STANLEY KUBRICK'S Full Metal Jacket
Shot-by-Shot Analysis
Part Eight
STANLEY KUBRICK'S Full Metal Jacket
Go to TOC for this film ( (which has also a statement on purpose and manner of analysis and a disclaimer as to caveat emptor and my knowing anything authoritatively, which I do not, but I do try to not know earnestly, with some discretion, and considerable thought).
PART EIGHT
TOC and Supplemental Posts | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Films Home
LINKS TO SECTIONS OF THE ANALYSIS ON THIS PAGE:
The Quiet American
Am I a Life-taker? Am I a Heartbreaker?, Shots 547 through 591
Fate and Free Will, Death and Rebirth
Circularity
The Sniper as Woman
Doen Ket
The Inverted Star
Who's the Leader of the Club, Shots 591 through 594
Mickey Mouse
The Bitter End of Paint it Black
THE QUIET AMERICAN
Along the way to completing this analysis, I got caught up in The Quiet American. I had noticed, in a photo of one of the buildings on the square that showed anticipated treatments for the film, "MINH-TE" had been on a banner on the side. This didn't make it into the film, but I had wondered if there was a connection with Trinh Minh The and Caodaism, which would have brought in a maybe reference to Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American and probably the ensuing Joseph Mankiewicz film...and of course it probably does. At first I resisted looking at yet another book and film that may or may not be referenced in Full Metal Jacket, but quickly decided it should be done.
The Quiet American is about a man named Thomas Fowler, a correspondant in 1952 Saigon, who has fled England and an unhappy marriage and a wife who won't divorce him. His love interest in Vietnam is Phuong (Phoenx), a young woman about to leave her teen years, and as Fowler can't marry her, Phuong's older sister is still looking for a good marriage match for her, but Phuong and Fowler have been together for two years and she lives with him. Enter the American, Alden Pyle, a "quiet" New Englander, product of an old Boston family, a professor father, and Ivy League education, who says he is working with the Economic Aid Mission. As part of his impeccable morality and sense of fair play, having fallen in love with Phuong, Pyle seeks to begin a friendship with Fowler, appealing to him to intercede on his behalf in his desire to marry Phuong who speaks French but understands very little English. Pyle's argument is that Fowler will want for Phuong what is best for her, and what is best for her is marriage and family. Further complicating things, Pyle then saves Fowler's life. They had been to a Cao Dai celebration and Pyle's car stopped working so he was catching a ride back to Saigon with Fowler, but they realize Fowler's gas tank has been siphoned when they run out of gas on the road. They take an uncomfortable refuge in a guard tower manned by two untrained South Vietnamese boys, and are attacked by the Viet Minh. Fleeing the tower to hide in a rice paddy, Fowler breaks his leg, and Pyle rescues him. Instead of feeling any indebtedness, or perhaps fighting it, Fowler resents the rescue, arguing he hadn't asked for Pyle's Boy Scout help. Middle-aged, whereas Pyle is young, Fowler worries that what Pyle can offer might be attractive to Phuong. In an attempt to keep her, he lies and tells her his wife has agreed to a divorce. Phuong, learning the truth, leaves Fowler for Pyle. Fowler is approached by communists who show him that Pyle is involved with importing plastics that are not simply used for making toys, as he's professed, but making bombs. In real life, in January 1952, General Minh The was responsible for terrorist bombings in Saigon, backed by the CIA who were attempting to bring the US into the war, who blamed the bombings on the communists, and were looking for a "Third Force" (such as Cao Dai) that would unify people. In the book, after witnessing the horror of such a bombing, Fowler, having proof from Pyle himself that he is involved, helps set up his assassination with the communists. Fowler is horrified by the Americans and what Pyle has done, but there is also the question of Phuong, that a reason he may have helped arrange Pyle's assassination was in order to not lose her, and after Pyle's death she does return to Fowler.
You may be wondering what this has to do with Full Metal Jacket.
An article on Edward Lansdale, by Max Boots, for FP (Foreign Policy) magazine, leads off with, "The legend of Lawrence of Arabia was concocted single-handedly by the American impresario Lowell Thomas, who in 1919 premiered a lecture and slide show on Col. T.E. Lawrence’s exploits that played to packed houses in New York and London and beyond. The legend of Edward Lansdale — the former ad man-turned-CIA officer who became known as the “American James Bond” and the “T.E. Lawrence of Asia” — had more authors, but perhaps the most important (and inadvertent) was the eminent English writer Graham Greene."
You'll remember, perhaps, that Pyle was instead Leonard Pratt in The Short-timers, and was renamed "Pyle", for Gomer Pyle, by the drill instructor. But Full Metal Jacket makes Pyle instead Leonard Lawrence and has the drill instructor bullying him for that name, associating it with Lawrence of Arabia. This would seem to reference Edward Lansdale, who many believe to have been the basis for Pyle in The Quiet American.
PYLE: Sir, Leonard Lawrence, sir.
HARTMAN: Lawrence? Lawrence what, of Arabia?
PYLE: Sir, no, sir.
HARTMAN: That name sounds like royalty. Are you royalty?
PYLE: Sir, no, sir.
HARTMAN: Do you suck dicks?
PYLE: Sir, no, sir.
HARTMAN: Bullshit. I'll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
PYLE: Sir, no, sir.
HARTMAN: I don't like the name Lawrence. Only faggots and sailors are called Lawrence. From now on you're Gomer Pyle.
Whether Hasford had inserted Pyle as a reference to The Quiet American is uncertain, though he has "Pyle's" first name as Leonard, and Audie Murphy's middle name was Leon. The film seems to make a more overt connection by renaming Leonard Pratt to be Leonard Lawrence and raising the comparison with Lawrence of Arabia.
Still, what has the "quiet" CIA Pyle to do with the quiet Pyle who is bullied, betrayed by Joker, then kills Hartman and commits suicide?
Joseph Mankiewicz filmed the book, with the assistance of the CIA and Edward Lansdale, who Greene insisted the book's Pyle character wasn't based upon but others have felt differently. Mankiewicz stays true to the book right up to the end, when he throws in a twist. After all is said and done and Pyle is dead, Fowler is informed by the detective he was used by the communists who had framed Pyle. Pyle and the CIA had nothing to do with the bombings. And Fowler doesn't even get Phuong back. In the movie, she refuses to return to him, having realized what true love is through Phuong.
I read the book for this analysis, and knowing how Mankiewicz twisted the book, and that he cast, against the advice of others, a German-Italian actress to portray Phuong, I wasn't too keen on watching the film but felt I should. Plus, I wanted to see this rare view of 1950s Saigon on celluloid. Thankfully, because Joseph Mankiewicz's film stays true to the Graham Greene book right up to the very end, it's easy to stick with it, and the film is beautifully shot by Robert Krasker who did The Third Man. Also, though Phuong was painfully depicted by the German-Italian actress, Giorgia Moll, at least the streets of Saigon were filled with scenes of Vietnamese life, which was very recognizable from the hundreds of photos I've looked at over the past few months--and yet was a very different place before the Americans moved in and Saigon partly transformed itself to pitch to them. As far as the film goes,
Michael Redgrave, who played Thomas Fowler, was very good, he seemed a perfect Fowler, though Mankiewicz originally wanted Laurence Olivier. And I read he also originally wanted Montgomery Clift to play Pyle, so how he ended up with Audie Murphy, I don't know, but Redgrave was distressed because Murphy was a war hero but no actor. Montgomery Clift would have been perfect. He played the duplicitous Morris Townsend with a charm that was both disarming and worrisome in The Heiress. What happened with that casting? Audie had no...inflexion. No subtlety. No layers. He was, as described by Fowler, an American Boy Scout. But Greene's novel shows he is also more than that. He had to be. He was CIA, masking himself as something other than what he was, while also guided in his choices by his Boston upbringing. Audie Murphy is instead Texas. He walks Texas, he speaks Texas. He was obviously born in Texas. His father was a sharecropper who deserted the family, he had to leave school, and after the death of his mother became a soldier, which he'd always dreamed of becoming. It isn't a matter of being classist to point all this out--it's just a matter of Audie Murphy not having had the ability to act anything other than his rural Texas roots. In no way is he Graham Greene's Ivy-league New Englander with a professor father who ends up in Vietnam for the CIA with the cover story that he's working for an aid society. When Audie says he, too, is high-Episcopalian, like Fowler's wife, who won't give him a divorce because she is high-Episcopalian, one thinks, "No, no, no." There are high-Episcopalians in Texas, I'm sure, but Audie's Pyle is not one of them. Perhaps Audie Murphy was chosen because he was a war hero and that real-life knowledge would impact the audience's sympathy for him. They would be reluctant to view Murphy's Pyle as responsible for terrorism, and purchase the story of his being framed in the Mankiewicz rewrite. Mankiewicz's The Quiet American would thus take precedence over Graham Greene's. It would become the more believable story, one in which the Americans were the good guys and Fowler was a louse.
