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May 31, 2016 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:24:47
Born to Kill

John Morgan and Roman Bernard join Richard to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). It’s about the duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe

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Time Text
John, Romain, welcome back.
Thanks, Richard.
Thanks for having me back.
So, when did you two first see Full Metal Jacket?
John, I guess we'll start with you, because Romain wasn't even born or something.
I was four.
You were four.
Okay.
I saw it on VHS, too, but John, you first.
Well, I remember when the TV commercials for it were on in the U.S. in 1987.
I already knew about Kubrick because even as a teenager, I loved 2001, but I was obviously too young to go to an R-rated movie.
I was only 14 at the time.
I think I saw it the first time in 1990 on HBO.
I remember...
It was at the time when I was working my way through all of Kubrick's films, when I was first kind of becoming a cinephile.
And I remember I was really blown away by the first half, I mean, the part on Paris Island.
And then being kind of, not exactly disappointed, but I felt like the second part of it wasn't as interesting.
Although I've come to appreciate it more.
In later years, on subsequent viewings.
When you don't know what's going to happen, when you see the whole sequence on Paris Island, I just think that that's so amazing.
It's so powerful and shocking.
Multiple things about it.
But of course, it was also, at that time, in the late 80s, there was this whole rash of...
I think it was kind of a reflection.
I mean, now, with all the wars we've had since then, it's kind of receded from people's minds, but people probably can't appreciate how obsessed with Vietnam Americans were in the 80s because it had such a...
You know, an effect on the popular consciousness of the country.
It was the first war that we so obviously lost in the eyes of the world.
I mean, that was a real shock to America.
And I think it's, well, to quote the Watchmen, I think it drove America a little bit crazy.
And maybe in some sense we never really recovered.
But it was, you know, Full Metal Jacket, I think, was definitely Kubrick's contribution to that sort of.
I think the way I would put it is that we never learned anything.
And I think this will get at some of the themes we're going to talk about as we dive into this.
But I agree.
I remember that because I was born in 1978.
So I was around 10 or 11 when Full Metal Jacket was released.
And it came immediately after Platoon.
There was, of course, Deer Hunter, which that might have been Deer Hunter Apocalypse Now.
Which were made in the 70s.
Those were kind of the first wave of Vietnam movies.
And then there were all these, you know, imitators born on the 4th of July, casualties of war.
And it became this kind of almost like a cliche, as you were saying, like, oh, I'm...
Let's not forget Rambo.
Well, Rambo is, in a way, a very important one.
Because I think that one, it was kind of interesting because you, you had this like, uh, kind of, you could say reactionary idea about like the, the, the loss of innocence and like, you know, and it kind of, he says this in Rambo too, I know, but why didn't you let us win?
Will you let us win this time kind of thing?
And it was the, you know, the guy who was betrayed by his country and set loose.
And he, and then he was, you know, and then in Rambo too, he becomes Right.
basically.
Right.
And, you know, and it was written by James Cameron when he was like a, in his Republican phase, like, I guess you could say.
But it was basically like Vietnam that becomes superhero, who goes and wins the war this time, kind of thing.
But yeah, there was definitely a spate of these films.
I would say that there's also kind of this ambiguity to it all, because when you make a Vietnam movie, you have to layer it with all this...
I remember watching the first act of this movie when I was with my football team.
And we would often, on a Thursday night, we would have these parties where we'd eat pizza, which I guess was not a good thing to do before you play football.
But anyway, we'd eat pizza and watch a badass film.
So I remember watching Mad Max the Road Warrior and various things like that.
But we would always watch the first third of this movie just so that we would get...
You know, drill instructor Hartman and Private Pyle and all that kind of stuff.
And, you know, we repeat all the stuff back at each other.
Like, you're the kind of man who would fuck another man up his ass without the common courtesy of giving him a reach around.
Like, that kind of...
I've got a nonsense.
Which apparently Kubrick thought was hilarious, by the way.
They said whenever Ernie said that line, he had to stuff a sock in his mouth so that the laughter wouldn't be audible on the recording.
That is funny.
And Kubrick is famous for having so many takes.
They probably did that scene like 200 times, and Kubrick was like, oh, it's funniest.
It keeps getting funnier.
But I think there's this ambiguity where, you know, objectively speaking, Full Metal Jacket and all of those films are anti-war movies.
Maybe even pacifist, at the very least, anti-Vietnam War.
And yet, they become popular for young men almost in spite of themselves.
It's like, oh, I want to go to Parris Island and see if I can hack it.
You know, to use their language, like, test myself, and, like, I want to smash myself up and see if I can rebuild myself.
I want to leave bourgeois reality behind and become a killer, you know, for the Marines.
It's this weird, like, there's this, you know, ambiguity where it's both, at least for young men, it's both a, it's an anti-war film, and then, like, it's like a recruiting film on the other side.
Yeah, I definitely felt that when I saw it.
I remember.
I mean, I think I was 17 at the time.
And yeah, it was actually the Gulf War.
I thought about going into the military, but then when I saw the Gulf War, I was never interested in being a pilot or anything.
I always wanted to be one of the guys on the ground who actually gets into hand-to-hand combat.
But then it seemed like in the Gulf War of 91 that that was all over.
And from now on, your war was going to be a purely technological thing.
So I was kind of like, what's the point of that?
I kind of lost interest.
But yeah, I remember having that reaction when I saw it.
Like, that's awful, but wow, that would be so badass.
Yeah, definitely.
Romain, when did you see it first?
Actually, it was my first Kubrick.
I think I was a teenager, maybe.
Maybe 15, something like that.
Of course, I liked the first act, like both of you.
As my first Kubrick, I wouldn't say I was disappointed by it, because I obviously liked it.
But it's not why I would become a Kubrick fan.
And it was a bit later with his most famous movies.
It's weird, because it was my introduction to it, and at the same time, it's not the reason why I like Kubrick movies.
And the other thing is that I liked Vietnam War movies, the other ones, more than this one, despite its terrific beginning.
So maybe, yes, maybe like John, I...
I think the second part is maybe it's half-baked.
I don't know how to put it, but it certainly doesn't match the first one.
I used to think that, but as I've seen it more, I've really...
I've come to appreciate how it almost kind of parallels the first part.
For me, it's still not quite as powerful, but I think it has some good elements to it that kind of redeem it.
Well, it is a bit chaotic.
I agree with John.
I agree with both of you.
Clearly the first 45 minutes of the movie is really intriguing and entertaining.
The second hour or so is harder to watch.
It's a bit chaotic.
You almost don't know what the movie's doing in a way.
Is Joker the protagonist?
I don't even know.
Is this a Dada-esque mashup movie?
