FULL METAL JACKET
and the universal art of brainwashing
by Rob Ager
This article is a transcript of my video of the same title. The video
can be downloaded for free on the film analysis page of my site www.collativelearning.com
Let’s take a look at brainwashing as presented in the classic war movie Full Metal Jacket. Before we get into details I first need to frame the context. This article isn’t going to be a generalized attack on military institutions. We need military institutions because if we didn’t have them then other regimes that do have a military could take over the world, just like if we didn’t have police then organized criminals would take over. And part of having a military is that we need to have soldiers who are trained in the art of violence against violence. So what I’ve referred to in the title of the article as brainwashing can be more politely referred to as conditioning or simply training. Some forms of conditioning and training are extremely useful, such as learning to read and write. And military training can also bring out great qualities in men. At the same time soldiers can be brutalized by their training, which can be made worse in turn by their war time experience. They can end up committing horrendous war crimes or can become crazy spree killers, as is alluded to in Full Metal Jacket’s Private Leonard Lawrence (Private Pyle) looking ominous as his drill instructor talks about Spree killer Charles Whitman. Soldiers, like politicians and academics, can also be so brainwashed that they end up being useful idiots for warmongering regimes. Every war has its complexities and so it’s not always easy to tell which side, if any, has the least brainwashed army. So for any military personnel watching this video, rest assured I’m not denouncing all military training or denying that it has positive functions.
Ok, on with the film review. Until recently I’d always considered the first half of Full Metal Jacket to be a basic statement against the brainwashing aspects of military training. It’s hardly even subtle in this respect. Private Leonard Lawrence is relentlessly targeted and bullied by Sgt Hartman, who also manipulates the rest of the platoon into torturing Leonard. He is emotionally broken by the experience and kills Hartman then himself. That’s the basic surface narrative, and the sheer horror of what’s done to Leonard is initially masked by Hartman’s hilarious insulting of the recruits. Hartman tells Leonard, “Wipe that disgusting grin off your face … or I will gauge out your eyeballs and skull fuck you”. Note the SKULL fucking implication regarding the MIND fuck that the recruits will be subjected to during their relentless training.
Incidentally, for those of you who’ve heard the commonly repeated rumour that most of the dialogue in the first half of Full Metal Jacket was adlibbed, it wasn’t. I read an early version of the script from 1985 and a lot of the dialogue was already there. What does appear to have happened, from the set reports I’ve come across, is that Lee Ermey, the actor who played Hartman, was doing a lot of rehearsals and at that stage there was some adlibbing, from which Kubrick selected out parts that he liked and incorporated them into the script. By the time of the actual shoot nearly all the dialogue was on paper, but a bit of adlibbing still occurred with Kubrick selecting and deleting as he saw fit. So no, the idea that most of this dialogue was just made up during actual shooting takes is misinformation to my knowledge.
So anyway, I recently I went back to Full Metal Jacket with a view to updating my original study, which I’d written way back in 2008 when I’d not long started out in film analysis, and something dawned on me that I’d not considered before. The military training context of Full Metal Jacket’s brainwashing scenes might not be the main point. Kubrick may have also been making a larger statement about how brainwashing occurs generally in multiple social contexts. A quick glance over Kubrick’s filmography supports this. …
In Paths of Glory, Kubrick gave us a story of French soldiers being coerced into battle under the threat of execution if they refused to fight. That story was a military context of course, but like with Full Metal Jacket its lessons about military coercion are more likely statements about military coercion of violence across the globe and across history, rather than only relating to a single historical war that is long gone and is now unchangeable. Kubrick also directed Spartacus, but it wasn’t his script and he had very limited control of production, but still the movie involved men being brainwashed or trained for violence and then coerced into fighting each other in gladiatorial contexts. Thematically this fits in his larger filmography. Dr Strangelove had scenes in which branches of the US military fight each other based upon paranoia and lies fed to them by their higher command – again, military context. But two films later Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange, in which non-military brainwashing is a central plot element. This time the surface story is of a convicted man whose criminal impulse is neutered by brainwashing and in turn his ability to defend himself in an already violent world is neutered. Kubrick’s next film was Barry Lyndon, in which a young man is forced into military service in multiple contexts. He is brutalized by the training and war experiences. But instead of being a fully brainwashed soldier dedicated to a national or ideological cause, he is turned into a social psychopath who manipulates his way through the ranks of wealth and power. Eyes Wide Shut’s orgy scenes present brainwashed secret society members who rigidly do as they’re told, like foot soldiers. And finally there’s A.I. Artificial intelligence, which has brainwashing elements weaved in beneath its story of robots programmed to serve their human masters. Spielberg directed the film, but Kubrick spent decades conceiving the basic story and supplied Spielberg with extensive visual storyboards which Spielberg adhered to. In other words Kubrick laid the directorial foundations. In the boardroom scenes of A.I. businessmen and scientists in their combat gear (also known as business suits) listen to delusional lectures about creating perfect human robot “companions”, in other words slaves, and his applauding audience of brainwashed academics are shown with inanimate robots placed among them, as if they ARE the brainwashed robots they seek to create. The reference to academia as a form of brainwashing, and hence to academics as pre-programmed or conditioned automatons, is made more overtly in scenes of the final act. Protagonist android David, meets a factory clone of himself in the office of his own creator. The clone tells David, “This is where they teach you read”. After smashing this robot, David walks into the boardroom where executives had previously discussed their plan to create robot children, but now the room is occupied by factory produced androids placed in the same positions – the executives and academics have been symbolically revealed to be artificial.