There is a Murphy in Full Metal Jacket who's not in The Short-timers. A sergeant, he's present when Touchdown is killed and calls in on the radio. From then on he is only a voice on the radio. When Crazy Earle is killed, he advises Cowboy he's NCO and gives him orders. When Cowboy calls in trying to get help during the sniper attack, to get tank support, it's Murphy who tells him he's been unable to arrange it. Cowboy is on the radio calling Murphy when he is killed. I've previously taken note of Murphy's presence during these important moments, because he becomes a tie between them. This may mean nothing. But Murphy's Pyle seems present in the Pyle who finds his place as the expert marksman, just as Murphy won honors as an expert marksman. And Pyle, in the book, was given special notice on graduation day, elevated above others with his being awarded a set of dress blues, even while the drill instructor is aware he's a Section Eight. In the book, his killing of the drill instructor is less a manner of planning than Hartman having come between Pyle and his gun, his romantic partner and alter ego. So, he kills him, then the gun betrays Pyle by turning on him and taking his life. The desperately inept Pyle of the film and book is obviously not the equivalent of the Pyle of The Quiet American, but the CIA Pyle has been referenced.
Kubrick filmed at the Beckton Gasworks, and The Quiet American was filmed in Vietnam, and there's no comparing the two, but it's interesting to contrast Mankiewicz's treatment of interiors, shot in Rome, with Kubrick's. For even The Quiet American's interiors affect a perfectly seamless ring of authenticity--such as the apartment in which Fowler lives that is filled with the idiosyncratic details of daily life piling up over years, Fowler's English life merging with Phuong's Vietnamese, and the apartment dressed with Vietnamese decorative elements that weren't carry-in, are instead built-in features--an older building, early 1900s, one medium-size room for bed, living, and kitchen--not like Pyle's modern, spacious, uncluttered apartment that is wholly western in feel with some picturesque Vietnamese items for show.
I have written a fair amount, in this analysis, about the architectural/decorative aesthetics in Full Metal Jacket, and how one of the mysteries of the Hue portion of the film is that there is almost nothing that speaks to the life of any of its buildings, what they were in what would have been a very recent pre-Tet Offensive time, just a few days prior. Which seems to me to have been planned by Kubrick to be this way, and not just because he was fabricating Kubrick's Vietnam at the Beckton Gasworks. No personal effects to speak of left behind, not even any industrial effects. No machinery. No file cabinets. No papers. Nothing. Just blasted hulls of buildings that look like they were emptied out years before the bombing began. The streets, too, are shapeless, not giving the impression of industrial and community life at any recent point of time--and then a cinema outrageously dropped into the center of it all, surrounded by sky-high pylons that are intended to support pipes. Kubrick convinces the audience this is an appropriate depiction, and yet it's not. He has purposefully avoided connecting these buildings with people. That has been one of the more inviting fodders for thought--why leave the Vietnamese out of Vietnam? All right, so the Americans are largely fighting an unseen enemy. But what of the Vietnamese of Hue, evidence of which would be left behind even if all had evacuated? Kubrick's version of the city gives no hint of Vietnamese inhabitation.
AM I A LIFE-TAKER? AM I A HEARTBREAKER? / JOKER'S WAR FACE
547 MS of Joker going screen left to screen right. We see a North Vietnamese flag. (1:44:38)
Animal Mother had split off with Rafter Man and sent Joker off by himself to explore the MyToan building. The first shot of Joker inside he is rounding a wall, having apparently come up a flight of stairs. The way stairs are often oriented, we wouldn't expect to see this part of the staircase so that it runs along the facade of the building, we would expect it to run along a side wall. For me, there is something especially about this staircase that gives that feel, and yet we will soon realize that it is alongside the front wall, thus separating the interior, in this area, from the facade. But we don't know yet the orientation of the building, and as Joker enters, and the camera dollies to the right, we may have the impression we are facing the front-interior of the building. This orientation is difficult to shake.
Whereas--with the exception of the movie theater, the interior of which was not viewed--the other buildings have been shelled husks, to our surprise we are not in an industrial space. It's not a residence. We don't know what it is but compared to what we've been presented, it's exceptional.
When one sees this in the cinema, on the big screen, there is much the same surprise, Joker entering this space, as there was to the Marines encamped at the villa, encountering its distinctive Vietnamese architecture. But even more profoundly. This is, in part, to do with the music, but only in part. One feels that Joker has reached the "heart" of something, and I don't just mean the complex but psychically. Not only do the embellishments, the columns, the colors, give this impression, but the sense of containment, there being no open windows.
Primarily for political reasons, capturing the city of Hue was vital to the success of the offensive. Hue was sacred to the Vietnamese people, both north and south.
"Hue was the cultural center of vietname, a place of learning, a remembrance of the traditions and values of the past. Hue was known for the Citadel, with its great walls and old imperial buildings...in the Buddhist myth, Hue was the lotus flower growing from the mud: it was the serenity and beauty of a city at peace in a nation of war.""
......
Peaceful and untouched by the ravages of war, Hue was an extremely sought after posting...
Source: From Siege to Surgical: The Evolution of Urban Combat from World War II to the Present and Its Effect on Current Doctrine By Major William T. James Jr. · 2015
The citadel is described as maze-like again and again...
Company of the ARVN 1st Division stood between the attacking VC and NVA and their goal of seizing the Hue Citadel. ... a maze of interlocking defenses from the buildings of the city and the walls and towers of the citadel itself...
Source: America and the Vietnam War Re-examining the Culture and History of a Generation 2009
We had arrived: we had reached the Citadel at Hué! ... We drove north along the moat and passed the ornate eastern gate of the Forbidden City, and ultimately found ourselves imbedded inside a maze ...
Source: Viet Nam 1993 – a New Beginning An American Professor’S Journal of Discovery, Exploration, and Introspection By Louis Grivetti · 2014
One Black Panther Company, led by Captain Tran Ngoc Hue, repelled Communist units at the Citadel airfield. ... companies became stranded and had to claw their way back using grappling hooks to scale walls within the maze of parapets.
Source: Vietnam, A Reader By David Zabecki · 2012
Imagine a maze where you need to enter many doors and cross many gates just to find your way towards the center of the seat of power is how to best describe the Imperial Citadel.
Source: lifetoreset.wordpress.com
From Hasford's The Short-timers:
The Citadel is actually a small walled city constructed by French engineers as protection for the home of Gia Long, Emperor of the Annamese Empire.
Though we are not in the Citadel, where the action in the novel takes place, I would argue that Kubrick is treating this area as the Citadel. The architecture, the red columns, may remind somewhat of the Forbidden City's Imperial Royal Palace. And "forbidden" is the mood here. On the big screen, one feels that Joker doesn't belong. He is trespassing.