You know, where part of it's stylized news reports and things like this, or is this actually a drama?
Is this an action movie, which it kind of is at one point?
I remember there's this one scene which I think was almost like Kubrick directly telling you what to think, where it's right before the final action scene of the sniper, and 8-Ball, who's the...
The Black Soldier.
Where did he get that name?
I don't know.
And Cowboy are there, and they're lost.
And they actually say on the map, oh, we're lost.
We're here, but we should be here.
And I think that was actually...
I think Kubrick is literally telling the audience, like, we're lost.
We're a little chaotic, but this is actually what the movie's about.
Well, and I imagine...
I mean, I have to say that I've talked to a couple of Vietnam vets about it, where they've actually said that, well, Full Metal Jacket came the closest in their view to what it was actually like to be there.
Because I imagine when you're in combat, you do make mistakes and get lost, and you often have no idea what's going on.
There's no climactic battle.
Even in the Second World War, most soldiers, at least from the American side, the vast majority of soldiers did not fire their weapon.
It's a lot of waiting, and you're not where the action is, and this weird thing where you're 20 guys going after one sniper, all this weird stuff.
But I do think as well, the two...
The two films, if you want to say that, are deeply connected.
In a way, the second platoon that Joker stumbles upon after he leaves the journalism propaganda wing, they're almost like doppelgangers of the trainees.
Cowboy is there.
He's kind of almost like the Link.
But I think Animal Mother is probably the most obvious.
Because he looks so much like Private Pyle.
He looks like a badass version of Private Pyle.
I think he must be supposed to be stoned or something when you first see him.
But he talks in that really slow way.
Like, you talk the talk.
But do you walk the walk?
Which is, like, how Pyle talked.
Because Pyle is almost, like, at some points he seems almost retarded.
Yeah, definitely.
Or, you know, semi-retarded.
And I think in, you know, you kind of...
I mean, this gets to a bigger theme that I see in the film of this, like, you're stripping down the layers of manhood.
And...
The title itself, because remember, there are no coincidences with Kubrick.
He chooses the title.
He takes, you know, he does 200 takes of a scene.
You know, he, you know, this film was made in England.
In East London.
Right, it's ridiculous.
They shipped in palm trees from Spain or something.
I was reading it.
You know, I mean, he is, it is a totally controlled environment.
I think they did, there are some scenes that I think might be Vietnam, but that was like the second unit he just sent them, like, I get some background shots or something.
Everything is filmed in a controlled environment.
You see what he wants you to see.
Literally nothing is found objects.
Everything is chosen.
When he tries to make a link between two things, if you think that's what he's doing, that is what he's doing.
He's creating that.
To go back to what I was saying, You're kind of stripping down...
I was talking about the title.
Full Metal Jacket, I think, is also kind of a metaphor of unclothing or taking off layers.
You've got this hard layer, the full metal jacket.
And it's also kind of like a badass layer to you.
But even the opening shots of this country music song about going to Vietnam, and you're shaving off their heads.
It's just this metaphor of getting...
Well, something that I think that Kubrick is trying to make clear is technology was always an obsession with him and the way humans use technology.
And I think what the Paris Island sequence is supposed to depict is the military trying to turn these men into actual weapons, into tools.
The problem with Pyle is he becomes...
At first he's very bad, and then he becomes too good of a tool, and he kind of malfunctions like Hal and ends up killing his master.
I've never thought about the Hal connection.
I think that's definitely there.
But yeah, I think that this sense of making people into tools, like a realization I had when I was in India is that the spiritual process that monks go through and...
What soldiers go through is almost the same.
It's about breaking down your ego and your personality and replacing it with something impersonal.
Of course, the ends are very different between the military and being in a monastery or something, but it's the same kind of process.
Both are the ascetic ideal.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Nietzsche would say, yeah.
Overcoming yourself.
Yeah, and smashing yourself up and seeing if anything remains.
Can you hack it?
Yeah.
What I was going to do with that is to go on this, the guy's named Animal Mother, and on his hat it says, I am become death.
He's this primal badass.
This, like, earlier version of humanity that is still within us.
You know, it's in everyone.
Even social justice warriors.
If you, you know, throw a social justice warrior into Parris Island for a long enough time, they'll come out an animal mother.
And, you know, it's kind of interesting because that scene where, the final scene of the first act where...
It's nighttime, and you have that characteristic Kubrickian blue light everywhere that reminds you of Eyes Wide Shut.
But the drill instructor...
Joker walks through the hall, and then he hears something, and he walks by the drill instructor.
Then he walks in a room that's labeled Head.
And, of course, that's a colloquial for the toilet, but it's also like...
Obviously metaphorical, like you're going into his head.
And he goes into his head, and you have Pyle has the thousand-yard stare.
He has that demonic, you know, you see the whites below the pupils of his eyes, and he's staring at you in this reptilian-like way.
And I think it is that metaphor.
Very much like Alex, very much reminiscent of many of Jack Nicholson's stares in The Shining as well.
And I'm sure there are others.
But you get at that other within ourselves.
Because there's the shadow in the Jungian sense.
There's an other outside of ourself, and that is the other of a different race, a different...
A different world, you know, the Viet Cong, but there's that other within ourself.
There's that shadow being who is a killer.
And who's also a terrible, I mean, you know, this, sorry, I've been flowing here for a little while.
I'll get you guys, I'll let you guys talk.
I'll force myself to be quiet.
It's my podcast.
But, you know, when the Marines are with the drill instructor Hartman, hard man, you know, obviously metaphorical, He talks about the University of Texas assassin.
And then he says, you know, who is that?
Hinkley?
Is that his name?
No, Charles Whitman.
Charles Whitman, excuse me.
Yes, I'd forgotten.
Hinkley obviously shot Reagan, right?
But it was Charles Whitman, and then he mentions Lee Harvey Oswald.
And so he's saying, you know, they did amazing shots, like for a moving target at 250 yards.
You know, where did they learn to shoot?
The Marine Corps.
And it's funny, and it obviously looks forward to the sniper as well, the female sniper.
So it's this kind of sense that the Marines will break you down, and they'll turn you into a killer, and they'll also turn you into a robot, despite Joker's insistence that they don't want to do that.
They will kind of turn you into a robot.
But on another level, it's like a weapon that It has no, like, warrior to it.
Like, it could go fire off.
It could fire off at itself.
It could fire off at friend.
You know, it's that killer instinct that is dangerous and uncontrolled.
Yeah, you're playing with fire.
It's made even clearer in the book, I have to say.
If Kubrick had actually, it's called The Short Timers.
Yeah.
If Kubrick had actually faithfully adapted the book, Nobody would have believed it.
I mean, it's way more psychotic.
