Film Studies Topic: The Vietnam War, Fall 2015

Student: Chi Hoang

Date: November 22nd

PLATOON & FULL METAL JACKET

Oliver Stone, 1986 & Stanley Kubrick, 1987
Unlike most war movies, Platoon (1986) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), being widely
recognized as major Vietnam War films; choose to tell their war stories from an objective angle
rather than taking sides. In such stories, no one is truly good or perfectly evil. The dual nature of
mankind, the longstanding battle of good versus evil is put to a test in which the correct answer
is neither good nor bad but rather dead or alive.
[...]war, by its nature, can arouse a psychopathic violence in men of seemingly normal
impulses1. In Platoon, Chris Taylor represents those young men who volunteered to go into the
war without knowing anything about the war. The brutal reality of war is gradually revealed to
him: numerous body bags lined up to be taken back to their homeland, unfavorable jungle
conditions with tiny exotic insects that dont simply leave mild scratches, long nights snoozing in
ceaseless jungle rains while on watch for unexpected ambushes, powerlessly witnessing your
friends maimed or blown up by booby traps and bitterly realizing that this isnt the kind of war
you sign up for. The Vietnam War is no place for heroism seeking. As long as you still breathe, it
is good enough. The war gets harder when the enemies are everywhere but you cannot see them.
Anyone can be a VC whether it is a 12 year old girl or 80 year old senior. In the midst of such
confusion, the men divide themselves in to good and evil. Sgt Barnes, Sgt O'Neill, and
1 Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War, Prologue

Bunny are brutal and ruthless to the point of inhumanity. Barnes is tough and determined to do
whatever it takes to accomplish the platoon's mission even if that involves killings of innocent
lives. Sgt Elias, on the other hand, as Barnes describes, is a crusader. He is disillusioned & no
longer believes in the war. He is an experienced, effective, and dedicated soldier, but, unlike
Barnes, he is a moral man who controls what he is willing to do to get results. Barnes and Elias
embody the dual nature of the platoon, or, human being: good and evil always co-exist. Chris, a
newbie to the war, a cherry of the platoon, is like an innocent child struggling to figure out how
he should choose to react to the war under the influence of his two father figures, Barnes and
Elias. It is no tough math to see in the beginning, Chris finds himself more comfortable in the
crowd of Elias, King and Rhah a.k.a the good guys. Good is always encouraged and preferred,
especially under a pleasant circumstance. However, when you have been hacking through
mountainous jungles whose immensity reduced us to an antlike pettiness, squatted in muddy
holes, picked off the leeches that sucked our veins, and waited for an attack to come rushing at us
from the blackness beyond the perimeter wire2, found your platoon member (Manny) mutilated
and tied to a post while two others, Sal, and Sandy, are killed by a booby trap in a bunker thus
realizing that could be you at any moment, it is not easy to keep cool. In fact, Chris almost loses
it in the village scene when he succumbs to near madness; swept away by his own fear and
anger, torments a Vietnamese civilian farmer by shooting at the poor man's feet and making him
"dance." His subconscious inclination to violence is again awakened in a burning desire for
vengeance over Eliass death when he gets in a fight with Barnes, slowly turning himself into a
Barnes junior. This conflict reaches its climax in the last battle in which during a chaos, the
wounded and driven to insanity Barnes attempts to kill Chris but stopped short and knocked