In the decorative metal-work that functions as a kind of screen, separating areas, can be viewed a swastika motif, which one might associate with the holocaust and Nazis, but the swastika is an important and ancient symbol in Asian culture--in Buddhism, Hindusim and Jainism--associated with good luck and peace, and representing a number of things, the eternal, the fullness of life, either the sun or the cosmic order of the heavens as they spin about the North Pole.
The clock-wise swastika is observed as Joker enters. The counter-clockwise is observed in the decorative work in the circular windows, appearing at the center. This is not, in Asian culture, "evil". In Hinduism it may represent Kali, and in Buddhism can be found imprinted on the chest, palms and feet of Buddha, and may concern the dharma wheel, or the dissolution of ego, different meanings attributed by various sources.
Joker rounds a column on which there is a poster showing a fist (more on this in the notes) )and continues down to where the North Vietnamese flag is hanging to look around another column with a fist poster. We still have no idea that he is walking parallel the front of the building.
548 CU of Joker peering around a square column. (1:45:21)
549 He sees the sniper looking out the window. He raises his rifle to fire but it jams. (1:45:26)
I don't know about you, but my orientation, no matter how much I know about the staging, is still thrown here. We now realize that we have been parallel the front of the building, for this is obviously intended to be the interior of the facade of the My-Toan building. But Kubrick, with all his exterior shots of this portion of the building, where the sniper is situated, had led us to believe the facade would be shorter in length than the sides, and that the five windows sprawl across the front.
Instead, we know we are able to see all five windows in the elevated area where the sniper is standing, and from this we also know that the interior extends far beyond, at least to stage left, these windows. This isn't what we've been seeing outside, it's not what we've thus expected, and it's disorienting. We also observe a door on the stage right side of the elevated area where the sniper is located so we know there is more interior past it.
There's no way around this, that the interior doesn't at all conform to what we've seen outside. Yes, one can argue the interior is a set and we shouldn't expect it to strictly conform with what we've seen at Beckton Gasworks, but this is a deliberate denial of what we've been shown. This is typical for Kubrick's films--he does the same most notably in Lolita (an example about which I've written at length as this should be a normal household and Kubrick teases us with how the interior is at odds with the exterior), The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut, but in Full Metal Jacket he reserves the overt reshaping of space for the confrontation in My-Toan.
550 CU of Joker with the jammed rifle. (1:45:30)
551 MCU slow motion of the sniper hearing and turning, revealed to be a young woman. (1:45:32)
552 CU of Joker. (1:45:34)
553 MCU of the sniper. She fires. Slow motion. (1:45:35)
554 MS of Joker as bullets hit the column. (1:45:38)
555 MS of the sniper coming down off a raised area before the window and firing again. (1:45:40)
556 MS of Joker flinging away his rifle as he cowers. Slow motion. (1:45:46)
557 MS of the sniper. Slow motion. Firing. (1:45:46)
558 MS of Joker struggling to pull out his gun. Slow motion. (1:45:49)
559 MS of the sniper. Slow motion. Firing. (1:45:51)
560 MS of Joker as the column is being blasted. Slow motion. (1:45:49)
561 MS of the sniper. Slow motion. Firing. Then she's blasted by gunfire. (1:45:54)
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562 MS Rafter Man firing at the woman. (1:46:01)
Joker had been twisted around his pillar in order to see the woman, then had sheltered behind it as the woman came down from the elevated area to shoot at him. Rafter Man has apparently used a different entry from Joker or else she would have seen him enter beyond Joker.
563 LS of Joker jerking as if he's still being shot at as Rafter Man continues to fire at the woman. (1:46:01)
564 MCU of Joker, stunned, staring at the camera/Rafter Man. (1:46:04)
I've read people online discuss what they believe to be Joker's "war face" and associate it with his aspect after he shoots the sniper. To me, instead, this is Joker's war face. No matter all his training and preparation, he was left helpless with his rifle jamming, and then he was unable to get an opportunity to fire on the woman with his pistol. All he could do was rely on the pillar behind which he was hiding to not be blown away, and for the woman not to come around the pillar, for he had nowhere else to hide. His body shakes, out of his control. He will perhaps feel that he should be dead. There is no victory. He has survived by chance. He had the good luck that the pillar he was hiding behind stood up to the hail of bullets until Rafter Man, who he was supposed to be protecting, appeared.
565 MS of Rafter Man rearming his rifle. He checks out the room to make sure no one else is there. Passing the woman he goes up the steps to the window. (1:46:06)
First, we see behind Rafter Man what can feel like the "rear" of the room, which is the wall opposite the one toward which Joker had walked as he progressed through the room, before stopping at a column and peering around it to the real "front" of the room.
Rafter Man comes around the column and checks out the wall opposite the wall that belongs to the front facade where the sniper had been.
Rafter Man then checks out the wall toward which Joker had been walking.
Rafter Man checks out the wall belonging to the front-facade, which we have observed extends unexpectedly long to the screen left.
RAFTER MAN: We got the sniper!
Having called out the windows to the others, he goes to stand next to the woman. Joker comes around to stand near her.
566 MCU of the woman. (1:46:58)
567 CU of Joker looking down at her. (1:47:04)
568 MLS of Rafter Man and Joker. Hearing sounds, they crouch, weapons drawn. (1:47:11)
569 LS of Joker and Rafter Man from behind. Animal Mother, T.H.E. Rock, and Donlon enter. (1:47:116)
ANIMAL MOTHER: Joker?
JOKER: Yep.
ANIMAL MOTHER: What's up?
JOKER: We got the sniper.
RAFTER MAN (as Animal Mother, Donlon and T.H.E. Rock enter): I saved Joker's ass. I got the sniper. I fucking blew her away. Am I bad? (Kisses his rifle.) Am I a life-taker? Am I a heartbreaker?
570 MCU of the woman. (1:47:57)
571 MCU of Donlon. (1:48:05)
DONLON: What's she saying?
572 MCU of Joker. (1:48:10)
JOKER: She's praying.
573 MCU of T.H.E. Rock. (1:48:16)
T.H.E. ROCK: No more boom-boom for this baby-san.
574 MCU of the woman. (1:48:05)
T.H.E. ROCK (off camera): There's nothing we can do for her. She's dead meat.
575 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:48:33)
ANIMAL MOTHER: Okay. Let's get the fuck out of here.
576 MCU of Joker. (1:48:41)
JOKER: What about her?
577 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:48:48)
ANIMAL MOTHER: Fuck her. Let her rot.
578 MCU of the woman. Music enters. (1:48:57)
579 MCU of Joker. (1:49:10)
JOKER: We can't just leave her here.
580 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:49:16)
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.
581 MCU of Joker. (1:49:31)
JOKER: I'm not trying to run this squad. I'm just saying we can't leave her like this.
582 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:49:44)
583 MCU of the woman. (1:49:50)
SNIPER: Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me.
584 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:50:10)
SNIPER (off screen): Shoot. Shoot.
ANIMAL MOTHER: If you wanna waste her, go on, waste her.
585 MCU of Joker. (1:50:24)
586 MCU of Donlon. (1:50:31)
SNIPER: Shoot me.
587 MCU of T.H.E. Rock. (1:50:33)
SNIPER: Shoot...
588 MCU of Rafter Man looking daringly at Joker. (1:50:36)
SNIPER: ...me.
589 MCU of Joker. (1:50:40)
SNIPER: Shoot.
590 MCU of the woman. (1:50:44)
SNIPER: Shoot me. Shoot. Shoot.
591 MCU of Joker. (1:50:51)
SNIPER: Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.
Joker fires. Her breathing ends.
RAFTER MAN (off screen, laughing): Joker, we're gonna have to put you up for the Congressional Medal of Ugly.
DONLON: Hard-core, man. Fucking hard-core.
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NOTES
FATE AND FREE WILL, DEATH AND REBIRTH
In the novel, there is an episode in which Joker is concussed into unconsciousness by a mortar that blows apart a man next to him. Going in and out of semi-consciousness, he even believes he is dead, and his spirit argues with his body over whether or not it will return.