I mean, the basic feeling you get from the book is that all Marines are psychos.
Like, the scene where Pyle shoots Hartman, in the book, the last thing Hartman does before he dies is he congratulates Pyle on, like, completing...
He doesn't finish his sentence, but you think he's going to congratulate him for, like, completing his training.
And then after Pyle shoots himself, Joker just orders all the other men back into bed, and they just leave the bodies lying on the floor.
The book is told from Joker's perspective, and he says something like, oh, well, probably the civilians are going to make a noise about that, or something like that, but we don't care.
Then they all get into their bunks, and they start praying to their rifles.
And then, like, Joker has some dream of, like, falling in love with his rifle or something, and that's the end of the Paris Island.
It carries over into the Vietnam part.
Like, the Marines actually spend more time almost killing or actually killing each other as they do fighting the Vietnamese.
Like, in the book...
A rafter man is actually run over by this psychotic marine driving a tank.
That's how he dies.
Well, he doesn't die in the film at all.
I won't go on at length about this, but there's many examples of this.
It's a very odd book if you read it.
I actually think Kubrick improved it by...
Well, I think Michael Hare...
Maybe pulling back a little bit is sometimes important.
Yeah, because I...
I've actually heard that some Vietnam vets have read the book and actually Gustav Hasford, who wrote it, himself was a combat journalist in Vietnam and in the Marines, but some people have said that they think he was exaggerating quite a bit.
I think the changes Kubrick made were good, but it reinforces this idea that is in the story, that this kind of psychotic animal energy is released.
Yeah.
Well, we all have a reptilian brainstem.
You know, there's a human evolution, which took place over the last, you know, when the world was created 3,000 years ago.
No.
I thought it was 5,000.
Oh, 5,000?
Yeah, yeah.
What are you, reading Richard Dawkins or something?
I mean, no.
Well, yeah, I mean, we're, you know, I think I...
I probably mentioned this in another one.
I mean, we're connected to the dinosaurs.
We have a reptilian brainstem that is still functional.
And it's actually the most efficient part of our brain.
It is the fight or flight mechanism.
It's basically fight, flight, fuck, kill, death.
You know, kind of mechanism.
And it is in everyone's brain.
And, you know, the mammalian system that grew out after that.
So with human evolution, like, in a way, like, you can see human evolution in the completed organism.
It's not like the little, you know, little proto-mammal that survived the extinction of the dinosaur is, like, you know, disappeared and a man arose.
You know, it's like an accumulation of evolutionary things.
So we still have a reptilian brainstem, and it's highly efficient, I mean, because it's so old.
It's been honed.
And then on top of that, we have the mammalian system, which is more about emotions and connections with the community.
Mammals generally raise their children as opposed to eat them like reptiles.
It's a small difference.
It's high investment parenting.
Yes, it is.
It's high investment.
Like, shall we eat our child, sweetheart?
Hmm, maybe not this time.
Let's raise this into an adult.
And also the reptilian brain is protected.
Yes.
Unlike the other parts.
That's why when someone is traumatized...
He will keep all his reptilian instincts intact while some areas like language or the ability to smell or to taste can be affected.
So it's the most important part because it's the core of it.
Absolutely.
And this cerebral cortex developed very late and it's very inefficient.
And we can't use it for long periods.
You can only concentrate intently on something for a little more than an hour.
You have to take a break.
You can't solve a math equation for two hours or something.
Maybe some autists can do that, but they don't have a reptilian brain.
They only have a cerebral cortex.
So it's a very inefficient part of the mind.
And a way you could think about it is that our cerebral cortex kind of rationalizes.
So we'll go and we'll become killers in a war, and then we'll go home and write a book about how it was a just cause.
And it was for the glory of God and so on.
I know I'm sounding extremely cynical, but I think people get my point, that what we think of as human and consciousness is this utmost outer layer of actual consciousness.
Which actually often just invents reasons to explain things that we do that come from this lower...
Exactly.
The outer layer is like Rafter Man, you know, and he's like, they died for a good cause, you know, or like, what are we fighting for?
And he's like, freedom.
And then, you know, what does Animal Mother say to that?
He's like, freedom.
You know, if there's a word that describes this, it's a fucking slaughter.
He says something like that.
So it's like there's a rafter man in your brain and he's rationalizing things.
But ultimately there's an animal mother in your brain that wants to fuck things and kill them and dominate other people and so on.
So it's who we are.
Although the interesting thing is when they're confronted by the dying sniper at the end, there's a moment where I guess Animal Mother at that point is in command of the squad.
And the camera shows him and he's like, okay, let's get out of here or something like that.
But you see his face and you can see that he's freaked out.
Maybe he's never actually seen a dying person that close before.
It's quite clear.
Just for a moment.
And then when Joker says that, you know, well, we can't just leave her here, then he kind of snaps back into, you know, whatever you want to call it, savage mode.
Yeah.
But there is that moment where it's like he actually has this look on his face of almost like terror.
Well, even when you're in this mode of kill them all, you know, kind of a thing, like it's impossible not to have some empathy.
That final scene when the sniper young girl comes out, there's no way you see that and you can't have a sense of pity.
You're not a human being.
It's a truly sad thing.
I also think it's not a coincidence that you've got this film about extreme masculinity and then it's a woman who almost takes them down.
In the end, I mean, that's also clearly symbolic.
Yeah.
I mean, when you first, I think also there, you know, again, there are a lot of layers to this, but I think that woman is kind of a symbolic one of the prostitutes.
You know, it's not, she's not literally, it's the same actress, but kind of like Buniel would, you know, which film?
Is that the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie?
Or maybe that's another one.
There's one where he has two separate actresses playing the same character.
I can't remember, but Kubrick loved Buñuel.
Oh, I'm sure he did, yeah.
There's a lot.
We should do some Buñuel movies, because those are really fantastic ones.
I think it's a discreet object of desire.
You have the wonderful woman who, the actress who played Miss Havelock in For Your Eyes Only.
To bring everything back to a James Bond film, as I'm one to do, she actually was in a Buniel film, I think, before or afterward.
And then she got mad at Buniel and just left or something, and he just hired another actress.
But they were like, oh, should we reshoot the scenes?
He's like, ah, no, it's fine.
So you'll have two actresses playing the same character.
Anyway.
You know, very surreal.
But, yeah, it's like the sniper at the end is one of those prostitutes.
You can kind of sense it.
And one scene, Joker says, you know these prostitutes, they're all officers in the Viet Cong.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, in that final scene, it's like it's a parallel to the earlier scene where they're negotiating with a prostitute and they're all there.
You know, the final scene is almost like them gang raping her and, you know, having their way with her, you know.
Yeah, they even say no more boom boom for this mama song.
