FULL METAL JACKET "The hidden hand"

“THE HIDDEN HAND”

An in-depth analysis of
Stanley Kubrick’s

FULL METAL JACKET

10) Ghosts on the battlefield

The lime covered corpses and Crazy Earl’s dead NVA “bro” are symbolic not just of the shadow of the self, but also of an afterlife theme.

Here are some other symbols to this effect:

Even though the NVA soldier is dead, Crazy Earl explains: “Today is his birthday”.

As joker dies in the script’s alternate ending he says: “Tomorrow is my birthday”.

During rifle training Hartman tells his recruits: “You will become dead marines, and then you will be in a world of shit”. This of course implies an afterlife, as does his line: “The marine corps lives forever … and that means you live forever”.

Joker adds to this afterlife dialogue: “The dead know only one thing … it is better to be alive”.

One of FMJ’s marketing slogans was: “Vietnam can kill me, but it can’t make me care”.

In the script Hartman dies with a grin on his face and the lime covered dead are narrated by Joker as: “… grinning that hideous joyless grin of those who have heard the joke and who have seen the terrible secrets of the Earth”.

Also in the script, Pyle’s expression before his suicide is described as: “The terrible grin of the skull”. His weird facial expressions in the film version of this scene are most certainly skull-like, and Jokers first question to Pyle is: “are those live rounds”.

When woken by Pyle’s shouting the recruits creep about the barracks like the lime covered dead rising from their graves.

But the most tongue in cheek symbol of the dead in FMJ has to be when the Lusthogs are being filmed by a camera crew as they hide behind concrete rubble. During this shot medics carry injured marines on stretchers from left screen to right. After the second dying soldier is carried past, a walking marine casually strolls by with his face and hands wrapped in white bandages. At this point the music changes to a ghost like babble. The camera man also point his lens up at the bandaged soldiers face, at which point a peculiar yellow flash can be seen in his camera. This ghost soldier even waves his hand, but whether he is acknowledging the camera team or we the audience is anyone’s guess.

Spiritual rebirth was a central theme in Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (see review). In the misleading surface narrative, the rectangular black monolith was a mysterious alien artifact, but in the hidden narrative it acted as a doorway out of the two dimensional celluloid universe. When rotated 90 degrees the monolith was revealed to be a symbolic cinema screen. Characters who recognized this were able to leave the film narrative and become not only part of their own audience, but were also reborn as their own God-like directors.

In FMJ Kubrick makes further use of 2001’s rebirth symbols. As Cowboy is dying from his bullet wound a battered black building is shown on the horizon behind him with a massive fire at its base. As the Marines stand around Cowboys dead body, the composition is remarkably similar to the apes of 2001 huddled around the monolith. When asked if this was the case Kubrick announced that the resemblance was merely “an extraordinary co-incidence”. However, due to the following observations, I am convinced that Kubrick’s response was a lie.

As Cowboy dies the fire gives off an orange lens flare in front of his face, like he is seeing the light of his impending afterlife. As a verification that this afterlife symbol is intentional look at the shot of Joker as he strolls around the Parris Island Marine barracks on his night shift. He first narrates to us: “Our last night on the island. I draw fire watch”. Seconds later his flashlight creates a lens flare that is almost identical to the one Cowboy sees. Combine these identical lens flares with the term “fire watch (= burning building)” and the notion of Cowboys death bed lens flare being an accident becomes remote in the extreme.

Verification that the distant building represents a monolith can be found on the closer building left screen when Cowboy is dying. When Cowboy and the other marines first approach the section of wall where Cowboy gets shot, a rectangular window frame is shown hanging from the rear wall of the building and above it is a matching black rectangular hole where the frame once fitted. The hole is positioned like a cinema screen, but the hanging frame is rotated 90 degrees, like a door. After Cowboy is shot and carried around to the back of the building, we see our first glimpse of the burning monolith on the horizon, but look at the hanging window frame. It has moved from it’s position high up on the wall and is now stood on the ground, leaning against the wall. The symbolic connection between this wooden window frame and the monolith / cinema screen is verified even further by its criss-cross diamond pattern. The same pattern was shown on the doors of the cinema where the Lusthogs took the Vietnamese prostitute. Yet another piece of this visual puzzle is that from the snipers view we see an identical window frame on a different building, and again it is hanging beneath a matching black rectangular hole. Black burning buildings and black windows with moving frames that rotate 90 degrees to match up with the entrance to a cinema – this is standard visual encoding by Kubrick and verifies the presence of a symbolic monolith on the horizon.

Like Dave Bowman in 2001, Cowboys death takes him out of the film narrative and into an afterlife dimension. However, the dimension Cowboy travels to is very different to the one Dave Bowman found after the stargate. We shall return to this subject shortly.

In addition, some reviewers have pointed out that a large monolith-like building can be seen when the Lusthogs conduct their first raid on an NVA occupied building. Before the Lusthogs approach this structure Crazy Earl is heard on the radio saying: “We’re gonna stop here and check out what’s in front of us”.