And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound. The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins. You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky?
"CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"
You're on your back. All around you boots dance by, pounding and crunching. Dirt clods and pieces of stone fall from the sky, into your mouth, your eyes. You spit out stone. You hold up one of your hands. You try to tell the pounding boots: Hey, don't step one me.
Your palms are hot. Your legs are broken. With one of your hands you touch yourself, your face, your thighs, you search your broken guts for warm, wet cavities.
Your reaction to your own death is nothing more than a highly intensified curiosity.
A hand presses you down. You wonder if you should try to do something about your broken legs. You think that it's possible that you don't have any legs. Tons of ocean water, dark and cold and populated by monsters, are crushing you. You try to raise your head. Hands hold you down. You fight. You fling your arms. Strong hands search for damage in your body.
"Legs..."
You cough up spiders.
On the ground beside you is a Marine without a head. Exhibit A, formerly a person, now two hundred pounds of fractured meat. The Marine without a head is on his back. His face has been knocked off. The top of his skull has been torn back, with the soft brain inside. The jawbone and bottom teeth are intact. In the hands of the Marine without a head is an M-60 machine gun, locked there forever by rigor mortis. His finger in on the trigger. His canvas jungle boots are muddy.
You look at the dried mud on the jungle boots of the Marine without a head and you are stunned that his feet look so much like your own.
You reach out. You touch his hand.
Something stings your arm.
Suddenly, you are very tired. You are breathing hard from the running. Your heart is beating so hard that it seems to want to tear its way out of your body. Through the center of your heart there is a star-shaped bullet hole.
Hands touch you. Gentle hands. "You're okay, jarhead. No sweat. I'm Doc Jay. Can you hear me? You can trust me, Marine. I got magic hands."
"No," you say. "NO!" You try to explain to the hands that part of you is missing in action. You want the hands to find the missing part; you don't want your missing part to be left behind. But you cannot speak. Your mouth won't work.
You sleep. You trust the hands that are holding you, the hands that are lifting you up.
In your dope dream of death you are an enlistment poster nailed to a black wall: THE MARINE CORPS BUILDS MEN--BODY--MIND--SPIRIT.
You feel yourself breaking up into three pieces...you hear strange voices...
"What's wrong?" one voice says, confused and frightened. "What's wrong?"
"Who's there?"
"What?"
"Who's there?"
"I'm Mind. Are you--"
"Affirmative. I'm his Body. I'm not feeling well..."
"This is utterly ridiculous," interjects a third voice. "This can't be happening."
"Who said that?" Mind demands. "Body? That you?"
"I said it, fool. You may call me Spirit."
Body sneers. "I don't believe either of you."
Mind speaks slowly: "Now, we've got to be logical about this. Our man is down. We've got to get organized."
Body whimpers. "Listen, you guys, that's me lying there--not you. You don't know what it's like."
Mind says, "Look, you moron, we're all in this together. If he goes, we all go."
"Is he..." Body can't say the word. "I've got to survive."
"No," Mind observes. "Not necessarily. They play this game. I'm not sure we are allowed to interfere."
Body is horrified. "What kind of 'game'?"
"I'm not sure. Something about rules. They have a lot of rules."
Spirit says, "This guy pisses me off. I'm not going back."
Mind says, "You have to go back."
"On the contrary," says Spirit. "I do as I please. You two have no control over me."
"Forget him," says Body.
Mind insists, "But Spirit must return with us."
"No. We don't need him."
Mind considers the situation. "Perhaps Spirit has a valid argument. Perhaps I shouldn't go back either..."
Body is frantic. "NO! PLEASE...."
"Yet, actually, nothing would be achieved by not going back. Our actions will not affect their game in any event. Losing one man won't change the game one way or the other. In fact, losing men seems to be the whole point of the game. We must be practical. Come along, Body, we're going back."
Spirit says, "Tell the man I'm missing in action."
In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone tablets with lightning bolts you're got to be brief, about how the Free World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of death...
"Hey, hit the deck, leatherneck, we're moving."
"What--?" I recognize the rooms I'm in. I remember the room from an earlier visit to Hue. I'm in the Palace of Perfect Peace in the Forbidden City.
Cowboy punches my arm. "Okay, Joker, stop acting. We know you're not dead."
Joker wakes in the Palace of Perfect Peace, better known as the Palace of Supreme Harmony. Kubrick has crafted a corresponding death journey for Joker in his confrontation with the sniper, which is a reason why I think this area has been crafted to correspond with the Palace of Supreme Harmony. The passage in the book is one akin to death and rebirth, much as Joker will have experienced here, his body physically and psychically pummeled by the barrage of shots fired directly at him that went into the pillar instead.
This is a journey that was begun back at Paris Island, when Pyle turned his gun on Joker. As with here, Joker was unable to defend himself. All he could do was ask Pyle to take it easy, and Pyle sat down on the toilet and shot himself. As I've noted, however, in the book Pyle is surprised by his gun shooting him.
CIRCULARITY
Kubrick's works often express circularity, the end wrapping around to the beginning though it ends up in a slightly different place, such as most obviously displayed in Lolita, the film opening with what we don't yet know is a flashback to Humbert's shooting of Quilty, then the film ending with Humbert's arrival at the mansion where Quilty is staying, looking for him, a scene that seems to duplicate the film's opening, but is slightly different. In Fear and Desire, the film ends with the same shot of the mountains and forest on which it opens. In The Shining, circularity is expressed throughout with the sense of deja vu, then with the final revelation of the 1921 July 4th party photograph and the idea that Jack was here before, which was why he was so familiar with the Overlook. In Eyes Wide Shut and A Clockwork Orange the circularity is had with Bill and Alex retracing their footsteps so that, in the second halves of the films, places they had previously been, people they'd previously met, are again encountered.
In Full Metal Jacket, it's less obvious, but Joker returns to the "head" in which he had his confrontation with Pyle, who killed Hartman, then pointed his rifle, named Charlene, at Joker, then shot himself instead. The novel makes it clear that Pyle didn't intend to shoot himself, that it was the rifle that did so, taking on a life of its own seemingly, Pyle's shadow unconscious so split off from him that he doesn't recognize he's murdering himself. In a sense, Charlene becomes "Charlie", the Viet Cong female sniper. The weaponry that the drill instructor had demanded should be named, anthropomorphized, and viewed as a romantic partner, a lover, had turned on Pyle and becomes the gun that takes the lives of Eightball, Doc Jay, Cowboy, and nearly Joker.
Whereas in the novel, the encounter with Pyle happened in the squad bay, in the film it happens in the "head", and Pyle had sat down on the "throne" and shot himself. If this room in Hue is intended to recall the Palace of Supreme Harmony, then it is also a throne room. Joker had faced Pyle essentially weaponless, a flashlight in hand. Again, facing the sniper, Joker is left weaponless, his rifle betraying him by jamming on him. He was preserved by the pillar upon which was the poster, and is saved by Rafter Man shooting the girl. Which isn't a good place for Rafter Man to be in. He doesn't cope well with this in his dark exultation, and Kubrick shows him as menacing, his expression seeming to dare Joker to shoot the girl and thus participate in the kill, and though Joker shoots her out of mercy, those around him interpret his action as hard-core. Joker, in the book, capitalizes on this when he kills Cowboy, making jokes, in order to deal with his own horror.
THE SNIPER AS WOMAN
Through the entire film, there are only three face-to-face personal interactions with Vietnamese--the encounter with the prostitute in Da Nang, when the camera was stolen; the encounter with the Vietnamese prostitute and her ARVN pimp at the cinema, and now the encounter with the Viet Cong female sniper. It is really regrettable that one of the lines of the film that has become most well known is, "Me love you long time," spoken by a prostitute, but it was also an expected response, and is countered with the reveal of the sniper being a woman. For, certainly, those in the theater, the sniper revealed to be a young woman, would connect her with the prostitute who had turned into a piece of meat to be fought over, Eightball backing off rather than escalate, Animal Mother pushing the young woman about, thrusting her into the theater, and the prostitute in the skirt simulating the American Indian loincloth in Da Nang.