Yeah, no more boom boom.
The fact that they call sex boom boom is also interesting because it's also a bomb or a sniper shot.
Which brings us to the younger thing.
Yeah.
The duality of man and the fact that on his helmet he both...
He has a peace sign on his jacket and a bound to kill on his helmet, right?
Yeah.
It's this way.
And he mentions Jung and it's funny.
Yeah, and it's funny because actually I know there's a kind of Aryan-Jewish rivalry between Freud and Jung.
But, you know, you find that in Freud's work too.
One of his later works, just before World War II, just before he died, maybe in 1935, he developed the idea that civilization is based on heroes and sanatos, so on love and death, and it's exactly what you find here.
I was surprised when I saw it again as an adult, not as a teenager, Kubrick cited Jung and not Freud, which maybe was more a natural reference for him.
No, I'm thinking through that.
I think that is interesting that he's doing that, because Eyes Wide Shut is a very Freudian movie.
Almost overtly, it's kind of like Freud for dummies or something.
It is interesting because there's almost like the duality of Jung and Freud, who obviously...
And Shining, too.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And it's three movies in a row, actually.
Yeah.
Over the course of 25 years.
Kubrick is so slow.
The psychological thing is important, but I think especially now when you have two fresh wars to see the same phenomenon in action that you're born to kill and the peace symbol.
That's like America's way of making war, which is probably why we're so bad at it, or at least of winning them.
Because America always thinks that, well, we can do these incredibly violent, barbaric things, but it's all going to bring about this peaceful utopia in the end.
That's always been the American misconception about war.
Yeah, it gets back to what I mentioned earlier, where we...
Even Hollywood did all these Vietnam films that were all serious and tragic.
Oh, you know, let's contemplate the heart of darkness kind of thing.
But we never learned anything as a culture.
And, you know, it's like seeing this movie now in 2016, where we're like 10 years distance from the Iraq War and we're many decades distance from the Vietnam War.
You see that we're still, like, saying the same crap, you know, that where he meets, because I think there are a lot of doppelgangers in this movie, and the Joker meets Hartman's doppelganger in this older, you know, is a colonel or general or something, who comes on.
When they see this, you know, mass death, mass grave covered, these poor people covered in lime.
He meets that guy.
He's like, what are you doing with the peace sign?
Are you a commie?
Why don't you come join the home team?
Get ready for a big win.
Come on in for the big win.
Like it's a football game.
Football metaphors, yeah.
It's so small-town American, white Christian, white Protestant, really.
But he says to him, you know, he's like, a peace symbol and a born to kill.
It's like, it's the Jungian duality of man.
And then he gets into his mode of propaganda.
He's like, you know, within every gook, there's an American just waiting to get out.
And that line, I think, might be the most important line in terms of understanding American consciousness, where America is both this racist nation, and I use that.
term with hesitation, but it's a racist nation, but then it's at the same time this almost anti-racist, post-racist nation of, you know, let's go kill the Arabs so that they'll have democracy one day and they'll be shopping at malls just like us.
One day they'll be playing football over in Iraq and they'll be our allies if we go kill some Nazis.
Nazis, if you want to say it, like George C. Scott's.
Right.
So it's, you know, and it's funny, like, we haven't learned anything.
Like, it's, I was, I was definitely, I opposed the Iraq War.
In a weird way, I was almost red-pilled by the Iraq War because it's like, I was so against it and everyone was for it that I was almost like, that inspired me to start reading.
The alternative right kind of stuff.
And certainly reading up on Jewish influence and the neoconservatives and so on.
But I think what's also important is that there's this deep myth within America that within every gook is an American just waiting to get out.
That's on some deep level of consciousness.
We all believe that.
We don't ever really learn.
Now, everyone is opposed to the Iraq War.
Being against the Iraq War is not controversial at this point.
But we've never actually learned anything.
You hear the same nonsense with, like, let's help the Libyans.
Let's help the Egyptians become Americans.
There's going to be another intervention.
There'll be another intervention, perhaps.
In the Trump administration, where we will say the same crap, because this is our foundational myth, and we really have never been able to get away from it.
No.
It's very deeply embedded.
I mean, I think it actually comes out of the Christian myth of the Puritans who came over to America, and Christianity more generally, just this idea that, well, you have to have a crusade.
To bring about God's kingdom on Earth.
I mean, it's been secularized, but the basic idea is the same.
Yeah.
And I think you see a variation on this in France as well.
I mean, Romain would not deny that.
There's a civilizing mission type way of articulating.
Actually, the regime that was established in 1789 was obviously linked.
To the new American one.
So there's no question about it.
And of course there were human links.
I mean, Lafayette fought on the American side, the insurgent side.
And then Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine were in Paris and really helped the revolution.
Jefferson, of course.
Thomas Paine was actually a French MP.
He was American and French at the same time because he was on the revolution side.
So that's not true.
The French, he was a Frenchie.
Because he was left-wing, so he was French, obviously.
No, but more seriously, yeah, there is...
The same idea, but I don't think it went as far as shaping the army.
Obviously, the French army is not much today, but when it was at the height of its glory, so maybe the First World War, I don't think it was more about fighting for...
It's very ambiguous because I think the army remained traditional to some extent, but serving a non-traditional regime.
While in America, maybe it's more consistent to have the Marine Corps, a drill instructor saying that here you are equally worthless whether you are yellow or black or Jewish.
Yeah, it's kind of the American ideal.
I don't think that in a European army, so today there are maybe two European armies if you exclude Russia, you could hear something like that.
A really ideological speech.
It's more about defending practical interests and I don't really see the civilizational mission.
We, Frenchmen, we call the army the great mute because it doesn't speak, it only acts.
And you don't really find ideology.
And actually, if you look at the forces inside the army that are fighting each other, it's...
Half Catholic and half Masons.
So they had to find a kind of compromise.
Whereas maybe in America it's more consistent with the regime and its ideology.
I also, but in the French case, couldn't that partially be because of what happened at the end of the Algerian war where there was that coup of military officers where they actually...
I guess they actually almost put in action a plan to overthrow De Gaulle by force so we never got to that point but I assume there must have been a real purging of politics from the army in the aftermath of that.
Actually there have been several purges starting of course after World War II because most of the army joined the Vichy regime but yeah first you had the Indochina War, which was actually a prequel to the Vietnam War.
And at that time, you had a kind of tension between the country which wanted peace at the price of abandoning all these colonies and the army that was defending a kind of romantic vision of the country and its mission.
And of course, Algeria was the final Because then the empire was over and France had to think of itself differently.
Maybe more as a European country than as a kind of empire.
And of course it was the same for England once it lost all its colonies.
And of course with America it's different because Vietnam was...
