# Full Metal Jacket: Was the drill instructor a bad guy? (Movie version) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 29, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743 "2010-10-29T06:32:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/21 "2010-10-29T14:21:57Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > Hartman was hilarious. If I was his recruit, he would of strangled me to death. If I were your DI, that would be a strangling offense. My father went through Army basic for the Korean war involuntarily. I voluntarily went through USAF basic (aka summer camp) in peace time. During war, you are trying to churn out bullet catchers as fast as you can, training them to do their best _not_ to catch them. I’m pretty certain Pyle would never have passed the physical requirements to be a marine in peacetime, and even if he did, would likely have washed out. I don’t know how it worked during wartime in that era. A non-fictional DI Hartman’s directive may have been simply to send every available body to the front lines. ---
**Author:** ![Box\_A\_Rox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@Box\_A\_Rox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Box_A_Rox)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/22 "2010-10-29T14:33:12Z")
I’ve talked with Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen about basic training… Boot Camp in the Marines is not the same. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/23 "2010-10-29T14:43:24Z")
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (or Gerheim, as the book calls him) isn’t a good guy or a bad guy. He is not a guy at all; he’s a symbol. He’s not meant to be a three-dimensional character, a living and breathing human. He is the embodied manifestation of industrial-scale Western warfare. **Hartman isn’t supposed to be a person.** He’s a personification of the government/military machine that is using and destroying young men for purposes both vague and distant. R. Lee Ermey does a fantastic job of making Hartman seem realistic, but he is still just a symbol. Assigning “good” or “bad” to the character of Hartman quite misses the point; it’s the phenomenon of an industrial, Western military that is bad. It destroys Lawrence/Pyle and Hartman in boot camp, and then later destroys a number of young men in Vietnam. Kubrick’s films frequently explore the concept of dehumanization and the coldness and abstraction of violence; in Full Metal Jacket he explores how war destroys people. The purpose of the extended boot camp part of the film is to demonstrate that the evil of war is rooted not just in the mechanics of combat, but in the way that the military takes young men and turns them into killers. Contrast “Full Metal Jacket” with another war movie very famous for its violence, “Saving Private Ryan.” In SPR, skipping by the bookends with the old guy, the movie begins on Omaha Beach and ends in a meaningless town in France. It begins and ends with combat. The characters are deliberately portrayed as being ordinary schmoes who have no choice but to engage in ferocious, often suicidal combat, and who are killed and maimed in a manner that is effectively random and defies any sort of logic or justice. Spielberg’s film concentrates purely on the horror of war itself; the viewer is subjected to over two hours of genuinely horrifying, realistic combat in which death is meted out seemingly at random. But in SPR, you get the sense that the soldiers involved are civilians who were just born at the wrong time and got rounded up and sent off to war… which is, of course, quite true. In FMJ, Kubrick’s emphasis is not on the horrors of combat, but on the horror of the dehumanization of soldiers through their training and the military organization and culture itself. That’s why Kubrick spends so much time on Parris Island and kills off Pyle and Hartman there; his message is, in part, that the military destroys people. Unlike previous war films, which suggested that the military destroys people only because of the inconvenient fact that it has to send them into combat because of pesky foreigners, Kubrick’s military destroys people by taking away their humanity; the process of converting a civilian into a soldier is dehumanizing process in and of itself. Spielberg starts his tale in Normandy, because spending time at basic would have been a waste of time, as his message is that combat is horrifying - specifically, that it is much more horrifying than Hollywood had been leading you to believe. (Though frequently copied since, at the time SPR’s combat scenes were of unprecedented realism.) The dehumanization of the soldiers is not nearly as prevalent in the film; in fact, we are asked to continue considering the humanity of the soldiers (note that Private Ryan cracks towards the end of the final battle, cowering and weeping, though he previously had fought very bravely; he’s snapped from shell shock) because that emphasizes the horror of what is happening to them. Both messages are fascinating and carry a lot of truth. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/24 "2010-10-29T14:46:40Z")
I think it’s the job of a drill sargent first and foremost to impress upon 18 year old kids the seriousness of what they’re undertaking. If his style of training saves lives the ends justify his means. When I first saw it I figured him just for a sadist, but I’m not sure any more. There are plenty of quotes in that movie were under the surface you can detect a teacher who cares about his students. ETA: But I like **RickJay** ’s interpretation too. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/25 "2010-10-29T14:48:32Z")
