Breaking Down Barriers

Quite possibly the most overlooked and under analyzed scene in Full Metal Jacket happens to be the one that epitomizes, and later emphasizes, the cog in the wheel effect. Shaving of heads leads to a barracks full of men standing at attention. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, parading up and down the middle of the barracks shouting profanities, opens the scene with such a profound impact that it surly pulls the audience in. If it is not the profanity that gets them, then it must surely be the exorbitant use of sexual humor. What purpose does this serve? To either captivate audience members or completely repulse them? To be clear, Kubrick’s rendition of what barracks look and feel like is spot on, maybe even a bit light.

Profane, absurd, grotesque: All words to describe Hartman’s spectacle at the beginning of the movie. While some may view the language and potty humor as directed toward the audience, it unequivocally sends a message to the newfound recruits—intimidation. The purpose, unlike that of the repeated use of profanity in Patton, which served to make a five-star general appear welcoming to the scores of troops he spoke to, aimed to terrorize the new recruits into doing as they were told, without questioning, breaking them down even further. And if screaming sexual innuendos at them was not enough, Hartman renames the soon-to-be Marines, an act used to belittle the men even more. Repurposing the young men’s identity serves to eliminate any forethought that one may have of a previous life, in an attempt, which Private Joker fended off, at least subconsciously, to make the soldiers into superior cogs in the machine—or a feeble attempt to make one good soldier and hundreds of failed ones.