Fin: ‘Full Metal Jacket’ is not a movie about why the military used to be awesome

Also, Watching people watch Megalopolis, movies that must be seen before the election, R-rated movies on planes, and more in this week’s notes column

The lack of media literacy these days is a problem. But when people say that, they usually talk about young people who don’t know the difference between depiction and endorsement. 

There’s also, of course, the conservative version of this. And as Donald Trump demonstrated at a rally in Scranton earlier this week, he and his campaign don’t really understand the plot of the film Full Metal Jacket. 

At that rally, Trump introduced a video in which he compared “the military of the past- let’s call it the Trump military- with the very woke military we have right now.” The video juxtaposes scenes from the first act of Full Metal Jacket — in which Gunnery Sergeant Hartman berates his recruits with creative and colorful insults — with footage of  Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health and human services, extending Pride Month wishes, a couple of TikToks of soldiers appearing to perform in drag and other such things. 

The clip, unsurprisingly, omits some of the more risque insults from the movie. But more importantly, it cuts off before the end of that movie’s first act: When Private Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) shoots Hartman dead and then turns the gun on himself. 

Leave aside the general homophobia and transphobia, and that while Rachel Levine serves in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, her Pride month greetings were to the Department of Health and Human Services and had nothing to do with the military. Or that there’s no real reason to believe that someone with an after-hours drag habit wouldn’t be good at being a soldier.

There’s also the media illiteracy, even coming from a lifelong showbiz obsessive like Trump.

Full Metal Jacket is many things, but it is not a movie about how the military was unambiguously tough, manly, and awesome in the Vietnam era. And if anyone knows the movie, they likely know exactly how the Sgt. Hartman plot ends. 

The film’s star, Matthew Modine, weighed in: 

This was an outstanding point as well: 

The Wolf of Wall Street, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Joker… we see this repeatedly. 

Watching People Watch Megalopolis 

One right-leaning writer with some media literacy is Ross Douthat, who wrote one of the better pieces about Megalopolis. 

But without being artistically successful, “Megalopolis” is really, really interesting. The film strives to be of-the-moment, to say something big about America Right Now, in a way that relatively few contemporary films aspire to do. And it largely succeeds in that attempt, delivering a portrait of civilizational dilemmas that, whatever its other failings, belongs fully to the realities of 2024.

See, isn’t that easier than just declaring a movie “woke” and dismissing it out of hand? 

Speaking of which, I saw a movie last Monday night, and it got out at the same time as that night’s showing of Megalopolis. Listening to first-time viewers react to Megalopolis is so entertaining that theaters should sell tickets to watch that.