow Private Joker and Rafterman as well as many others. Here they are faced with prostitution, bombings, snipers, and the death of good friends. Throughout the film there is a lack in female characters and of those three the two shown on screen are prostitutes. I found it very interesting that you could not see the expression on the faces of the prostitutes and that they both spoke in broken English. When they would speak to the men about possibly paying for a sexual act, she would refer to the act as being “boom boom”, which is also often what people describe as the sound that a gun makes when it was fired. This reminded me about a scene earlier in the film during the Marines training when Sergeant Hartman told the men that they would be sleeping with their rifles and to give these rifles female names. These comparisons between sexual acts and the rifles used by the Marines were used to desensitize the men to replace the feeling of pleasure relating to sexual desire with pleasure from killing with their guns. Another scene during the training had the men marching in their underwear chanting “this is my rifle this is my gun, this is for fighting this is for fun” while having a hand holding their crotch. I believe this was another ploy to get these young men to feel some sort of pleasure in the context of killing and their rifles. Going back to the last female that the Marines encounter, the sniper, there is another case of sex and killing once again. After Rafterman kills the sniper and the others in the troop show up we see him standing over he body cheering and rocking back in forth, his rifle sticking outward from his pelvis. Once again the rifle is used and a “sexual device.” Struggling to allow the sniper girl to left to die slowly, Joker argues with Animal Mother about killing her for good. He responds to Joker by telling him something along the lines of “fuck her” although fuck was not used directly relating to sex as much as it was to indicate a lack of remorse and respect for her. Violence and guns are constantly mentioned thought the film but the underlying message of women and sex are constantly present. The idea of "de-humanizing" these men as well as the women, show how dangerous war can be for the psyche. Bibliography Barsam, Richard Meran., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print. Full Metal Jacket. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick. By Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford. Perf. Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Lee Ermey. Warner Bros., 1987. DVD. Howard, Spencer. "Full Metal Jacket: A Wartime Correspondence - Film Dispenser." Film Dispenser. N.p., 4 Mar. 2014. Web. 06 Oct. 2014. "Les Carabiniers and the Death Dance of Imperialism." Pilgrimakimbo. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. |