I saw the film in the theater, on the big screen, when it first came out, and I swear I felt the visceral shock that went through the theater when the sniper was revealed to be a young woman. To me it seemed that much of the hatred that audiences had for Wendy, in The Shining, who wasn't a sex object, could be felt radiating out toward the screen for this female shooter, and that had the sniper been a man there wouldn't have been this same sense of rage. This is knowledgeably communicated in the film with how the corpse of the Vietnamese soldier is referred to as a "friend", respected for being a worthy opponent, a warrior. The female sniper is instead only spoken of in sexual terms, T.H.E. Rock saying there will be no more "boom-boom" for her, and everyone but Joker is prepared to just leave her to the rats. The hate they have for her is not just because she is an enemy Vietnamese sniper who killed fellow Marines, but because she is a woman. The female has betrayed them. The young Vietnamese woman belonged in the role of the prostitute, who they could trust to give them TB or an STD, but needed them for their dollars. This sexual aspect is worked by Hasford in The Phantom Blooper when Joker discovers that a Vietnamese woman who he'd read only as being a sex worker turns out to be a Viet Cong leader. And, as I've noted, it has everything to do as well with the feminization of the rifle, which turned on Pyle, as "Charlene".
It seemed to me that every Kubrick female character who had only been interpreted by the audience as being either a sexual object, or not worthy of being a sexual object, was coming down those stairs firing the gun. She was the woman in Fear and Desire who had been sexualized by Lieutenant Corby and killed by Private Sidney when she attempted to escape after he freed her, his expectation being that she would have sex with him. She was Iris, in Killer's Kiss, who had given up her career as a ballet dancer to marry in order to care for her father and sister, then committed suicide after their father's death. She was the younger sister, Gloria, who became a taxi dancer, and was raped by the gangster who owned the dancing establishment, who tried to control her and force her into a relationship. She was the German singer at the end of Paths of Glory who cowered in fear as she took the stage before the soldiers who felt completely at ease in their communal verbal abuse of her. She was Lolita, a child abused and controlled by a pedophile, and her mother, Charlotte, as well, who had been also used by Humbert. She was Wendy, abused by Jack, and by an audience that was irritated that she wasn't a typical sex object. All of these female characters shared in that they were each blamed by societal standards and the audience for their abuse. Wendy wasn't attractive enough and was whiney. Lolita hadn't been an innocent enough child and was interpreted as enticing Humbert. Charlotte was too comically eager for a husband. Gloria was seen as putting herself in a position of being unable to deny sex by virtue of her being a taxi dancer, and then, when kidnapped, she led the gangster on. The young woman in Fear and Desire had also led the soldier to believe they would have sex. They were duplicitous, sly, not genuine. Every single one of these characters and the two prostitutes shocked the audience by betraying their roles as sex objects, but I felt especially the prostitutes, and Wendy, who had once worn braids in The Shining, as this young woman did.
Kubrick has contributed to the disorientation, the audience's expectation that the sniper would be male, by seemingly showing the sniper's hand earlier, which appeared to belong to a man. Perhaps it did. Then should we consider Phuong, and how the masculine and feminine aspects of the phoenix, had, over time, merged so the phoenix held them both, was still a symbol of yin-yang harmony, but is represented now as feminine. Not to mention the CIA's Phoenix Program taking that auspicious symbol and torturing and killing tens of thousands in its name. Hasford had referred to this in The Phantom Blooper. Everyone involved in the sculpting of this script was aware of the Phoenix Program and opted to face the My-Toan building with Tam-Phuong. And they would have been aware that the young woman in The Quiet American, who Fowler and Pyle fought over, was named Phuong, and how each had accused the other of orientalizing her, not understanding what she wanted.
The name of the actress who played the sniper is given as Ngoc Le. The theater's name was Le Ngoc, the meaning of which is "Valuable gem stone".
JOKER (as JOHN WAYNE, mocking for the camera): I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I, uh,I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture..and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.
All that the sniper is for Rafter Man is his first confirmed kill. In the novel, though Joker performs the mercy killing, Rafter Man claims her as his kill and afterward shoots her body to pieces, after Alice has cut off her head and taken other parts of her for good luck.
"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste the gook."
Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.
I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.
I fall on my back.
The sniper is moving.
Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline on his ass.
I try to stand up. But all of my bones have shifted one inch to the left.
Suddenly a foot steps on my chest, pinning me. The sniper looks down, surprised. The sniper sees that I'm helpless, glances back at Rafter Man, gets ready to jump across to the other roof.
Rafter Man runs back up the incline and slides back down on his ass, ten yards away.
I reach for my grease gun.
The sniper turns toward Rafter Man and raises her SKS carbine.
The sniper is the first Victor Charlie I've seen who was not dead, captured, or far, far away. She is a child, no more than fifteen years old, a slender Eurasian angel with dark, beautiful eyes, which, at the same time, are the hard eyes of a grunt. She's not quite five feet tall. Her hair is long and black and shiny, held together by rawhide cord tied in a bow. Her shirt and shorts are mustard-colored khaki and look new. Slung diagonally across her chest, separating her small breasts, is a white cloth tube fat with sticky reddish rice. Her B.F. Goodrich sandals have been cut from discarded tires. Around her tiny waist hangs a web belt from which dangle homemade hand grenades with hollow wooden handles, made by stuffing black powder into Coca-Cola cans, a knife for cleaning fish, and six canvas pouches containing banana clips for the AK-47 assault rifle slung on her back.
Bang. Rafter Man is firing his M-16. Bang. Bang.
The sniper lowers her weapon. She looks at Rafter Man. She looks at me. She tries to raise her weapon.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bullets shock flesh. Rafter Man is firing. Rafter Man's bullets are punching the life out of the sniper.
The sniper falls off the roof.
The tank fires into the ground floor beneath us. The house shakes.
I stand up. I feel like a dead man's shit. I walk to the front of the house. I wave to the blond tank commander. He swings a fifty-caliber machine gun around and aims it at me. I step into full view on the edge of the roof. I wave an "all clear."
The tank commander gives me a thumbs-up.
I pop a green smoke grenade and I drop it on the roof.
I limp over to the skylight and I climb back down into the library.
Rafter Man has already jumped into the library and is running down the shrapnel-scarred stairs.
Down on the street I watch as the tank rolls up to the last house still standing. I wave another "all clear" and the tank commander gives me another smile and another thumbs-up and then the tank fires, blasting the top floor. If fires again, blasting the ground floor.
The tank commander's great mechanical body grumbles contentedly and rumbles away.
Cowboy double-times to meet me. He punches me on the arm. "Look!" Cowboy touches his right ear, carefully. "Look!" There's a neat little round hole through his right ear and a semicircular nick on the top of his left ear. "See? A cheap Heart! The round went through the helmet from behind, spun all the way around my head, then came out and hit me in the arm..." Cowboy holds up his right forearm, which has already been bandaged. "Did you see that tank? Was that tank bad? What a honey."
Doc Jay catches up to Cowboy, grabs him roughly, pushes him down. Cowboy sits on a splintered tree stump while Doc Jay tears the waxy brown wrapper off a compress bandage and ties the bandage around Cowboy's bloody head.
Alice and I walk around to the rear of the house.
We find Rafter Man standing over the sniper, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola. Rafter Man grins. He says, "Things go better with Coke."
Animal Mother walks up and Rafter Man says, "Look at her! Look at her!"
We all stand over the sniper. The sniper is drawing her breath with great effort. Guts that look like colorful plastic have squirted out through bullet holes. The back of the sniper's right leg and her right buttock have been torn off. She grits her teeth and then makes a sound like a dog that has been run over.
