Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) shows young recruits emerging as soldiers after undergoing a rigorous and dehumanizing process involving combat and military training. The film has been praised for its unadulterated depiction of the psychology of war and its examination of core issues such as authority, individuality, and humanity. One of the main topics is brainwashing because, in military life, one experiences psychological manipulation inherent in military training and forcing everything to define one as an individual.
Kubrick attacks the conditioning of the mind as a means of exercising control and a form of resistance to becoming a cog in the machine. The combination of grit and philosophical inquiry transforms Full Metal Jacket from a war film into an examination of the human condition in turbulent times.
The first part of the film consists of very different parts. The first part is just about the Marine boot camp, where the merciless Gunnery Sergeant Hartman tortures the recruits. The second part takes the audience to the war zone in Vietnam, where the effects of the harsh training can be seen.
Although the scenes change, both parts are thematically connected: how war and its institutions strip humanity and the struggle to maintain it. The two-part construction allows Kubrick to show how the forces organically shape individuals and minimize their choice of fighting for acceptance or fighting against it.
It fits perfectly with the opening scene: the recruits have their heads shaved as if to erase their individuality. From there, we enter the brutal training camp under Hartman’s iron fist. He uses verbal abuse, humiliating rituals, and constant threats to reduce the number of recruits so that he has only the remains he can rebuild as obedient soldiers.
Hartman’s methods mirrored those of a large military machine, thriving solely on conformity and unconditional obedience. Recruits were given unsavory nicknames, such as Leonard Lawrence being called “Gomer Pyle,” to strip them of their identity further. The point was to draw out individuality and mold it into a soldier who would act without hesitation. As he put it: “You are no longer part of society. You are part of a brotherhood.” However, it was a kind of “brotherhood” that was all about sameness; one’s individuality was seen as a weakness that could potentially endanger the entire group’s safety.
Pyle ultimately becomes the most tragic victim of the entire process. Initially, he is presented as an overweight, awkward, and withdrawn recruit, making him an easy target for ridicule and punishment. Hartman’s relentless harassment, coupled with intimidation from his fellow recruits, drives Pyle to a complete psychological breakdown.
It all culminates in the famous toilet scene where an utterly hollow version of Pyle kills Hartman and then turns the gun on himself. It is the most heartbreaking moment, showing what brainwashing and dehumanization can do and the mental toll of military methods used.
Pyle embodies the epitome of the effects of brainwashing, while James T. Davis, or “Joker,” balances the two extremes of obedience and rebellion. In that sense, Joker is indeed the moral and intellectual compass of the film and, as is well known from the beginning, sarcastic and very different from the others. His actions include an attempt to balance being a soldier without denying individualism.
The words “Born to Kill” under the peace sign on his helmet are an excellent symbol of his internal conflict. Joker realizes humans have a dual nature and do both destruction and good. In the film, he tries to unite both within himself.
So by undergoing a ritual, through a limited touch of Hartman’s rules, Joker allows himself to enter the game while still keeping everything from being thoroughly carried away. Therefore, in the film’s second half, he can play the character of a journalist.
However, even Joker is not immune to the system’s pressures. When he joins in, along with others, in Pyle’s collective punishment of beating him with towels hung over soap, it shows how powerful institutional pressures can be. It shows how even someone trying to resist can be pushed to do things they would normally oppose.
During the final act of Full Metal Jacket, the film shifts to the dark reality of Vietnam, where the recruits have been transformed into hardened soldiers. For Joker, the conflict escalates as he lands right in the world while military training breaks down into a war zone complex with normalized dissonance. As a journalist for Stars and Stripes, Joker plays a dual role as an actor and a witness to all the madness. It is Kubrick’s way of investigating how difficult it is to maintain so-called human values amidst chaos, carnage, and ruins.
The war scenes show how dehumanization affects everyone, not just the soldiers but also the Vietnamese civilians caught in the middle. Kubrick presents war’s fog and moral gray, where right and wrong blend together and are difficult to distinguish.
The rather infamous sniper scene is a perfect example: A young Vietnamese girl kills Joker’s men. Joker has to shoot her to relieve her pain, and this is called an act of mercy. Even this has a tremendous moral cost to pay because it shows that war sacrifices beliefs and accepts the inevitable loss of humanity.
Despite the pressure to conform, Full Metal Jacket shows resistance, even at a high price. For Joker, his humor and irony act as a silent means of rebellion to maintain an identity the system is trying to destroy. His sarcasm and refusal to approach military ideology are his shields in his attempt to remain human.
However, the rebellion is not a complete victory because Joker’s aloofness and cynical views leave him confined and emotionally disconnected. Thus, by the film’s end, Joker is a walking contradiction: a soldier who somehow manages to maintain his identity but is still part of the violence he once questioned.
The final moment, when Joker walks with his troops singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, really hammers home the point. The cheerful, childlike song contrasts with war’s dark realities, creating a profound irony that cuts to the heart of the film’s central themes.
Joker states how he is “in a world of shit,” and he has made every moral compromise possible; he has decided, however, how he will survive, and it is only temporary that the struggle to maintain his humanity will never indeed end, even when the odds are not in his favor.
The commentary is not limited to military brainwashing; the film is an extension of the bombing on the subject of how institutions toy with human psychology. The film suggests that dehumanization is not just military; it is part of any system trying to control people. Kubrick delves into the ongoing tug-of-war of the individual versus the collective, personal freedom versus the demands of authority, as revealed through Joker’s journey.
However, in reality, Full Metal Jacket does not call for total rebellion. Instead, the film shows the high cost of following the rules. The film depicts that survival is only achieved by adapting but reinforces the issue of the need to resist total submission to the system. However, such small amounts of resistance are presented as painful and, most of the time feel like an exercise in futility. It is challenging to live in the world without becoming inhuman, given that everything is done to ensure that we are inhuman.
Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is a sharp critique of how war and the war machine destroy a person. The film shows training camps and battlefields to vividly depict the mental toll that war takes and the tug-of-war between conformity and resistance.
If it is a short story full of anger and rage, it becomes sharp compared to stories where characters like Joker fight in battles rather than small, easily won struggles. The realism combined with the philosophical questions Kubrick creates through his films inserts humanist questions into war films, going far beyond war while capturing the painful but still excruciating chest of what it means to be human.
Full Metal Jacket defines war as an irony; it relies on and destroys man’s humanity. The film’s anti-brainwashing message is not to incite rebellion but to show the survivors what hard moral and psychological compromise means.
In Full Metal Jacket, we see the reality of war, how the characters in the film have to pay a high price to achieve harmony, and the struggle to maintain humanity in a world intentionally made to destroy it. Otherwise, Kubrick gives us a reality of the fragility of individuality and shows the struggle against dehumanization, no matter how hard it is to fight it.
References
- Baker, C. (2009). Kubrick’s Films: An Overview (2nd ed.). University Press.
- Friedman, L. D. (2006). The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick. University of Kentucky Press.
- Hardy, S. (2012). War and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick. Routledge.
- Herman, M. (2016). The Psychology of Military Training: Effects on the Human Psyche. Psychology Press.
- Jones, T. D. (2014). Brainwashing and the Military Mind: Psychological Conditioning in Modern Warfare. Academic Press.
- Kubrick, S. (Director). (1987). Full Metal Jacket [Film]. Warner Bros.
- Lifton, R. J. (1989). The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Basic Books.
- McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press.
- Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.