2 Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War, Prologue

unconscious by an airstrike. Barnes intention triggers Chris defend mechanism which together
with his desperate yearning for vengeance over Eliass death, prompts him to point his rifle at
Barnes instead of the Vietnamese gook, his supposed enemy. As foreshadowed in Rhahs
conversation with him as Chris convinces the good guys to punish Barnes for his crime, Only
Barnes can kill Barnes, Chriss cold and unwavering killing of Barnes has confirmed a quick
moment of triumph for the Barnes junior spirit that has been embedded and growing inside him:
I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy was
in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days as I'm sure
Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called possession of my soul. There are times
since, I've felt like the child born of those two fathers.3
If Chris Taylor is the embodiment of battle between good and evil in Oliver Stones
Platoon, Private Joker character is his parallel in Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket. While
throughout the movie, Chris seems to struggle with such dual nature, Private Joker appears more
comfortable admitting to the coexistence of good and evil within himself from the very
beginning. The nickname Joker, though given to him due to his ill-timing joke during drill
Sergeant Hartmans aggressive greeting insults of the newly recruited for Marine boot camp
training, seems to foreshadow an important characteristic of Joker: he can be like a Joker card in
a card game either extremely useful or the other way round, extremely harmful. When
questioned by Pogue Colonel about him wearing a helmet that writes Born to kill while
unyieldingly keeping a peace symbol on his jacket, Joker dauntlessly answers: I think I was
trying to suggest something about the duality of man sir. Such duality is further explored in his
interview clip: I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to
3 Chris narrates in the last scene of Platoon

meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the
first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill! Should this be interpreted again as one of his
many jokes to take the war less seriously or does it suggest something else: a reporters
enthusiasm to learn and get exposed to new people and new culture disastrously accompanied by
a thirst for killing that has been nurtured in him since the ruthless boot camp training. Everything
seems to be a big joke for Joker until he is put into combat where the matter of life or death is no
joke anymore. If for Chris Taylor, killing Barnes is the climax of evil and good battling, that
significant moment of Joker comes when he put the dying sniper to death. The question of
whether it is good or evil that prompts his shooting of the sniper sparks off major controversies.
The sniper, dying in excruciating pain, gathers her last strength mouthing Shoot me, shoot me
in begging to end her suffering. None of Jokers fellow squad members want to waste the
Vietnamese gook. Animal Mother commands Leave her for the mother loving rats. Joker,
insisting We cant leave her like this, fires his rifle. Rafterman cackles Joker, We ought to put
you up for the congressional medal of ugly. Donlon lauds Hardcore man. Fucking
hardcore. Should the shooting be interpreted as an act of mercy to end the snipers suffering, a
ruthless accomplishment of someone hardcore enough to shoot a dying young girl for a
confirmed kill, or brilliant decision with dual motives that kills two birds with one stone? Given
his somewhat merciful look and the fact that he does not want to leave her like this, most
viewers would read the scene as a merciful act of killing, a triumph of good over evil in their
longstanding duality. Nevertheless, be it either way, does it really matter in a war zone? The big
question is not good or evil, it is life or death. The film ends with a marching scene where all the
boys sing to a popular Mickey Mouse Club song somehow in a desperate attempt to cling on to
any last shred of innocence from their pre-Vietnam war version while Joker narrates My

thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great
Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short. I'm in a world
of shit... yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid. None of the boys will be the same. They may
have come for a good cause but they all have done evil things they might or might not approve
of: destroying villages, killing women and children. They realize they are in a world of shit
where men are divided into dead and alive rather than good and bad. In that sense, who cares
whatever they have been doing as long as they are on the alive end now.
Rather than trying to establish a position on whether the war should have been fought in
the first place, the two films choose to reveal the truth, describing what war is really like. Chris
Taylor learns this hard truth when he finds himself in a war within, life or death, Barnes or Elias.
Chris starts out as someone like Elias, a man of morals, nevertheless, as the movie progresses,
we see a Barnes growing in him. Barnes could have been someone like Elias until he realizes that
being a crusader, fighting a war with mercy might not end it quickly but rather waste more of
his men and at any moment, himself. Who is there to decide if Barnes or Elias is right? Whats
the use of morals when you are dead meat? Joker might have been racked with hatred, guilt and
compassion at the same time when he found out that the sniper, who has been taking his men
down, one by one, is just a young girl who has not even grown out of braided hair. Still, its
either them or her and its better to be alive. War zone is a place where morality is weakened
and whether you like it or not, if you dont kill, you get killed.