Private Pyle's instability is still alive

The movie watcher finds it very disturbing when Private Pyle grins from ear to ear before his mental breakdown and suicide. His smile is imprinted in the audiences’ brain, and cannot go without being noticed when watching Full Metal Jacket. It is one of the pivotal moments of the film, and, in my head, correlates with the movie itself more than any other scene.

But what would the audience say about the grin from Bunny in Platoon when Sgt. Barnes shoots a running Vietnamese and tells Bunny to “Check him out.”? Was that a pivotal moment? What would the audience say about the laughter that rang through the soldier’s mouth in FMJ when he was shooting random women and children from the helicopter? Was that a pivotal moment? Most would say no to both of those questions after their first seeing of the movies, but looking more in depth into those scenes, I can go as far as to say that those scenes were probably more important than Private Pyle’s suicide scene.

The suicide scene is important because it shows what training and harsh treatment in the military can do to a person’s mental capabilities and health. But the two scenes in the two movies involving soldiers smiling over death reveal a deeper kind of mental instability that shows a lot more about a person than suicide. When Private Pyle kills himself, it is not much of a shock to everyone since they have seen him slowly deteriorate over the many months, but the unsteadiness inside the minds and hearts of the soldiers that not only survived the training, but became ruthless killers too, is hard to read. They act as normal as everyone else until they are given a weapon. No one else is human to them anymore. It is a very unstable and disturbing way to release their anger.

It is not a question of which soldiers have a conscience or not. It is more of a question of which soldiers have been brainwashed to truly and sincerely think they are doing nothing wrong. Let’s examine the scene mentioned above from Full Metal Jacket. This scene is a great contrast of a combat soldier, and a soldier who has only seen and heard about the aftermath of fighting.

The soldier that is sitting on the edge next to the open helicopter door is shooting his heart out while screaming, “GET SOME” as loud as he can. The camera then turns to the new soldier (Rafterman) that is implied to have seen no combat at all. He almost vomits repeatedly. This is a symbol of his innocence. This is a symbol of his shock. He is we. He is normal.

The camera again turns to Private Joker who is looking everywhere but he cannot look at the soldier killing innocent people. He is a little more experienced. He has learned denial. He has learned acceptance.

The soldier stops shooting, and after some conversation, Private Joker asks the soldier how he could kill women and children. The audience takes this question as Joker asking how the soldier can find it in himself to kill potentially innocent and undoubtedly weak humans. He replies with a literal answer and joke of how he can physically kill women and children. And the scene ends. What is he? He is Private Pyle’s instability; much more dangerous alive.