Oral #1

Full Metal Jacket

1. What tradition or genre is it in?1. Full Metal Jacket would fall in the sub genres of anti-war and Vietnam war. It takes place in Vietnam therefore considering it as a Vietnam war  film and it also shows the horrendous happenings in war and the directors ideology towards war is being against it. Going throughout the life of a soldier from the belittling drill sergeant at the training camps all the way to the Viet Cong where you are fighting for your life shows its dramatic features while also being a stereotypical war film, as most are actually anti-war films.

2. In a stereotypical war movie, there is a private or a sergeant who goes into the war seeing ally casualties everywhere which carves him into the solid character that he becomes. He has a task to carry out that needs to be done get into enemy territory. His squadron loses a few men, than they start an offense on the enemy. The private or sergeant ends up completing this task that was assigned but this most likely ends his life and his legacy lives on. In Full Metal Jacket the protagonist, has to go and clear out Viet Cong held territories and he loses many ally troops in his squadron. Therefore Full Metal Jacket is a war film and since it is in Vietnam and they are in war, this has to fall into the Vietnam war sub genre. The movie take place in the late 60’s and the scenes in the movie compare to what Vietnam looked like during the Vietnam war in the late 60’s with napalm and Agent Orange having its effects on the land and buildings. During the Vietnam war, many Americans opposed the war and there where many protests against so not many people that weren’t involved in the government supported the war. Since this is true, most Vietnam war films were also anti-war films because if you show what really happens in war to the public, the people will be afraid of themselves in the war and potentially dieing. This will create the directors ideology about war to be spread to the people and will gain support. A pro-war film would glorify the allies and make them look like they are supermen with very little loss of men. The enemy would be annihilated and the protagonists would come out as heroes. There are not many pro-war films that I have heard of so therefore that can basically leave anti-war to its purpose. The film shows lots of lives being lost and that war is very stressful as you never know if you are gonna die or live or even when the next enemy ambush might happen.

3. It can be connected to the war films like Apocalypse Now, the war aspect of Forrest Gump, and Saving Private Ryan. If you look at the aspects of the movies where the characters are in action, they show that war is frightening and that there is death all around the allies. The protagonists all have an assigned tasks to do and they end up succeeding there task but without the loss of many ally soldiers. The films are all anti-war and glorify the thought of death in the mind of the soldier.

4. The director is Stanley Kubrick who is famous for the film 2001: Space Odyssey and The Shining. Kubrick had a huge impact on the film industry as many famous directors now a days look up to his works as a guide line on how they want there film to be portrayed as. He uses special effects to add emphasis on the point he is trying to get across as the technology they had when he was alive making movies weren’t the best on creating realistic scenes but Kubrick used these effects to make his films surprisingly realistic.

5. Kubrick was already notably famous for his previous works as everything he touches or has an influence on turns to gold. He can most notably use his actors in emphasized roles as it easy to spot its main protagonist as he is glorified, or just everything around him is centered on him.

6. Full Metal Jacket has the special effects used during the scenes as the Agent Orange, napalm, and gun fire around as the land is burned with agent orange and the buildings are destroyed by the napalm.

7. The theme of the film which i took it as is that war is not the key to everything as the thought of death inside a person’s head will drive them crazy as they can never know what is going to happen next. Kubrick thought of war as bad since he glorified what happens to soldiers and how they are not only physically wounded but mentally too.
8. Its target audience are Americans in there 20’s and 30’s since the majority of Americans that will make a stand are within these age groups. It probably was also meant to be for the non-hippies to get them on the side of anti-war as the hippies were already anti-war since they wanted peace.