Lance Corporal Stutten leads his fire team to the sniper. "Look at that," says Lance Corporal Stutten. "It's a girl. She's all busted up."
"Look at her!" Rafter Man is saying. He struts around the moaning lump of torn meat. "Look at her! Am I bad? Am I a menace? Am I a life taker? Am I a heart breaker?"
Alice kneels and unbuckles the sniper's web belt and jerks it from under her body. The sniper whimpers. She speaks to us in French. Alice tosses the bloody belt to Rafter Man.
The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese.
Rafter Man asks, "What's she saying?"
I shrug. "What difference does it make?"
Animal Mother spits. "It's gonna get dark. We better hump back to the company area."
I say, "What about the gook?"
"Fuck her," says Animal Mother. "Let her rot."
"We can't just leave her here," I say.
Animal Mother takes a giant step toward me, puts his face up close to mine. "Hey, asshole, Cowboy is down. You're fresh out of friends, motherfucker. I'm running this squad. I was a platoon sergeant before they busted me. I say we leave the gook for the mother-loving rats."
Rafter Man is buckling on his NVA belt. The belt has a dull-silver buckle with a star engraved in the center. "Joker is a sergeant."
Animal Mother is surprised. He stares at Rafter Man, then at me. Then: "That don't cut no shit out here. This is the field, motherfucker. You ain't a grunt. You don't pack the gear to be a grunt. You want to fuck with me? Huh? You want to throw some hands?"
I say, "I wouldn't run this squad for a million dollars. I'm just saying that we can't leave the gook like this."
"I don't care," says Animal Mother. "Go on and waste her."
I say, "No. Not me."
"Then we saddle up and move...now."
I look at the sniper. She whimpers. 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. As I lift my grease gun she is praying in French. I jerk the trigger. Bang. One round enters the sniper's left eye and as the bullet exits it tears off the back of her head.
The squad is silent.
Then Alice grunts, flashes a big grin. "Man, you are one hard dude. How come you ain't a grunt?" Cowboy and Doc Jay are standing beside me.
Cowboy says, "Mother, I'm serviceable. Joker, that's a well done. You're hard.'
Animal Mother spits. He takes a step, kneels, zips out his machete. With one powerful blow he chops off her head. He picks the head up by its long black hair and holds it high. He laughs and says, "Rest in pieces, bitch." And he laughs again. He walks around and sticks the bloody ball of gore into all our faces. "Hard? Now who's hard? Now who's hard, motherfuckers?"
Cowboy looks at Animal Mother and sighs. "Joker is hard, Mother. You...you're just mean.".
Animal Mother pauses, spits, throws the head into a ditch..
Cowboy says, "Let's move. We done our job.".
Animal Mother picks up his M-60 machine gun, lays it across his shoulders, struts over to me. He smiles. "You know, Shortround never did see the frag that wasted him, that little kike." Animal Mother unhooks a hand grenade from the front of his flak jacket and pushes it into my chest--hard. Mother looks around, then smiles at me again. "Nobody shits on the Animal, motherfucker. Nobody.".
I hook the grenade onto my flak jacket..
Alice picks up the sniper's rifle. "Hey, number one souvenir!".
Rafter Man is standing over the sniper's decapitated corpse. He aims his M-16 and fires a long burst of automatic fire into the body. Then he says, "That's mine, Alice." He takes the SKS from Alice and examines it closely. He looks down and admires his new belt. "I shot her first, Joker. She'd have died. That's one confirmed for me.".
I say, "Sure, Rafter. You wasted her.".
Rafter Man says, "I did. I wasted her. I fucking blew her away." He looks at his NVA rifle belt again. He holds up the SKS. "Wait until Mr. Payback sees this!".
Alice is down on his knees beside the corpse. With his machete he chops off the sniper's feet. He puts the feet into his blue canvas shopping bag. He chops off the sniper's finger and takes her gold ring.
We wait until Rafter Man takes photographs of the dead gook and we wait until Alice takes photographs of Rafter Man posing with his SKS set in his hip and his foot on the mutilated remains of the enemy sniper..
Then, as we're moving out, Rafter Man sees a reflection of his face in the jagged teeth of a shattered window, sees the new smile upon his face. Rafter Man stares at himself for a long time and then, dropping the carbine, Rafter Man just walks off down the road, not looking back, not responding to our questions. Cowboy waves his hand and we move out. Nobody says anything about Rafter Man.
There are three chapters in the book. Rafter Man dies at the end of the second chapter, the Battle of Hue over. He accidentally walks in front of an American tank, confused, even as he's trying to escape its path. He's cut in half.
The 1975 Michael Maclear documentary, Spooks and Gooks, on the CIA's Phoenix Program, lists the statistics of things not going well for veterans upon their return home. At the time 35% of prison inmates had served in Vietnam, 1 in 5 veterans were arrested within 6 months of their return from Vietnam, 500,000 were officially suffering from "prolongued, psychiatric effects", 500,000 had received "other than honorable discharges" and were not entitled to benefits. 50,000 veterans had died since their return to America, credited to self-destructive behavior.
DOEN KET
Several times we observe a poster of a fist plunging downward, in black and white, on the sleeve of the fist the flags of the United States, South Korea, and Australia, and above, in large letters, DOAN KET, or đoàn kết, which means "to unite". This must be a poster to do with a South Vietnamese psyops campaign, called "Dai Doan Ket', or "The National Reconciliation Program". A purpose was to bring back in defectors to the Viet Cong, offering full re-integration, and employment. I read that it was announced 27 April 1967 in the PSYOP-POLWAR Newsletter printed by the United States Military Assistance Command "to inform commanders, PSYOP personnel, and PSYWAR advisors of psychological operations in Vietnam and exchange idea and lessons learned". The phrase "Dai Doan Ket" had an ancient history, a rallying cry calling the Vietnamese people to unity in 1284, during a war with invading Mongols, the Vietnames victory yearly celebrated on the 20th day of the 8th Lunar month, in early October. But it gets confusing because the Communist Vietnamese also used the term in their propaganda, and after the war a major paper in Hanoi adopted the name. The PSYOP objectives were "To convince potential ralliers that they can contribute to peace and save their own lives by laying down their arms and rallying under the Chieu Hoi/Dai Doan Ket banner which is an honorable way to reduce the bloodshed and suffering of the Vietnamese people" and "To convince potential ralliers that the people and the government of SVN will welcome them because of their decision to join in the pursuit for peace and prosperity and will recognize their full rights as citizens".
I can find online no poster like that one observed in the film, but with the US, South Korean and Australian flags on the sleeve I'm assuming this is referring to the unity of these three forces who were engaged in the Vietnamese War and that they form a strong fist. Many of the materials, instead of drilling the idea of the strength of forces engaged in fighting for the South Vietnamese, intended to elicit feelings of homesickness, of happier times with a reunited family. This was part of the "winning hearts and minds" strategy. "Capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow". (Source for this information at Dai Doan Ket - National Reconciliation.) So, as I've noted, this is an odd poster that in some ways looks more like it would be a Communist Vietnamese propaganda poster--and Communist Vietnamese did use the same phrase--but must be South Vietnamese.
I've assumed there may be also a spiritual significance attached to the poster of this hand, the closed fist, considering the Hebrew alphabet and YD, the hand of god, and KPh, also the hand. The interpretations are complex as they are varied.
THE INVERTED STAR
The way the Viet Cong flag is hung, the star is inverted. We see the same inversion in The Killing at the stables when we are shown Red Lightning, the horse that will be killed. A star is on a barrier gate before each of the stalls, and on one stall it is inverted.
I only draw a comparison as Red Lightning was killed by a sniper, Nikki, who shot him from a parking lot. The sniper in turn was promptly killed by a policeman as he was unable to make his get-away as a tire of his car was punctured by a good luck horseshoe that Nikki had refused and had been thrown on the ground by the parking lot attendant who had brought it over to Nikki as he had been kind to him but then turned racially insulting in order to get the attendant to leave him alone so he could kill the horse. The last shot we have of that scene is the sniper's hand resting beside the horse shoe.