I think liberals are right to say that it was a kind of colonial war.
And, you know, America was really at its height.
And it was still the case in 1991 with the Iraq War, the Gulf War.
Well, Vietnam, I don't think it would have happened were it not for the Cold War.
Because there wasn't really anything that America was interested in getting in Vietnam.
It was more, I think, the idea that, well, if that one falls, all the dominoes in Asia will fall and the world will go communist within 10 years.
I think there are many people who genuinely believe that.
I agree.
I don't think it was a colonial war.
Like a 19th century colonial war.
But I think what's interesting is that the Cold War inherited all of this colonial baggage, you could say.
And they became the new colonialist, almost just by the act of being there.
Just to go back a little bit on the nature of the military, I'll say this, I've never served in the military.
I've only watched Vietnam movies.
I have an outsider's perspective.
I think I can still talk about it.
I would say that maybe the American army had a greater synthesis, and that's why it still does have this aura to it.
One of the things that this movie definitely presents is that the American army is still dominated by this older Midwestern and Southern...
White Christian, white to say, you know, don't even need to mention it, but white Christian, but not even white Christian, really white Protestant type mentality of, you know, Drill Sergeant Hartman, of, you know, when someone says, like, do you believe in the Virgin Mary?
And he, you know, he freaks out, you know, kind of thing.
And this, you know, God loves the Marines because we keep heaven full of fresh souls, all this kind of stuff.
So there was this synthesis achieved where it kind of brought in the revolutionary, egalitarian, universalist qualities of America itself, but then it kind of enveloped those in this Midwestern and Southern, almost conservative-type people who were leading it.
And I think maybe that synthesis is why the American army is still, in a way, going as a major force.
I mean, it's now being, you know, from what I can tell, the army is now being social justice warrior-ized.
You know, you have all these, you know, transgender soldiers and all this kind of nonsense.
Cremanty pouches.
Yeah.
You posted it a few years ago.
I remember that.
Yeah, and there was one person, I can't remember his name at the moment, was it, no it wasn't, I can't remember his name, but it was after that terrible event in the Fort Hood shooting where a Muslim cleric shot dozens of people, and there was this army general, do you remember his name?
But he said basically, as terrible as this event was, if we give up on diversity, that would be worse.
I don't think I actually remember hearing that.
In some ways, it's totally unsurprising.
I'm not surprised.
Yeah, I mean, it's just this...
He was the chief of staff, I think.
Yeah, but even...
And so he uttered this just totally ridiculous thing, the kind of thing that you would expect to hear at the postmodern literature department at...
Duke University or something.
Like, just, you know, eye-rollingly nonsensical.
Like, giving up on diversity is worse than mass murder?
You know, like, wow, you're really dedicated.
But the guy who said it was probably, like, from Oklahoma or something, you know, who goes to his megachurch every Sunday and, you know, ooh, yeah.
So I think America has reached this just horrible synthesis in its military culture.
I have to say, unlike Europe, which still has this older tradition of a kind of pompous ruling class type culture, we are the weaponized arm of the Prussian elite or something.
I think there's still probably some hangovers.
Oh, yeah.
I think I've read that the American military is...
Especially after World War II, you know, very much borrowed from what they learned from fighting the Germans and especially from Prussian tactics and, of course, weapons and things, too, that were taken from the Germans after the war.
So, yeah, I definitely think that there's...
And let's face it, I mean, no offense to our European comrades, but, I mean, they've had the shield of the U.S. now for 70 years.
Yeah, but they didn't really have the choice.
Especially the Germans.
Oh, I know.
They are not allowed to have an army.
But I'm just saying we can't really fault Europe for not having a true military culture anymore because they needed it in a long time.
We can and we can't at the same time.
It's really paradoxical because Europeans, and it's not only the government, it's also the public opinion, doesn't want a real army.
Especially in northern countries or countries like Germany, which are really pacifist.
But at the same time, it's not like there's been a real choice between the two options.
Because I read and I heard Trump criticizing NATO, but...
It's both a shield and a sword at the heart of Europe.
Because if America left NATO, or if NATO was dismembered, which would be good and bad at the same time, it would mean that maybe it's close to 100,000 soldiers in Germany, I think.
American soldiers.
And maybe it would at last give the opportunity to Germany to build a real army.
And, you know, it's really...
We've reached a stability.
It's this stability where America wants to pretend that it's not an empire.
An unsound stability.
A bad stability.
And, you know, it's really ridiculous because Germany is one of...
They produce some of the best weapons that they export all over the world, but they can't have an army.
It would just take a withdrawal of NATO and you would get a German army.
I think the public opinion would shift.
It's easier to be a pacifist when you don't really have the choice.
I agree.
I think it's a little more ambiguous, actually.
I'll be short, but in a way, I support NATO not the way it is, but I like the idea that You know, there would be a transatlantic force that would unite Western countries.
The problem being that it's not defined that way and that's why you get Turkey in the mix.
Well, that's the same problem with the EU.
It's a great concept.
It's the execution.
That's the problem.
No, absolutely.
I think we're all on the same page.
I might be a little more critical towards Europe than equally critical to the United States at the same time.
We've had this stability in the post-war era, beginning of the Cold War, let's just say 1950 onward, and it's now kind of cracking up.
But we've had this stability where America, because...
Because we want to have this born-to-kill and peace sign empire.
We're going to have an empire, but we're going to pretend that we're not imperialists and that we're doing this for freedom and God and all that kind of stuff.
But then at the same time, as you're saying, Germans and all Europeans, it's easy to be a pacifist when you know that you don't have to ultimately confront an enemy.
And, you know, I almost think that we've reached maybe this point of European decadence.
And again, I don't like criticizing Europeans.
I like criticizing Americans.
I feel like I should do that.
But, you know, criticizing Europeans.
It's my role.
That's why I bring you on here.
But it's almost like a point where even if America pulled out, like if Trump goes full Trumpian and says, where does ending NATO, you guys defend yourself.
It's almost like Europe has reached a state of decadence where they wouldn't even step up to the fight.
And I hope that that's not the case.
I'm not sure about it.
So I am more pessimistic than Romain.
Wow.
You see, things happen.
You know, I always say I'm pessimistic on the short run and optimistic on the long run.
But I'm not sure because...
You know, it's really a spoiled kid phenomenon, you know, this pacifist thing.
And it was the case in, you know, the interwar era, it was the case in the 50s, and it's the case today.
I mean, you know, it could also be applied to America.
I mean, so, of course, there's a strong American army with lots of American boys fighting overseas, but...
Most of the population is shielded from, you know, combat and death the same way that Europe is.
And maybe even more because, okay, so granted you had something like 9-11 15 years ago, but America is really far from war situation, which is not the case of Europe.
