Phony tough and crazy brave meaning9/7/2023 ![]() ![]() It’s the Marine Corps, where such things were not tolerated.įor reference, boot camp is divided up into “Phases.” The first is “Receiving,” where you get off the bus, get assigned to a platoon, get your hair shaved off, and get your initial issue of uniforms. It sets the tone of the movie you aren’t going to see peace and love here. Kubrick addresses this through his choice of a hawkish country song as an intro. This is a representation of the division that was already prevalent in the pre-Tet Offensive phase of the war. This division is touched on in other movies like Oliver Stone’s Platoon consider the conflict between the “heads” who live in one bunker, get high, and listen to Motown and the beer-drinking country music fans on the other side of the firebase. On one side were pro-war “hawks,” generally older conservatives, on the other were anti-war “doves,” generally younger and more liberal. This was perhaps the most polarizing event since the US Civil War of a century earlier. The Vietnam War was something that divided American opinion to an extent that is difficult to understand today. This is accurate, military barbers are civilians. The movie opens with the song Hello Vietnam playing while the new recruits get their heads shaved by apathetic looking civilian barbers. So, with remote in hand, let’s get to it. Although I wasn’t in during the Vietnam War, some aspects of the Marine Corps just do not change, and I’ve done a decent amount of study in the form of reading piles of books and taking several University-level courses on the Vietnam War myself. ![]() I’ve decided I’ll do a “Where I Watch” of one of the best known movies about Marines, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. I was never in subs, but I was a Marine in the 80’s/90s. Ghoti’s thread made me think that I should do something similar. Ghoti pointed out a whole range of flaws in the movie that I would have otherwise missed completely. What made it particularly enjoyable to me was the way Ghoti explained how someone who was actually in submarines viewed the movie – not from a film critic’s point of view per se, but from the perspective of someone who had done the job they were portraying in the movie. A few months ago Ghoti did a fantastic “Where I Watch” entitled A submariner watches “Crimson Tide.” I selected it as a “Staff Pick,” an example of the sort of thread that makes this place worthwhile. ![]()
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