Donald Trump is featuring the iconic drill sergeant from the 1987 film "Full Metal Jacket" to illustrate his version of a strong military that he uses to needle Democrats and the "woke" version he says they seek.
The video that the Republican presidential nominee has shown at his rallies and posted on social media highlights R. Lee Ermey in his role as the hardboiled Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film.
Ermey plays the tough-talking, no-nonsense Marine who unleashes a series of racist and crude attacks as he tries to shape each recruit into a "minister of death" during boot camp.
WE WILL NOT HAVE A WOKE MILITARY! pic.twitter.com/zpWZhSKcEs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2024
The video juxtaposes clips of the sergeant berating and punching actor Matthew Modine's character "Private Joker" with scenes of drag performances and people celebrating LGBTQ rights.
One of the running themes of the first part of the movie deals with how Ermey's sergeant bullies and harasses a new recruit, Pvt. Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence, played by Vincent D' D'Onofrio, to his breaking point.
Lawrence shoots the Hartman to death before taking his own life.
The Associated Press also points out that Trump used an anti-war film to make his point, and that it's about Vietnam, which Trump avoided serving in because he was able to get a medical deferment for bone spurs.
Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, said she can see why Trump is using the film, even as Modine compared the former president to Nazi propaganda.
Using an anti-war movie is "incongruous with promoting the idea of a tough non-woke US military and thus war itself," Kubrick said on X.
But she said "Full Metal Jacket" is also about the "complicated paradoxes of human nature."
"So I'm going to stick with the idea that FMJ footage was used primarily because of its powerful, realistic portrayal of boot camp, juxtaposed with the entirely demoralizing and inappropriate injection of WOKE ideology into the USA military," she said.
TO THOSE WHO THINK MY FATHER WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED #TRUMP TO USE FMJ FOOTAGE
— Vivian Kubrick (@ViKu1111) October 13, 2024
Here are my thoughts: I agree in principle that an anti-war movie is incongruous with promoting the idea of a tough non-woke US military and thus war itself - however - these are very dangerous and… https://t.co/0bSXz8nL3V
Modine didn't see it the same way, comparing Trump to Hitler.
"In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda films 'Triumph of the Will' and 'Olympia,'" the actor told Entertainment Weekly.
"These two films are considered among the most effective propaganda ever made. Riefenstahl denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, repeatedly invoking the 'how could we have known?' defense," he said.
Modine emphasized that "ironically, Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick's powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda."
