The Absurdity of War

After watching Full Metal Jacket again, I better realized how Hartman uses a combination of profanity, patriotism, and absurdity to better prepare the would-be Marines for war. The scene where this is most apparent is the "Eskimo Pussy" cadence.

Hartman starts off this jody with a fairly universal military theme, patriotism, and has the cadets rhythmically repeat after him how much they "love working for Uncle Sam." He then continues with a few variations on a count with "Marine Corp" attached, finishing that particular segment with "My Corp, Your Corp, Our Corp, Marine Corp!"

Then, the always infamous "I don't know, but I've been told..." kicks off the last segment.

Judging by the previous two parts of the chant, which deal with some of the fundamental beliefs in the military (love of country and brotherly support), we'd expect something that deals with another military theme. Instead, we get: "Eskimo pussy is mighty cold." Where the hell did that come from? The Gunnery Sargent ends the whole thing with how good cold eskimo pussy is (feels good, tastes good, good for me, good for you, etc...), and then the scene ends. Talking about Inuit genitalia. Don't worry, everyone else had the same "Wtf?" moment you did.

Now, after watching the whole movie again, I can better understand what that scene was trying to accomplish in context. The entire movie, when boiled down to it's basic parts, is about the absurdity of war, about how ridiculous it is that we turn our men into machines programmed to kill other machines. Soldiers saw absurd stuff on the battlefield every day (booby-trapped bunny rabbit, child snipers, etc...), but they were able to take it in stride because of the training they received on the island, training like the Eskimo Pussy cadence. By bombarding the cadets with simultaneous serious and absurd orders, Hartman was making it easier for troops to function on the battlefield, where messages might (and in fact would) be similarly mixed.