Full Metal Jacket: The Philosophy of Private Joker

Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is incredibly robust and rich in philosophical issues, specifically speaking: ethics, personal identity, and agency. The film is distinctly in two parts that serve as a narrative. In the first half of the film, men to be soldiers are stripped of their identity and free will. In the opening sequence of the film, the men are stripped of their physical individuality by collectively getting their hair shaved down to identical buzzcuts (Full Metal Jacket 0:28-1:51). These men are plucked away from their homes and dropped into an extremely sterile and symmetrical boot camp, led by the tyrannical drill sergeant. The drill sergeant breaks each of them, to the extent where one scapegoated Private “Gomer Pyle” kills him and commits suicide. Only when stripped of their names and personality, can men become killers. Pyle’s actions marks the end of the first half, exemplified by the Pyle’s blood splattering and dirtying the sterile latrine.

In the second half of the movie, narration seems to halt when the soldiers reach Vietnam. Kubrick spends more time to characterize the American soldiers in the Oriental Vietnamese environment. In the first half, Private Joker had shown signs of strong individuality that faltered with the pressure of authority and group forces. Despite this, his deep, though hesitated and confused, sense of self and purpose continues to create conflict for him against his team and himself. A significant moment of the film is when Joker is questioned of his contradicting use of a pin of a peace sign and helmet with “BORN TO KILL” written (Full Metal Jacket 1:04:18-1:05:42). Joker’s answer, though on the surface seems like just another one of his remarks that earned him his nickname, “The duality of man, sir” is an incredibly complex and philosophical answer.

As depicted by the film, American soldiers were planted into another country to fight a war. In Vietnam, the war is known as the “American War,” because American involvement was--whether or not offensively--an intrusion.So what is the purose of this? The purpose of any war? What Joker writes on his helmet suggests that humans are born to kill. The juxtaposition of the fateful helmet on his head to the peace pin on his heart points out the contradiction in using violence and death to chase after peace; “a war to end all wars” as Woodrow Wilson said during World War I. This contradiction poses a lost of cause for many soldiers, and in Joker’s case the epic struggle between prudence and compassion.

The film progresses with its narrative at the last few sequences of the film. Joker and his comrades are fired at; fatalities were inescapable. Joker is able to penetrate the sniper’s realm, revealing a teenage girl at the trigger. She is then unforgivingly wounded by Rafterman. Kubrick uses head on close up shots, having the young girl look directly into the camera as she lies there in pain, praying in her language and begging to be shot and end of her misery. Joker, due to his compassionate heart argued against leaving her there to suffer. When his comrades all disagreed, it was up to him to shoot her. The gun shot is off camera, because it is not the shot itself that matters. The camera is kept on Joker’s face, as he struggles in agony with his ethical and moral beliefs. Was shooting her just fulfilling his destiny to kill as his helmet says? Or was shooting her an act of compassion to spare her of suffering? By the look of Joker’s face, it was both. The movie ends with the men marching in the foreground to a background of what can only be compared to hell. Joker is no longer prominent, fading out with the rest of the men. They march and sing the theme song to Mickey Mouse, and Joker reveals that he is no longer afraid (Full Metal Jacket 1:51:01-1:53:07). Joker has broken the innocence all men have before taking a life, which would now diminish both his fear and hesitance in war.