I mean, 20 years ago.
In the Balkans, it was real and, you know, actual war.
So, you know, I kind of respect guys, you know, joining the U.S. Army, even if they're deluded in some way.
But most of the American population is like Europe's.
When you go to Walmart, do you really feel like you have a people?
Ready to fight if it's necessary.
And I'm not referring to the Black Friday.
The answer is yes.
No.
If you remove the cortex.
No, of course not.
We're perhaps even worse than Europeans.
Europeans at least experience decadence with taste and style.
We experience decadence of the...
That's why John is in Hungary.
Right.
Who lives the last days of the Habsburgs.
Yes.
Sort of the last gasp.
But also, well, I mean, this came out really during the Iraq War.
But, you know, I mean, basically what the U.S. military was was like, you know, a hired class of people, you know, to go in.
I mean, that was always the irony of the people who really gung-ho over the Iraq War was it was like...
They were very strongly committed to the idea that America should be there, but personally, Americans, unless you had a member of the family in the military, you really didn't have to sacrifice anything.
So it wasn't like, in Vietnam, to be in favor of the war, if you were a young man anyway, you actually had to be willing to go over there and fight, but in the case of the Iraq War, everybody was very much...
Talking about how great a crusade it was, really was risking very little in order to do that.
I have no great affection for Michael Moore, but there was that great scene in Fahrenheit 9-11 where he stands outside of Congress and his congressmen are going by.
He's trying to give them army literature to persuade them that they should send their kids to Iraq.
Because I think there was only one congressman who had a...
Oh, I remember that scene, yeah.
I thought it was quite hilarious because some of them really got quite upset, but it was the truth.
Yeah, it was like the Iraq War and subsequent wars, like the Libyan War or whatever.
They're almost these...
Post-war wars.
Maybe the first one of these was actually with Bill Clinton's intervention in the Balkans.
I remember there was a leftist who coined this phrase, the laptop bombardiers.
And it was kind of a post-war war, where it's like, oh, no one will die, at least on our side.
We're just bringing about feminism and capitalism to these benighted European nationalist types.
Yeah, I think that's definitely the case.
So do you want to get back to the movie we're analyzing?
The actual movie?
Yeah, I was thinking maybe we should cover the shaving scene because, you know, in Shining there was a...
Subtle reference to the Holocaust.
And of course, in Full Metal Jacket, it's more obvious and more plain.
I mean, they're shaved the same way.
No, I'm not going to make a Holocaust joke.
The same way they were in Auschwitz.
Do you think there's a Jewish element to it?
In addition to the fact that Kubrick, of course, is Jewish, but...
Because the reference to me is obvious, but is there more to it that maybe that every country is based on a mass murder of some kind, which in Shining is also a reference to the genocide.
I want to definitely get into the connection between cowboys and Indians and the Vietnam War.
I think that's also a major theme.
Do you want to talk more about the Holocaust?
Is there something beyond?
I agree.
It was more a remark and a question.
Is it just a visual reference or is there something deeper?
And with Kubrick we know it's...
Always deeper than just a passing reference.
Maybe...
I don't know if the meaning is that America as a country is based on mass murder or if you need to eradicate a kind of humanity to bring a new one, which is a recurring theme in Kubrick, especially in 2001.
So it was a question.
I see it more as the latter.
I think what you're saying about the Holocaust, that's a possible interpretation, but I always just saw it as more of a general portrayal of dehumanization, that it's like the first phase in the stripping away of their civilian personalities.
Like Richard was saying before, with the full metal jackets.
But what you're saying is entirely possible.
I've never seen Kubrick, I mean, from reading his public statements and his other films, I never got the feeling he was very hung up on the Holocaust, like Spielberg or somebody was.
But who knows?
It's possible.
Yeah, I think it's definitely there.
You know, he's not hung up on it objectively, but I think there's something going on there.
I agree.
In a way, it doesn't even matter what Kubrick's motivations were.
I mean, you can't see that and not have that reference there.
I was also thinking that that last shot of the little prelude where...
They're playing this country-western song about going to Vietnam, but then they're being dehumanized.
I thought that was an interesting juxtaposition.
We can talk about the music in this film, which is pretty brilliant, of these juxtapositions of pop songs and visuals that are strikingly...
So you have this dehumanization, but then it's given a southern twang to it, and southern hospitality.
And then it's kind of interesting, that final scene, he shows a still shot of all of the hair mixed up together on the floor.
Which is also very interesting.
It almost seemed kind of like that race-mixing aspect of the Marines itself, where it's like, you know, it doesn't matter if you're a kike or a nigger or a greaser or a spick, you're all equally worthless.
And you're all just kind of like lying on the floor there.
I think that's there.
I think definitely the more overt reference is to Cowboys and Indians and to the figure of John Wayne.
Like, is that you, John Wayne?
Which, it's kind of an interesting thing because the Joker repeats that joke.
It's not an actual quote from any film.
You know, it almost sounds like it is, but it's not.
It's this kind of question out there.
Is that you, John Wayne?
Like, is that you, you know, exemplar of American masculinity?
And also maybe a kind of callback to the genocide, which, you know, again, gosh, I'm going to be accused of sounding like a heart, you know, a bleeding heart leftist by saying this, but the genocide that really does.
That really is at the heart of the foundation of a European country on the North American continent.
You know, I mean, like, one people and civilization lost, and another one predominated.
And, you know, you can't, I mean, you can't go to an Indian reservation and not today and not recognize that there was a genocide.
The Indians who are still around living in Indian communities.
Are totally demeaned and humiliated at this point.
There are also some little things.
There's a movie theater that occurs throughout, and they're playing a Vietnamese translation of Red River.
Which is Hawk's film about a cowboys and Indians clash.
It's starring John Wayne.
That's going on in the background.
There's that famous scene where you have almost Kubrick himself filming the soldiers.
And as he's passing by, you're following him as well.
And as he's passing by, you get...
They're actually like, oh, welcome to Vietnam, the movie.
I think Cowboy says that, which is pretty funny.
And then, you know, it's like, we'll be the Cowboys.
Who will play the Indians?
The gooks will be the Indians.
Yeah.
And it's definitely kind of playing with that.
And I think there is a kind of loss of innocence.
I mean, just because I, I mean, I highly respect John Ford.
I hope not a lot of people in our...
No John Ford movies, but I think maybe we should do The Searchers at least.
But The Searchers is a highly ambiguous film as well.
I think in a way, we imagine John Wayne as this expression of just pure American masculinity, but I think you could...
That movie, what it's saying in a way is that John Wayne himself, very similar to...
Sorry, I got a phone call there.
