h/t ASM@ Borepatch
Mosey over to Borepatch's blog, and read ASM's epiphany on a classic scene in Full Metal Jacket.
My take?
You (ASM) know no recruit ever saw a doughnut on P.I. Kubrick didn't.
You're still overthinking it. (And BTW, Pyle confessed to stealing the jelly doughnut in the scene without further prompting. Trying to pin this on Hartman's imaginary dastardly subterfuge is plainly bad movie-watching comprehension.)
The doughnut scene was just lazy screenwriting, and bad shorthand to make a point, nothing more nor less. That's the discovery. Hollywood only does that 24/7/365. (Lou Gossett did it even worse, when he won an Oscar for them making it look like he single-handedly ran a Navy OCS platoon in An Officer And A Gentleman. As If.)
Pyle's failure is that he's Pyle. I knew many Pyles. I had them in my recruit platoon. Some of them hid it better than others. Some didn't even try.
We had "Sniper", caught sighting in his M-16 on 1st MAF's helo as it landed on the parade deck.
The "Filter Kings", caught smoking a half-smoked cigarette butt they'd found. (The scene where Profile is running around the entire formation coming back from the range in Heartbreak Ridge? Oh yeah, that happened many times in real life. Just ask the Filter Kings.)
And two outright Thieves who should've been shit-canned from the Marine Corps on the spot in boot camp, and were later court-martialed and shit-canned from the FMF, for stealing ordnance in MOS School right after. Leavenworth Correctional is tough to explain on a resume.
The Corps oft-times fucks up by trying to salvage the unsalvageable, when it should just do them a mercy and kick them out as "unsuitable for military service" for life, the first time it becomes bog obvious.
Not everyone left MCRD in dress blues. Some leave it in Levis. Even two days before graduation. Deservedly.
The D.I.s were simply the illusion of perfection, because they only had to put the show on for their shift. It is the most elaborate staged performance in a military full of them. The Blue Angels have nothing on Marine boot camp for creating an illusion. Doesn't matter for recruits, because they're expected to make illusion reality, Or else.
The problem comes when over-eager recruiters are desperate for audience participation, and screen in kids they should've screened out, and knew they should've screened out.
Anybody can do documentaries on Marine boot camp, or BUDS Class 234. It's not hard.
The one I want to see, that would tear the mask off, would be to do a documentary on BUDS Class 234 Instructors Behind The Scenes. Or ditto for Ranger School or SFAS Cadre.
Then the penny would drop.
The military would crap itself to stop that reality show getting out.
(That's a lot of why The Guardian failed at the box office, despite being an excellent flick: Costner's senior chief was shown to be just as damaged in his personal life as the trainee he was trying to reach, and it was a little bit too on-point for audiences to like. It broke the boot camp movie mold.)
I saw one of the sister platoons' D.I.s in the base PX about a year after boot. After a momentary flashback, the truth dawned. He was just another motor T sergeant, buying T-shirts and socks.
Army here. What's really illuminating is when the DI, (Drill Sergeant), gets off "the trail," and back to a real unit. The privates in his squad aren't trainees, and aren't going to put up with his DI shit. Neither are the NCO's and Officers above him. They need a cohesive unit, and he's not making that happen.
ReplyDeleteIt usually takes a few months for the guy to reorient, or the First Sergeant deals with him.
There was Tribes, back in the day. It was pretty realistic. I think I've mentioned this before, but I saw a lot of what the recruits went through on a daily basis for as long as I can remember, until we moved to WNC from San Diego in 1975 after my junior year of high school. My dad worked there on base for eighteen years.
ReplyDeleteI'd say the training was equally hard whether you went to PI or MCRD San Diego, except the west coast trainees were called Hollywood Marines.
I was a Marine Recruit in January, 1979. We were in Platoon 3001, the first platoon of the new year at MCRD San Diego. Me and my newest buddy (We met in Oakland at the Armed Forces Examination Center). We just endured our time there and if you could make sure to not be really noticed you could skate. Our Private Pyle was called Private 'Brasterd' (Brastad) That dude could not seem to concentrate and would stay up in the head to the wee hours studying and still not get "it". He got dropped two days before graduating after a lot of torture. My buddy who was from Oakland? He was named Wayne Adam Ford. Anyway, if I could make it through, anyone can make it. Hollywood never really has any idea what it's like serving, but sometimes it is entertaining.
ReplyDeletePI 1973. Yes we had a couple of room-temperature prives who *almost* made it. Boot was HARD, but I did get the occasional glimpse of humanity if not imperfection in my DI's; even the Senior who was a three-tour 'Nam Grunt with dead eyes,shark eyes on duty. He'd say "I killed ol prive like you one day" with complete credibility (to me, certainly).
ReplyDeleteTo see him in civvies, driving his Starsky and Hutch Gran Torino was already earth-shaking; but when he glanced over, saw me and gave a little grin and wave, my respect actually increased if such was possible.
Boat Guy
I wonder if the DIs now have to ask for consent and pronouns? Any read on that?
ReplyDelete