WHO'S THE LEADER OF THE CLUB
592 LS of Marines walking through the burning city. (1:51:57)
JOKER: We have nailed our names in the pages of history enough for today. We hump down to the Perfume River to set in for the night.
MARINES: M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. We play fair and we work hard and we're in harmony. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse! Forever let us hold our banner high, high, high, high! Boys and girls from far and near...
593 MS of Joker walking screen left with Marines. (1:52:41)
MARINES: ...you're welcome as can be. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me...
JOKER:
My thoughts drift back to erect-nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the great homecoming-fuck fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece, and short. I am in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive and I am not afraid.
MARINES: ...come along and sing our song and join our family. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.
594 LS of Marines walking left. (1:53:21)
MARINES: Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. Hey there, hi there, ho there, you're as welcome as can be. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E. Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse.
Fade to black. Rolling Stones "Paint it black" starts for credits.
I see a red door
And I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by
Dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
Until my darkness goes
I see a line of cars
And they're all painted black
With flowers and my love
Both never to come back
I've seen people turn their heads
And quickly look away
Like a newborn baby
It just happens everyday
I look inside myself
And see my heart is black
I see my red door
I must have it painted black
Maybe then, I'll fade away
And not have to face the facts
It's not easy facing up
When your whole world is black
No more will my green sea
Go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing
Happening to you
If I look hard enough
Into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me
Before the morning comes
I see a red door
And I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by
Dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
Until my darkness goes
I wanna see it painted
Painted black
Black as night
Black as coal
I wanna see the sun
Blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black, yeah
NOTES
MICKEY MOUSE
Mickey Mouse. We had already observed Mickey Mouse toys earlier in the film, two of them on the windowsill back at the base in the hut where the journalists met. The toys both disappear during the course of the scene in which Lockhart becomes exasperated with Joker and sends him out, with Rafter Man, to Phú Bai, an Army/Marines air base that was south of Hue. "Vanish, Joker, most ricky-tick," says Lockhart, even as we may have noticed the two Mickey Mouse toys having vanished from the sill.
Because the character of Shortround, in the novel, becomes Touchdown in the movie, I had wondered if there might be an association with the sweater Danny had worn in The Shining that displayed Mickey Mouse kicking a football. They were into the beginning isolation of the snowstorm. Wendy watches The Summer of 42, a movie about a teenage boy who, being a minor, does not simply have an affair with a woman whose husband has been killed in WWII, but is sexually abused, which carries heavy consequences and devastates him for years. Danny goes to get his fire truck in their apartment and sees his father seated on the bed, distant. gazing out the window. Danny, who has already been physically abused by him, doesn't trust his aspect. He fears his father might hurt him and his mother.
I have written about this in my analysis on The Shining, that I believe there's a link between Danny's sweater and WWII. The story goes that the last show run before the BBC shut down, for security reasons, the day Germany invaded Poland, was the cartoon Touchdown Mickey, while others say it was Mickey's Gala Premier. The BBC would be shut down until the end of the war, which links with the Overlook having been essentially cut off from civilization. Danny is in his Touchdown Mickey sweater, Wendy is watching a movie on television despite the fact they not be receiving any broadcasts, the film doesn't appear to be on VCR, and the TV isn't even plugged in. This isn't the hotel and its ghosties. It's instead a rather surreal style of cinema in the way the past is brought into the fictional present and comments on it. The sexual encounter in the film had actually happened to the screenwriter (and author of the subsequent book) The Summer of 42, and due some of Jack's experiences in Stephen King's novel one wonders about his history and whether he might have experienced some sort of sexual abuse when young, and that his experience in Room 237 is perhaps an expression of this. The past is replayed in the present. A prior caretaker had murdered his family and Jack will attempt to repeat this, taking on the murderous authoritarian rage of the hotel, its need for strict control.
The Torrances are as isolated at The Overlook as the exiled Prospero in The Tempest, a work referenced in Fear and Desire with Kubrick's first isolates, stranded behind enemy lines. Wendy is only able to now have radio contact with the outside world, which will end when Jack removes the relays. The squad in Full Metal Jacket has become more and more removed from The World, and are completely cut off during the sniper ordeal. Murphy is present at Touchdown's death, then during the killings of Crazy Earl, Eightball and Doc Jay is only available by radio, giving news that the isolated squad will not be able to receive support, then appears to have not been even contacted at all after Cowboy's death, which occurred while Cowboy was radioing Murphy with information on the sniper.
There is a Mickey Mouse scene in The Short-timers, it occurring after the Marines have killed rats that have invaded their quarters. .
We rest for a while and then we gather up the barbecued rats and take them outside to hold a funeral in the dark.
Some guys from utilities platoon who live next door come out of their hootch to pay their respects.
Lance Corporal Winslow Slavin, honcho of the combat plumbers, struts up in a skuzzy green flight suit. The flight suit is ragged, covered with paint stains and oil splotches. "Only six? Shit. Last night my boys got seventeen. Confirmed."
I say, "Sounds like a squad of poges to me. Poges kill poges. These rats are Viet Cong field Marines. Hard-core grunts."
I pick up one of the rats. I turn to the combat plumbers. I hold up the rat and I kiss it.
Mr. Payback laughs, picks up one of the dead rats, bites off the tip of its tail. Then, swallowing, Mr. Payback says, "Ummm....love them crispy critters." He grins. He bends over, picks up another dead rat, offers it to Rafter Man.
Rafter Man is frozen. He can't speak. He just looks at the rat.
Mr. Payback laughs. "What's wrong, New Guy? Don't you want to be a killer?"
We bury the enemy rats with full military honors--we scoop out a shallow grave and we dump them in.
We sing:
So come along and sing our song
And join our fam-i-ly
M.I.C....K.E.Y....M.O.U.S.E.
Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse...
The Marines, in the film, sing that they play fair, work hard, and are in harmony...words which partly echo Jack's "All work and no play..." repetitions. How does the actual Mickey Mouse theme song go?
Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Hey there, Hi there, Ho there! You're as welcome as can be!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Forever let us hold our banner high, high, high, high!
Come along and sing a song and join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Mickey Mouse Club!
Mickey Mouse Club!
We'll have fun
We'll meet new faces
We'll do things and we'll go places
All around the world we're marching
Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Jiminy Cricket: Hey there, Hi there, Ho there! You're as welcome as can be!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Forever let us hold our banner high, high, high, high!
Come along and sing the song and join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Yay Mickey!
Yay Mickey!
Yay Mickey Mouse Club!
There's nothing in the original lyrics about playing fair, working hard and being in harmony. That lyric line isn't in the book either. It has been incorporated to forge another connection with The Shining and Jack's "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" novel.
This is how the The Short-timers ends:
Everyone hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me again; I'll be invisible....
Nobody talks. We're all too tired to talk, to joke, to call each other names. The day has been too hot, the hump too long. We've shot up our share of Victor Charlie jungle plants and we are wasted.
We wrap ourselves in pastel fantasies of varied designs and "X" another day off our short-timer's calendars. We look forward to imaginary bennies: hot showers, cold beer, a fix of Coke (because things go better with Coke), juicy steaks, mail from hone, and a moment of privacy in which to massage our wands, inspired by fading photographs of loving wives and girlfriends back in the World.
The showers will be cold, the beer, if there is any, will be hot. No steak. No Cokes. The mail, if there is any, will not be from sweethearts. The mail from hometown America, like the half dozen letters I carry unopened in my rucksack, will say: Write more often be careful if you think it's tough there bought this used car what a report card mother is taking shots nothing good on TV don't write depressing letters so maybe send me fifty bucks new furniture in the dining room for a ring quick buddy she's pregnant be real careful write more often and so on and so on until you feel like you just got a Dear John letter from the whole damned world.
We hump back down the trail.
