“THE HIDDEN HAND”
An in-depth analysis of
Stanley Kubrick’s
FULL METAL JACKET
© by Rob Ager June 2008
11) Shoot me
Now we’re going to explore a series of subliminal themes in FMJ that are among the darkest and most daring in Kubrick’s entire filmography.
The first of these dark themes is the pathological merging of sex and violence in warfare. While conditioning the recruits, Hartman systematically uses language to associate rifles as tools of sexual expression.
Pyle develops a love fixation for his rifle and, in Gus Hasford’s original book, he kills Hartman out of jealousy for looking at his rifle the wrong way.
The association of rifles as phallic symbols makes a bizarre appearance as Joker and Cowboy chat in the toilets. They initially talk of their concern about Pyle’s deterioration, but Joker unexpectedly changes the subject: “I wanna slip my tube-steak into your sister”.
The point of all this conditioning is to transform the recruit’s sexual urges into a tool of aggression – to associate pleasure with killing, but an unfortunate consequence is that once in the battlefield the troops become sexual deviants. This theme is very prominent in the Vietnam scenes.
The sexual deviance of the Lusthogs is most evident when the ARVN officer brings them a prostitute. Eightball: “Don’t get between a dog and his meat”. Animal: “Hey, I won’t be long. I’ll skip the foreplay”. The two men pull the girl back and forth between them and Animal is seen pushing her aggressively into the cinema. In the Lusthogs eyes she is nothing more than an object of gratification.
This prostitute encounter appears out of place in the overall narrative because it is immediately followed by the seemingly unrelated sniper battle ending. However, these two sections of the film are most definitely related.
The prostitute scene is basically a metaphor of the overall sex trade during the Vietnam war. Some sources estimate that over 70,000 prostitutes were active in the war and that many suffered horrendous physical abuse from their military clientele. Gang rape by soldiers apparently was also rife, as it is in most wars. Kubrick, as always, was more than willing to tackle this kind of controversial subject.
Instead of simply showing us a gang rape scene, as Oliver Stone did in Platoon, Kubrick implies it during the prostitute encounter. He then flips the abuse of the prostitute on it’s head by showing the Lusthogs picked off and tortured by a female sniper – remember that in the Lusthog mentality sex and gunfire are the same thing.
The connection between the prostitute and the sniper was actually made much earlier. When joker was cutting a deal with a prostitute in the first Vietnam scene, he told Rafterman: “You know half of these gook whores are serving officers in the Vietcong. The other half have got TB”.
Eightball is the first to be shot by the sniper and he suffers the most. This choice by Kubrick may have been because Eightball was the first to step forward and demand services from his “little yella sister”, or it may have been because the prostitute objected to his manhood being “too beucau”.
There are more dialogue connections between sex and gunfire in these two scenes. The ARVN officer uses the phrase “Boom-boom” to describe sex: “She say ‘No boom-boom with soul brother’.” Boom boom is also the sound of gunfire. This is repeated as the sniper lays dying: “No more boom boom for this baby-san”. In addition the term baby-san was used by Eightball in the prostitute scene: "This baby-san looks like she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch".
Rafterman’s antics in shooting the sniper definitely carry a sexual connotation. As he stands gloating over his handy work he thrusts his body back and forth sexually: “I fucking blew her away! … (kissing his rifle) … Am I a life taker? Am I a heart breaker?” Like a teenager who has just lost his virginity, he considers his first kill to be a declaration of manhood. Cowboy's comment about the prostitute: "We need a batting order", not only further associates the link between sex and violence. It also links to the "batting order" with which the recruits beat Pyle with soap.
Rafterman even makes gestures with his rifle that mimick the use of padded sticks in the combat training scenes. The recruit who wins the padded stick fight has the name Hunter S. written on his back. This is likely a reference to the journalist Hunter S Thompson, though it's meaning here is vague.
Now comes the long, drawn out mercy killing of the sniper. We already know Joker is not a killer, so his hesitation in pulling the trigger makes immediate sense. We could also say that the unfortunate moral dilemma emotionally breaks him, hence he acquires the so-called thousand yard stare. But there is a very important detail in the scene that unlocks a hidden meaning. Pay close attention to the peace button on Jokers jacket. As he slowly raises the gun to aim at the sniper, his collar slowly overlaps our view of the button. At the very second when the button moves completely out of sight, the gun fires. This is most definitely a deliberate touch.
As Jokers face changes to the thousand yard stare, one of the Lusthogs tells him: “Hardcore man. Fucking hardcore”. The word ‘hardcore’ is synonymous with pornography, and so we have yet another sexual reference in the scene. So have you guessed what the hidden narrative of the scene is?
It is a symbolic repetition of the prostitute gang bang scene … and Joker is taking his turn in molesting the woman in front of him. There are none of the usual Kubrick wide shots here. Our views of the sniper and Joker are close enough to pass for a sex scene. A curious detail is that when the sniper was shot, we saw blood spurt from her nose and mouth, but here laying on the ground, the blood is gone (this also happened with the blood from Cowboy's mouth as he died, so it is unlikely to be accidental). The sniper's breathing is not just that of a dying woman. It is that of a woman having intercourse. She stares us and Joker in the eye, repeating the line “shoot me”. Considering the Lusthogs pathological associations between sex and gunfire, she may as well be saying “fuck me”. Animal even verbalizes this: “Fuck her. Let her rot”. The off screen firing of Joker's handgun is now a metaphor not just for him psychologically snapping, but also for his pleasureless orgasm.
Jokers hidden dilemma here was not that of a mercy killing. It was the pressure from his fellow soldiers to sexually abuse a young woman. Animal: “You wanna waste her? Go ahead ... waste her.” This was his same dilemma in beating Private Pyle. Cowboy: “Do it … do it”. The prostitute's emotions were hidden from the Lusthogs by her dark sun glasses, but as Joker struggles to pull the trigger, the snipers eyes glare widely - forcing him to look into her soul. Perhaps he was the only one of the group who saw the prostitiute as a human being with real emotions.
When the troops were negotiating a price for the prostitute outside the cinema, Joker for once had nothing to say. He sat rubbing his neck with his hand, keeping a low profile. Rather than deal with the tauntings and rejection of his buddies, he probably took part in the gangbang and was crippled with self-loathing afterward. It is hence revealed that the thousand yard stare is not some macho fantasy to be proud of. It is the cold, empty expression of guilt-ridden soldiers who must carry rape and murder on their conscience for the rest of their days. They are dead inside. They are ghosts on the battlefield.
The sexual connotation of the thousand yard stare was also hinted at in the journalist’s barracks. When Payback was explaining the mystical stare to Rafterman he was reading a porn magazine. Another character then interrupted him with a joke about rape: “How do you stop five black dudes raping a white chick? … throw ‘em a basketball”. After Cowboy's death, animal also told Joker: "Let's go get some Payback", which is yet another connection between the character Payback's rantings and the hunting of the sniper.
In earlier versions of the script Animal supposedly cut off the Snipers head after her execution and the Lusthogs proceeded to play football with it. Hence we have another connotation of rape as a sport. When rafterman was telling Joker that he wanted to "get some trigger time", a group of soldiers could be seen in the background throwing a football back and forth.
The sniper execution / rape is one of Kubrick’s darkest film moments. It was certainly a subject he had passionate views on. Not only has he offered one of the most powerful depictions of wartime insanity ever to hit the screen, but he is also acknowledging a universal truth about military brainwashing – soldiers who can’t be turned into brutal psychopaths by their drill instructors can certainly be persuaded in the battlefields by the overbearing peer pressure of their weaker minded friends.