> [@Captain\_Midnight](#): > > If I was his recruit, he would of strangled me to death. No numbnuts! :mad: I believe that he would have had you choke [yourself](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQfbJuBLDak). 😃 ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/26 "2010-10-29T14:58:04Z")
> [@Box\_A\_Rox](#): > > I’ve talked with Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen about basic training… Boot Camp in the Marines is not the same. Well for one…its a hell of a lot _longer_. Twice as long as Army boot camp I believe. Eight weeks versus sixteen. I cannot imagine sixteen weeks at Parris frakking Island. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/27 "2010-10-29T15:18:04Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > I think it’s the job of a drill sargent first and foremost to impress upon 18 year old kids the seriousness of what they’re undertaking. If his style of training saves lives the ends justify his means. When I first saw it I figured him just for a sadist, but I’m not sure any more. There are plenty of quotes in that movie were under the surface you can detect a teacher who cares about his students. > > ETA: But I like **RickJay** ’s interpretation too. So do I. Few are willing to address how dehumanizing training for combat is; it could be seen to dishonor the ultimate sacrifices of combat itself. But you don’t get through learning to face death as a unit with your personality intact. If you do, your training has failed. One way training does rank with combat however: those who have done it get the ultimate authority to talk about it. Because it usually works so well, though, there is not much intelligent criticism. It’s one of the most obvious examples of how Freedom Isn’t Free - even more so during Vietnam and the draft for a poorly waged and costly conflict. ---
**Author:** ![Box\_A\_Rox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@Box\_A\_Rox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Box_A_Rox)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/28 "2010-10-29T15:19:09Z")
I was in the Corps in the 60’s, my son joined in the late 80’s and Parris Island hadn’t changed at all. From the look of this video, it’s still the same today. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJpwlvIIDcY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJpwlvIIDcY) ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/29 "2010-10-29T16:19:05Z")
Pyle, a sensitive but rather dimwitted young man, must have enlisted with this fairy-tale concept of how war & the Marines are run, but then gets this rather rude awakening, which eventually shatters him. Most recruits aren’t that sensitive; Joker for example seems to come out of the experience with his original wisecracking personality intact. Not having been in the armed forces I don’t know how others handle the training psychologically, but I’d imagine most people would have a reserve in their minds, a place which remains untouched by all the training (and subsequent horror), but Pyle didn’t have the capacity to construct such a reserve-the training utterly destroyed the smiling nitwit, replacing him with a cold-blooded killer. While rare, this should happen often enough during training that Hartman should have been noticing the changes (Cowboy and Joker certainly did). Permission from actual military folks to nullify my hypothesis hereby given. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/30 "2010-10-29T16:23:59Z")
> [@Box\_A\_Rox](#): > > I’ve talked with Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen about basic training… Boot Camp in the Marines is not the same. I don’t doubt it for a second. As I significant time at two multi-force postings, I figured something had to make them all that way. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/31 "2010-10-29T17:12:18Z")
> [@villa](#): > > I think you are wrong. In _Full Metal Jacket_, as in other Kubrick movies, the film is an analysis of a descent into insanity. The situation is the villain, not any individual. Kubrick in general does not do “bad guys.” Even people who do terrible things - General Ripper, HAL, Alex, do them for complex reasons stemming from their situations. (I don’t count Killer’s Kiss, as being too early, and Spartacus, where he didn’t have full control, in this analysis.) As a life-long civilian, I didn’t see him as a bad guy, but I will respect the opinions of those who have been there. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/32 "2010-10-29T17:19:51Z")
I’ve seen recent interviews with Ermey and he’s mentioned several times the incredible responsibility he felt as a DI. He and the other DI’s read the casualty reports and were all too aware which recruits they had trained died. There wasn’t much they could do except push training harder and harder. Try and give these guys the best possible chance of surviving their tour in Vietnam. It was a now win situation. The DI’s had the job of training these guys knowing damn well they were being shipped off to the war straight out of boot camp. Ermey himself left his safe stateside post and volunteered for a tour in Vietnam. He was severely wounded and had to retire early from the service. For my money Ermey is the real deal. > [@Kobal2](#): > > I always considered him something an asshole myself, but most grunts I’ve chatted with are of your opinion that he was actually doing his level best to get his Marines in shape for Viet-Nam, so they wouldn’t get killed. > I’m confident Ermey, having himself been a DI during the war and being a strong military supporter, would have refused to play it any other cocksucking Commie way. Nor would Kubrick would have wanted to direct it any other way since he was shooting for perfect accuracy, with all the ambiguity that implies. You’re \*supposed \*to ask yourself that question. > > As for me, I have no doubt Pyle shipping out less than fully competent or discipled would indeed have put other soldiers’ lives in jeopardy. I still think the proper course of action would have been to kick him out rather than try and push him so hard, however. Some people just aren’t meant to be mean Marines, and a good DI should recognize that. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/33 "2010-10-29T17:39:43Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > No numbnuts! :mad: I believe that he would have had you choke [yourself](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQfbJuBLDak). 😃 Not with your hand, numbnuts! With _his_ hand! Now choke yourself! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/34 "2010-10-29T17:42:20Z")
I’ve never been in the service, but I have taught, and from my point of view I could see Hartman using some very good teaching techniques, and implementing them very well. Consider Joker, for instance: It would have been fairly easy to turn him into a competent private. But instead, by making him responsible for Pyle’s success, Hartman turned him into a leader, and at the same time also succeeded in getting Pyle into shape (in most respects, at least). I’ve tried to do that with my own students as much as possible, and have only very rarely succeeded. Someone mentioned upthread that, on first viewing, they thought that Hartman was an asshole. Well, yes, he was. But that was because, in the situation he was in, an asshole was exactly what was needed. He did the job that was required of him, and he did it well. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/35 "2010-10-29T18:40:46Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug] One way training does rank with combat however: those who have done it get the ultimate authority to talk about it. Because it usually works so well, though, there is not much intelligent criticism. [/QUOTE] I am a little confused. Those two quoted sentences seem to be contradictory… Those who’ve been there (boot camp or combat) are the best source of info, but you can’t trust what they say? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/36 "2010-10-29T21:26:19Z")
No, you can trust what they say, and what they say is usually positive. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/37 "2010-10-30T00:36:11Z")
Not so much that you _can_ trust them, but that you have no choice. Basic is a sacred rite that defined manhood for generations; as such, it is beyond criticizing or analyzing, and to do so is to show your alienation from what most of us understand America to be. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/38 "2010-10-30T00:57:39Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > I don’t think so, no. It’s funny - recently I started a thread sparked by this very question about “what movies do you take the wrong thing away from” because I just now saw _Full Metal Jacket_ and I thought only the first third of the movie was any good, and that only because I saw Hartman as the real sympathetic character - just put yourself in his shoes for a minute and think about what a shit-ass job that was. I was surprised how many people a) thought Kubrick had intended that (I disagree) and b) thought the rest of the movie was any good. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/39 "2010-10-30T01:05:19Z")
> [@Box\_A\_Rox](#): > > I was in the Marines, and went through Parris Island about the same time as R Lee Remey (but I’ve never met him). He played the Drill Instructor probably the same way he WAS a drill instructor in the Corps. > The boot camp section of Full Metal Jacket was exactly the way I remember boot camp, with one exception… we were warned early on that a “blanket party” beating was not allowed and would be dealt with severely if one happened. That’s right; you would have been damaging gov’t property, and some pretty expensive property at that. It’s not cheap to put people thru boot camp, and the results, especially at the time, were very much in the “need to have” category. To answer the OP, I don’t think he was a villain. In fact, I don’t think the movie has any villains at all. To me, that’s one of the points the film was trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743/40 "2010-10-30T05:10:57Z")
He was doing his job - weeding out the weaklings. He says straight up that until they become Marines the recruits are nothing to him, unorganised pieces of grabasstic amphibian shit, and he will make them hate him. Which makes sense, as if they can’t hack a hard-as-nails Gunnery Sgt. berating them they aren’t going to hack having VC snipers popping at them. “Because I am hard you will not like me. But the more you hate me the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. …And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?” Of course, he failed - didn’t pick up on Pyle’s instability. Possibly because he saw Pyle’s potential at the firing range, which he calls ‘outstanding’, he tries even harder to make Pyle into a Marine while he should have been chewed out, and probably would have if he wasn’t such a good shot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/full-metal-jacket-was-the-drill-instructor-a-bad-guy-movie-version/558743.md?page=3)