Very similar to the message of Full Metal Jacket, where you're stripping down your humanity and you're getting to this primal killer, this other within yourself.
The same goes for John Wayne.
I mean, he becomes a kind of savage Indian in order to kill the Indians.
And John Wayne wants genocide.
I mean, he says that explicitly.
Well, another interesting connection as far as Full Metal Jacket goes is John Wayne made...
That film, The Green Berets, which I think was one of the few Vietnam War films made during the war.
That's what you would expect of a John Wayne film about Vietnam, because he tries to depict it in a very simplistic, good versus evil way.
So it's kind of like, that's like the idea, John Wayne is the idea of what these guys probably thought the war was going to be.
But then they get there, and it's actually, they're in this kind of nihilistic realm where...
There's no right or wrong, and everything's just about who's stronger, basically.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I was just thinking, to go back to this theme of the two, you could say they're two halves, it's kind of like the first third and the second two-thirds, but they do have these recurring themes.
When you first enter the camp of where Cowboy is and his platoon, you enter through this circular...
A lot of people have talked about that as being a film lens that Kubrick is referencing himself.
But cowboy shaving.
It's kind of interesting.
You keep meeting these people as they're shaving down themselves.
Again, with Kubrick...
Maybe he didn't even intend that, but he kind of did subconsciously or something.
Oh, I'm sure he did.
I don't think, like you said before, there's any accidents in a Kubrick film.
Yeah.
When he told him to do that, he's like, oh, let's have you shaving.
It's a kind of callback to the time when you first see these people and they're being dehumanized.
And they all do kind of blend in with one another, these different characters.
But, yeah, I think that is there where it's like you're reenacting, in Vietnam, you're reenacting this cowboys versus the Indians myth.
and you're doing it again, but this time you see it up close, and it's chaotic and meaningless and so on.
Yes.
Yes, I agree.
Is there anything we missed?
We need to talk about Mickey Mouse.
Yeah.
Which, the first time...
I think the first time it occurs in the film is when Hartman comes into the head to confront Pyle and he says, what in the hell is this Mickey Mouse shit?
Yeah.
Which, of course, that's like a...
Yeah, that's a good catch.
I forgot he said that.
And it's also shit.
It's also this recurring theme of...
Yeah, I'm in a world of shit.
I'm in a world of shit.
And then when people want to see combat, they say, I want to get in the shit.
And they're literally, in one of those scenes, they're almost literally in shit of their...
They're in this mud race or something, and just mud is everywhere, and they're in the shit, you know, almost literally.
Yeah, I think the Mickey Mouse thing, because also when you go to the propaganda office where Joker is working, there's these Mickey Mouse in the background.
Whenever they show Matthew Modine, there's a little Mickey Mouse, two of them, I think, characters.
And there's some other little cartoons.
There's this one shot that's like a 360-degree movement shot, and you see Mickey Mouse.
You see this kind of oriental fan on the wall, which seems almost like something out of Madama Butterfly or something.
You know, almost like our view of Asians.
There's Snoopy.
As well as a kind of thing.
And then, you know, most famously, I think that this is the scene where I felt like I got the movie and I got what Kubrick was saying, because it encaptured basically everything about the...
The film in one scene, but it's the final scene of they've killed the snipers, they're walking away, the Jolly Green Giants are walking away from a burning village, and they're singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, which, as a march.
And I think it encapsulated everything.
There's the infantilization of these men.
You know, they're singing a kid's song.
It's hard not to see also the, like, march of Americanism of you're, you know, you're destroying this, you know, I wanted to go to ancient Vietnam, the jewel of the East, and kill them all, you know, kind of.
Oh, I love that line, yeah.
To meet exotic people from an ancient culture and kill them.
Right.
You know, it's too bad that they'd rather, what is it?
They'd rather be dead than free?
They'd rather be alive than free, poor dumb bastards.
Right, poor dumb bastards.
But you have this scene, and it's kind of like the whole movie where you have the march of Americanism, of the Mickey Mouse march.
You have the infantilization of all these men.
You can also see it as an attempt to return to innocence, like they've just been through.
This cauldron of barbarism, and it's an attempt to recapture their innocence somehow.
Absolutely.
Well, he says at the end, he goes, you know, the homecoming fantasies of Mary Jane Rottencotch, you know, kind of thing.
Which Hartman had referred to in the beginning.
Yeah, which is...
Your days of finger-banging old Mary Jane rotten crotch to her pennies is over!
Yeah, it's funny because that's almost like a vision of America, and it's a rotten crotch.
And it's Mary Jane, which, you know, it's almost like the Virgin Mary, which again is referenced by Drill Instructor Hartman as well.
There's this scene that, like...
There's a sense of America itself, like your mother, your home, this little small town where you came from, that it is rotting in its crotch as we speak.
And yeah, I think that was definitely there.
But then at the other level of it, and this is why I think Kubrick is a great filmmaker, is the ambiguity, which is that...
And this is my...
Vision of the film, which is probably, I don't know, maybe it's not even that controversial.
I think this is a pro-war movie.
And at the end of the day, despite all that shit that we've just talked about, all of these men are coming together as men and experiencing themselves in a real way as men.
They are bonding tribally.
They're bonding in a Jack Donovan type manner.
And they're getting closer to their inner world, their inner self, and maybe for the first time.
And so it's hard not to even look at that scene and want to be there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll confess that I'm really too old for it now, but in some ways I do regret that I'll never get to experience that.
I mean, I've never been in the military either.
Although I'm sure in some ways it would be absolutely horrifying and also saltifying, but at the same time, well, I mean, these days, of course, war is so different, even from Vietnam, because there's so little actual contact between the soldiers and the people they're trying to kill these days.
But if you actually can get into that situation, I've got to believe that it's...
You learn things about yourself.
There's a line from Apocalypse Now when Willard says, he's talking about the military.
He says, well, it lets you know who you are more than some factory in Ohio.
I think that that is the thing about war.
It's horrible, but at the same time, it's also a fundamental part of who we are in our experience.
In some ways, I'm very glad I haven't had to experience it.
In some ways, I also feel like my life will always be a little bit incomplete since I never did.
You never face death.
You only live twice, once when you're born, and the second time when you face death, you confront death.
Those people have confronted death.
They've experienced an existence in a way that we haven't.
We've not been the first kids in our block to get a confirmed kill.
Well, another line that I really love in that scene where, I forget his name, the guy who unveils the dead Viet Cong and then he kind of gives this monologue.
But one of the lines I've always loved, he says, these people who we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know.
Which you think it's funny, but when you really think about it, they're actually saying like...
Actually, these people who we're trying to kill and they're trying to kill us, we actually understand them more than the people we left behind at home.
It's like the brotherhood of war, in a sense.
