Full Metal Jacket: a Film Review

Power, it is what everyone seeks in this world. How you get to it is up to you. Many people try to manipulate others into believing what they say. Others use brute force. Now imagine if both of those tactics are combined. When you do, you get war. Now two types of people are included in war, the solider, and the commander. The power hungry, manipulative, and the forceful; are all known as government officials. From the lowliest senator, to the president, all power hungry convincing others to fight for them. Simply put, people fight for power, whether it is by words, or with a gun, they all want the feeling of I beat you, and I am better than you are. Now the soldiers may also be known as the power hungry in their own right. The next few paragraphs will contain examples.

Full Metal Jacket was a movie about young soldiers going off to Vietnam to fight a war. The generals commanded them to fight, and fight they did. Now, many of the recruits did not want to go and fight, take Pvt. Joker for example, he wore a peace symbol on his hat, and killed on the battlefield. He beat up Pvt. Pile, and could not stand the screaming afterward. He did not want to fight, but was forced to due to the draft. Another fine example of this was in "Legends of the Fall", where the two brothers go off to war and fight in the "name of their country", and their other older brother goes just to watch after them. Two different reasons to fight, two different reasons to die. Now perhaps the younger brothers were power hungry, and wanted to kill to feel supreme? On the other hand, maybe it was the convincing of the government to make it seem so appealing to go off and fight on their battlefields.

Now I feel all of this is justified in Freud's "Why War", "The individual in any given nation has in this war a terrible opportunity to convince himself of what would occasionally strike him in peacetime that the state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong-doing, not because it desired to abolish the practice of wrong-doing, not because it desires to it, but because it desires to monopolize it like salt [oil] and tobacco. The warring state permits itself every misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual man. It practices not only the accepted stratagems, but also deliberate lying and deception against the enemy; and this, too, in a measure, which appears to surpass the usage of former wars. The state exacts the utmost degree of obedience and sacrifice from its citizens, but at the same time treats them as children by maintaining an excess of secrecy, and a censorship of news and expression of opinion that renders the spirits of those thus intellectually oppressed defenseless against every unfavorable turn of events and every sinister rumor. It absolves itself from guarantees and contracts it had formed with other states, and makes unabashed confession of the rapacity and lust for power, which the private individual is then called upon to sanction in the name of patriotism." This to me describes the ideas of "power hungry" and the two different types of people involved in war.

In conclusion, I feel that many people go to war, or fight in general for that matter, as a way to earn more power. By being victorious on the battlefield or in your living room arguing, you gain power and respect by the opposing side. Perhaps this is why sports were invented; at least we are smart enough to do that.