Back on the hill, Sorry Charlie, our bro, will laugh at us one more time; Sorry Charlie, at least, will greet us with a smile.
Putting our minds back into our feet, we concentrate all our energy into taking that next step, that one more step, just one more step.... We try very hard not to think about anything important, try very hard not to think that there's no slack and that it's a long walk home.
There it is.
I wave my hand and Mother takes the point.
Joker is glad to be alive, but everyone is glad to be alive, and they are too wasted, too exhausted by their ordeal to do anything other than concentrate on taking the next step, which requires all their energy. There isn't this exultant bravado of unified Marines marching together, as one. From where does that come?
I would wonder if the Marines marching to the "Mickey Mouse" song isn't in response to the Hearts and Minds documentary of 1975, toward the beginning of which there is a fairly surreal segment of a musical production from WWII, the 1943 film, This is the Army. In it, the soldiers sing they do this so they will never have to do it again. The movie begins with WWI, so it covers two wars. It would seem that the use of the Mickey Mouse march in the film is partly a satire on this, the Marines replicating the march of the soldiers in the WWII film.
THE BITTER END / COMPARING SHOT 595 IN 2001 WITH SHOT 594 AND AN INFERRED SHOT 595 IN FULL METAL JACKET / PAINT IT BLACK
As the Marines march they pass by not just one but two pillars that could be taken as referring to the monolith of 2001.
Though I'm repeating myself, I'm going to insert again here what I'd written in Part One about the ending of this film.
* * * * * * * * * *
In shot 55 of Full Metal Jacket, as we hear the cadence call "Up in the morning to the rising sun", we observe the red sun dawn behind men on the obstacle course.
In 2001, we first see the red sun dawning, not just its glow but a shaft of red radiance breeching the hills, in shot 5. The monolith first appears in shot 55 in 2001, and if we are attentive we see that the sky and distant landscape used in shot 5 is used again for this shot (though we don't see the sun), and is flipped, mirrored. Then, in the next shot the sky and distant landscape returns to its previous orientation. As I state in my essay, that the horizontal flip occurs with shot 55 is itself expressive of the doubling/mirroring inferred with the horizontal flip that occurs in that shot, and I hazard that confirmation is given in shot 595.
At the end of the film, when the monolith appears to Dave in his bed, it is with shot 595 that the camera zooms in on the monolith, and as it does so the roomtakes on perfect mirrored symmetry to either side of it, and we observe how the monolith is the between, the line that makes the mirroring, dividing left from light, yet is also the space in which left and right are extinguished.
Dave is reborn. If you add the digits of a number the 9 always disappears, such as with adding 5 and 9 and 5 one gets 14 plus 5 is 19 is 10 is 1. 5 and 5 is 10 plus 9 is 19 is 10 is 1. With 595 Kubrick has returned us to shot 55, the monolith's first appearance, when the landscape was reversed, mirrored (though we didn't see the doubles alongside one another, as we do in The Shining, and the doubles face one another in Fear and Desire). The practice of adding numbers in this manner, related to gematria, letters having number values, is isopsephy. We could look on 55 as being the Jewish number/letter 5=Heh, side by side, which is related to how the ten commandments were written so there were 5 on the left stone and 5 on the right. According to Jewish gematria, 9 signifies truth and eternity as all multiples of the number 9 are 9 when reduced. Also, according to tradition, the stones were inscribed clear through so that on the reverse side the writing was seen in mirror form and yet understood.
Dave is reborn at the end of 2001. The recruits are reborn, after a fashion, on Parris Island, but they are reborn in the way that we find early humanoids are changed with the appearance of the monolith. We can compare the rebirth of the recruits to, after the appearance of the monolith, early humanoids discovering the use of tools for purpose of self-protection from predators, for the killing of food, for the territorial protection of a water hole, for violence and blood shed. But the recruits have also regressed so they are animals. They compare themselves to animals in the novel.
* * * * * * * * * *
So it is that in shot 594 we have the Marines marching along before the twin monoliths, then it seems an implied shot 595 is had in the black that follows and the Rolling Stones song "Paint it Black" beginning.
I see a red door
And I want it painted black
...
I wanna see the sun
Blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted
Painted black, yeah
The second act for Joker is in Hasford's following novel, The Phantom Blooper, in which Joker, as in Kubrick's Fear and Desire, faces the enemy and finds themselves--which is not in the manner of a misleading meme.
It's complex.
The end of the film is frequently viewed as Marines victoriously banded and bonded together after the killing of the sniper, but it is not so positive as is often believed. What Kubrick's ending does is stick with a humane view of, in particular, Joker as a person, not simply a soldier. He has just survived a situation in which he should have been killed. His weaponry failed him and then he was failed by simply being a physically mortal human in a desperate situation. He is alive because of Rafter Man, and it has been made clear that Rafter Man's soul has gone to a dark side that's eager for "the kill" and to hook others into killing. That Joker shot the sniper as a mercy killing has no meaning for Rafter Man, but he's confident that killing the woman will have an effect on Joker. That was an intense drama--then suddenly we're out here with the singing Marines marching together as one, which isn't the situation we just saw, and the viewer needs to remember what was just experienced.
The book ends soon after Rafter Man has died, sliced in half by an American tank, and Joker has reminisced about his first confirmed kill, which was of an innocent farmer.
After my first confirmed kill I began to understand that it was not necessary to understand. What you do, you become. The insights of one moment are blotted out by the events of the next. And no amount of insight could ever alter the cold, black fact of what I had done. I was caught up in a constricting web of darkness, and, like the ancient farmer, I was suddenly very calm, just as I had been calm when the mine detonated, because there was nothing I could do. I was defining myself with bullets; blood had blemished my Yankee Doodle dream that everything would have a happy ending, and that I, when the war was over, would return to hometown America in a white silk uniform, a rainbow of campaign ribbons across my chest, brave beyond belief, the military Jesus.
Joker, the human being, is viewed at the end, as well as what Joker becomes on the battlefield. He may say he's unafraid, but Kubrick responds to that assertion with the despair of "Paint it Black". In Paths of Glory we had been made to feel such empathy and pity for the sacrificed soldiers that when their comrades were shaking off the gloom in the tavern, frightening the German waitress, the audience is tempted to fall right in with their behavior because of that bonding. Kirk Douglas' character is, however, obviously distressed, which is the first call for self-examination on the part of the audience, then the second is the German girl's song breaking the men down as they were reminded of home and what they used to be. In response to Joker's, "I am not afraid," Kubrick's "Paint it Black" ending functions much the same. Just because we view the Marines seeming to be victoriously bonded and functioning as a single entity at the end, Joker now protesting he's "unafraid", does not mean this is a static, forever situation, or that it is even true. Just because the screen appears to relay this information as reality, because Joker says this, does not mean the audience has to agree with it or believe it.
It's one thing for a film or a character to be unbelievable. It's another thing for a film to make something believable, to present it as fact, while demanding throughout one take a second look and discern what is not as it seems.
THE WRAP UP, IN BRIEF
Underneath the sell of this film being conceivably about Vietnam, the action taking place at Hue during the beginning of the Tet Offensive, as with some other Kubrick films it's instead aggressively surreal and what's happening is never quite what the audience assumes in its determination to constellate the conceivable. Why is the audience normally blind to this? Because, though there are those who represent Kubrick as a cold filmmaker, he emotionally connects, and the ride is based on the very immediate strength of the relationship forged between the audience and the camera's grip on the principle characters. As with Kubrick's other works, the subterranean level of this film can only work because this is also, foremost, and most immediately, a film about Vietnam, committed to expressing, as best it could, the harshness of boot camp, and then the insane terrain of war.
Thank you to those who, over the years, kept asking me when I was going to do an analysis of "Full Metal Jacket". It was very rewarding, digging into this film and writing about it.
Approx 12,800 words or 26 single-spaced pages. Uploaded Sep 30 2022.
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