Watched ‘Full Metal Jacket’ again recently and was struck by a few things. I first saw it when I was very young and obviously alot went under the radar. I had thought of the film up until recently to be relatively straight forward and perhaps not as thematically dense as Kubrick’s other work. But on closer examination, it’s every bit as rich and nuanced as 2001 or The Shining. Needless to say, spoilers follow.
Private Pyle
The central image of the film for me had always been that of the previously child-like Private Pyle, at the end of his wits, blowing his head off whilst sitting on the toilet. The idea of sitting down to do the very human thing of going to the toilet but actually blowing your mind out instead, struck a chord and illustrates the main point of the film – that war dehumanises. In fact, it’s not just a by-product of direct combat but a pre-requisite of the war process- the first third of the film details how ordinary young men are dehumanised in basic training so that they are more able to be cold-hearted killers. It begins in the very first shots, as we see the new recruits having their heads shaved. And then they get given new (often insulting) names. This is followed by what amounts to physical and mental torture at the hands of Sgt. Hartmann and culminates, at least for Pyle, with the complete disintegration of humanity to the point where he can’t do the most human of things, expel his abject waste, the ‘shit’, because he’s backed up full of the stuff. Blowing his head off has symbolically replaced going to the toilet, for his head is now full of shit.
