I watched Full Metal Jacket, last week, and I was extremely perplexed by something that struck my attention:
When Joker and his crew are inside the American Marine Base in Vietnam, you can see “blobs” all over the rooftops of the shelters there. They appear to be about the size of a contemporary student-style backpack and they appear to have been placed there purposely. (note: This is shown before the base gets attacked, so it’s not battle debris and is too small to be camoflage)
What in the world are these “blobs” and why are they on the rooftops???
Because this is a movie related topic, I put it here, but it could almost be a GQ question, as it’s mostly about identifying the “blobs,” rather than discussing the movie itself. Mods, feel free to move topic if deemed necessary.
Possible, but unlikely, because the “blobs” are placed individually, several feet apart from one another. I don’t see how they could possibly serve as any sort of “cover.” I’d guess-timate that each rooftop had about a dozen or so “blobs” per shelter.
Those roofs are too steep for snipers anyway. I zoomed in on a couple of them, and they look like sleeping bags to me. Maybe they did that to one another as a practical joke, or as a way of getting back at someone for something — throw their bag up on the roof.
If you go up to northern New Hampshire you can sometimes see rocks placed at intervals on rooftops. I’m told you can see them in Europe, too. I’ve been told theyre to help keep really high winds from taking the roof off. Don’t know if it’s true, but, if so, maybe the blobs you saw are sandbags put there for the same reason.
I also had entertained the idea that maybe it was some type of prank. However, if you look at the entire scene, as a whole, the “blobs” are resting in nearly symmetrical patterns. In other words… the “blobs” on top of shelter A are resting in almost the same positions as the “blobs” on top of shelter B, and so forth.
Whatever the “blobs” are, they do appear to be cloth, of some sort. They could be sleeping bags, laundry bags, knapsacks, towels, clothes, who knows. It’s very hard to tell.
BTW, I watched FMJ on my 30" HDTV and even though the picture was better than crystal clear, I still couldn’t tell what the items in question were.
CalMeacham your answers certainly seem the most logical.
If those are sandbags for holding down the roofs in FMJ, I wonder why they were not laid out in a uniform pattern. The right ends of the rooftops have more blobs than the left ends do. Prevailing winds, perhaps?