You're actually, in some ways, you're more connected to your enemy than you are to the people you're allegedly fighting for.
That's the thing.
I would not start this podcast by saying this is a pro-war film because I think people would then misunderstand me and they'd be like, oh, Richard, wow, he must be in support of Vietnam and he loves this stuff.
He loves Americans destroying other cultures.
I'm like, no, I don't.
I think Vietnam was stupid.
I think all these subsequent wars were idiotic.
But I'm not going to also deny the reality of...
Of the fact that there is a killer in us and that, in a way, that's a more intense and a more real version of ourself than the one sitting here recording podcasts.
But I guess we can only experience it.
Maybe a subsidiary question would be almost 30 years after it has been released.
And let's not forget that the Cold War was not over.
When all these Vietnam War movies were shot, did America really lose the Vietnam War?
Because now there are Vietnamese kids wearing Mickey Mouse ears.
And even if the Viet Cong won in 1975, then on the long run, they lost.
And now China is formally communist, but is really capitalist, and there are many other examples like that.
Yeah, I think that's very insightful.
It's maybe, of course, not what Kubrick wanted to say.
It's not the subject.
But with 30 years from the time it was shot, we can certainly see that...
I don't agree when...
You know, it was not really a defeat for America, and nothing was really at stake, and it was not on American soil.
It really hurt America's pride.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, it had a catastrophic impact on American culture, and I think also our international reputation at the time.
Yeah, there's no question about it, but in the long run, did America really lose?
Yeah, I agree.
We won them over through passive nihilism.
And if you compare the body count in this war, I think it was 60,000 American soldiers who were killed.
And on the other side, it's 2 million.
Maybe equally between the North and the South.
I mean, Vietnam was...
You see that maybe more in the apocalypse now than in...
In a full-metal jacket, of course, because of this London studio.
But all the architecture and the art that was destroyed during this war was really horrendous.
And it was even worse in Cambodia, actually.
One of the frightening things about what America is, I think, is that Even when somebody is our mortal enemy, and even in the case of Vietnam where they win, they still end up becoming part of the liberal order.
It's like a zombie power.
That's the other aspect of Americanism.
I think we are kind of at the end of something.
This is not the beginning of Americanism.
The liberal American paradigm, you know, the second political theory, I guess, and to use Dugan's terminology, it still is dominant, and there's no really...
Excuse me, there's the third political theory in Dugan's, yes, communism, fascism, and liberalism.
But there really isn't...
The fourth political theory is a big question mark.
I mean, there's...
There's some people who are taking a different path.
I mean, China is taking a different path in a way, but I agree that it's still taking a consumerist, passive nihilism path, even if it's slightly parallel.
But there's really no other way.
The alternative to nihilistic Americanism is a big question mark.
And there's no one out there that really has something else.
Including Russia.
Yeah, even including Russia.
Because Russia, as you could say, is a very similar thing.
There are Starbucks coffee joints in Moscow.
Exactly.
People want to get rich and so on.
And you could also actually go back even further and say that communism and Americanism were kind of like twins, separated at birth, I think is what...
Tomoslav Sunish says, they were kind of, you know, twins in the womb and different paths.
But yeah, Russia, obviously, I think from our perspective, we see Russia as better and resisting this.
But, you know, if you step back a few paces, you see it as just a parallel path, you know, towards this.
And other nationalist movements, like the Scottish nationalists, they're not offering some new way or something.
God, no.
Yeah.
And so it's like, no one has it.
I think, and I'm trying to be...
In a way, very self-critical as well.
Or even Islam, actually.
Right.
Wow.
Islam is more, you know, it's like the bully on the school, you know, on the schoolyard.
But, you know, it's just a negative reaction to the West or to America.
ISIS is kind of like an extreme, it's like an extreme photographic negative of Western Catholics.
It's like a parody of us in a way.
It's like they're sitting there going, well, how can we be the opposite of everything that the West is?
Right.
No, I mean, it is.
I wonder if there is another paradigm.
Atlantis.
I'm kidding.
And Kubrick is getting at this.
I mean, we haven't done 2001 yet, but we have.
But that is that you can only imagine the new paradigm as like an infant in the stars.
I mean, we can't really fully make it material yet.
We have to evolve first.
We can't even comprehend it right now.
We might have to die first.
You have to say a line like that with a little twinkle in your eye because it's true, but then, yeah.
You've convinced me I'm going to join ISIS.
This is the black pill.
Well, let's put a black pill in this.
That should be my new catchphrase as opposed to bookmark.
Let's each take our black pill.
Go home.
But did you want to say anything about Kubrick?
Full Metal Jacket is only one of several films that Kubrick made about war.
It's very bad.
But if you watch his first film that he wanted destroyed, Fear and Desire, it's actually very similar to Full Metal Jacket in many ways because it's about this band of soldiers stuck behind enemy lines and they're trying to survive.
I mean, it's very crude in comparison, of course, but it seems like it's a theme that he kept coming back to.
Band of Brothers.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's in Paths of Glory in a very different way, and you can see it a little bit in Dr. Strangelove, I think.
Clockwork Orange, you can see the droogs.
The droogs are almost like a...
In Berlinden, the only time when Redmond...
He's, you know, an accomplished man when he's a soldier.
Even if he's with, you know, social outcasts and, you know, people you wouldn't like to have as neighbors.
He's a real man when he's a soldier.
And that's when, you know, that's just after that he's gambling all over in Europe.
As soon as he gets to what he said he wanted, he becomes weak and soft and he starts unraveling.
That's, I think, this theory of, in a way, all Kubrick movies being a Russian doll.
They're all nested.
Yeah, and you kind of see their aspects of Full Metal Jacket and Barry Lyndon, like what Roman was just saying.
When I was watching it, the scene where they beat up Private Pyle with soap and a towel...
The way they even come over to them, they look quite like monkeys.
They're actually hunched over.
And I could almost hear, you know, see the very famous 2001 scene of these monkeys in front of the obelisk going, you know, smashing things.
And, you know, you have that, you have the thousand-yard stare takes you back to The Shining.
It takes you back to some...
To some other films, it's the shadow.
The opening shot of Clockwork Orange.
Right, exactly, where he's giving you a thousand-yard stare and the camera pans out.
So there is this funny way where it's like Kubrick made this one film and it's all kind of mashed together.
It's very interesting.
I'm sure someone has done this, but if they haven't, we should do a big Kubrick mashup of parallels.
Parallel aesthetics that recur throughout his movies, like leitmotifs.
Yeah, that would be...
It would take a long time, but it would be worth it.
Yeah, definitely.
Well, anyway, let's put a bookmark in this one.
Or a black pill.
Or a black pill.
Let's all take the black pill.
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