Blog 5 JKK

The film “Full Metal Jacket” is split up into three parts to show the soldiers different phases through the war. The first stage of their progression is a training camp. Then the film moves to the protagonist Joker and his time in Vietnam as a journalist. The final transition in the film is when the young soldiers are in combat in the jungles of Vietnam.
In the first stage, the soldiers are sent to Parris Island where they must learn to function as a group. The young men are sent to training and broken down physically and mentally so they can be built back up with the idea of killing in their minds. The protagonist in the film is known by Joker and is assigned to help another soldier named Pyle who struggles to keep up and is mentally slower than the rest of the group. The sergeant drills them into becoming killers and desensitizes them. He works them down until the only thing they know is to kill. Pyle shows the audience that killing is all they know when he snaps and kills the sergeant and then commits suicide. This stage shows the change from innocent young men to killing machines that are being sent to war.
In the second stage of the film, Joker is seen as a journalist in Vietnam. His job is to persuade the United States citizens that the events in Vietnam are positive and that America is doing well. At the base that Joker is located there is not much action to be seen, but an editor tells Joker to report about Americans killing Vietnamese officers during combat. The article is to please the American people even though many are against the war already. The government wanted support from the public and were going to go to lengths like lying to get that support. At the end of this stage, Joker meets the soldiers that he is going to be fighting with in combat.
In the final stage of the movie, Joker is with his friend from Parris Island, Cowboy, because they are in the same company when they go out to fight. Until now, Joker has only seen training and a military base where he would write his articles. While roaming in Vietnam, a sniper shoots down one of the soldiers in their company and as another goes to help him, he is shot as well. With two soldiers shot, the company goes to find the sniper and shoots her. The sniper is a young Vietnamese girl, which is unexpected and shows that in the Vietnam War, everyone was fighting and everyone was involved. The face of the enemy was a young girl who had lost her innocence, just like the young soldiers fighting against her. When they catch her they shoot her, but she does not die she is just badly wounded. She begs for one of the soldiers to shoot her again to kill her so she won’t have to suffer. Joker shoots her in the head and she dies. This is the first time Joker has seen combat in Vietnam and the first time we see him kill someone. This is the part of the film where Joker has fully transitioned from a young man into an emotionless killer.
At the end of the film, the young soldiers sing and march to the Mickey Mouse song. This shows that even though these young men have seen horror and death, they are still young and it shows the audience that they still have some innocence left in them. They must kill the enemy in order to ensure their survival, but are still young at heart and can sing Mickey Mouse songs when they are killers. This song also reminds the boys of their childhoods and home which is a memory that they can hold onto when they are in Vietnam.