Kubrick was very conscious of the fact that there’s a thin line between training, conditioning and brainwashing. He even avoided academic training himself, preferring to self-educate through extensive reading and experimentation. And his films A Clockwork Orange and A.I. certainly present non-military brainwashing themes. And so, going back to Full Metal Jacket, I now view the training section of the movie as both a statement against how men are conditioned or brainwashed into war and as a statement about how people are brainwashed in the more general sense, be it through lunatic cults, academic ranks, secret societies, political parties or plain old news media brainwashing. But military training is a strong metaphoric context because the brainwashing methods are universally used in the militaries of many countries on account of their reliability. Those methods are also incredibly precise and purposeful in design, and military training is such an intense and exaggerated form of brainwashing that is has powerful dramatic impact on screen, whereas more underhanded and prolonged forms of brainwashing in other social contexts are harder to draw attention in the context of a two hour movie.
There are, of course, some key differences between military brainwashing and non-military brainwashing, especially contexts where the conditioning is unofficial. So for example, with both the military and academia, there is an openly stated intention to condition the subject within a specified timeframe. The military version is short and intense. The academic version takes years. And if we consider that the education of children in schools includes brainwashing elements, such as the regimentation of a five day working week into the subject’s psyche, that form of brainwashing spans a good ten years or more. However, unlike schools, universities and the military, some powerful forms of brainwashing are done without the subject being made aware that they are being enrolled in a training program, commercial advertising for example. We don’t usually sign up for these. We don’t ask to be manipulated into buying a product by associating false value with it. Instead advertisers try to get to us covertly through product placement and other methods.
So what I’m going to do for the rest of this article / video is highlight some of the key brainwashing elements in Full Metal Jacket’s training scenes. Some are universally present in many other contexts outside of the military. Others are military specific. As we go through have a think about which of these brainwashing methods do and don’t manifest in non-military contexts and how they manifest. If you occasionally feel like you may have been subjected to some of these methods yourself then that’s ok, you probably have. I know I certainly have.
Right, so let’s get into it. I’m going to use a bit of a scattershot approach to try and get as many points across as possible. There are lots of overlaps between these techniques as well, enough for you to further explore later.
ONE
LEGAL PRESSURE
By this I’m mainly referring to men being drafted into military service against their will (though apparently this is not the case in the Marines), but I’m also referring to the presence of military courts and prisons. Refuse to serve under a draft or go against the program too much during training and you can wind up in a prison cell for a year or two, which is effectively a form of mild, but prolonged torture. Stanley Kubrick was certainly aware of this form of coercion and brainwashing because he made a whole movie about it called Paths of Glory, a story of French soldiers tried in a rigged court and executed for not storming an enemy who they knew they couldn’t defeat. The trial and execution of course were done as a showcase, a warning to the rest of the military to follow orders without question.
Outside of military and criminal behaviour contexts the threat of imprisonment isn’t usually a means of brainwashing coercion, though it still sometimes exists in the form of what some governments call hate speech laws, which in some contexts might be more appropriately called anti-speech laws. But, for the most part, legal pressure in terms of monetary fines is more common outside of the military to my knowledge.
TWO
SEPARATING THE SUBJECT FROM FAMILIAR LIFE CONTEXT
Military training involves young men being taken out of their familiar environments – their home, neighbourhood, family, friends – and dropping them alone into a new environment that is radically different to what they’re used to. None only is the physical environment new, but they are effectively locked in among a large batch of unfamiliar faces. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to brainwash a large group of people who are already familiar with each other and have close bonds. Such a group would be a lot more resistant to the conditioning. They would stand up for each other, share opinions of disagreement with the program and so on. In fact I’ve seen that kind of resistance in work-based civilian training courses.
So the military tactic of separating recruits from familiar environments and familiar individuals is a massive psychological pattern break. It severs many of the thousands of intricate links between people and their historical context, making the brainwashing process easier from there on. In fact it’s a familiar tactic used in brainwashing cults, such as the one ran by Charles Manson. They typically find a remote location to house their members and cut off access to family and friends.
Full Metal Jacket makes a very strong point of this tactic in that hardly any of the recruits talk about their personal histories. Hartman asks them some initial questions about their backgrounds, but only so that he can insult their backgrounds, to try and make them feel ashamed of where they are from. The same disconnection from personal history even occurs between the two halves of the movie. Joker meets up with Cowboy, who he was in boot camp with, and there is only minimal dialogue about their shared boot camp experience. It’s almost like they can’t remember their personal histories or the way in which they were brainwashed.
THREE
FRAMING THE BRAINWASHING AS SELF-IMPROVEMENT
In military institutions there’s a very clever piece of verbal manipulation regarding the perception of training. Even though recruits are already technically adults they are told that military training will turn them into MEN. An implication, therein, is that the personal history of the recruits before the boot camp was just child’s play and is therefore something to be disregarded, but the implication is nonsense if you think about it. Boot camp training is an incredibly artificial setup. What the recruits have experienced beforehand in civilian life is more akin to reality. In fact it could be argued that military training causes some men to regress into boyish states of mind where bullying, peer pressure and fantasies of violence acted out through toys soldiers become dominant in the psyche once again.
In his very first speech Hartman slips in two pieces of clever manipulation. “I am hard but I am fair.”And “The more you hate me the more you will learn.” Well both of those claims are garbage. Hartman isn’t fair. He claims to be non-racist then gives a racial insult, “Well, there’s one thing you won’t like Pvt Brown, we don’t serve fried chicken and watermelon in my mess hall on a daily basis”. He brutally targets Leonard and drives him to suicide. And the idea that the more the recruits hate him the more they’ll learn … Well, if I hate Stalin or Hitler does that mean they stood for something good and worthwhile? No. An effective teacher is more likely to be respected than hated. If they’re hated by the majority of their trainees then they’re likely doing something wrong. But these twists of logic are thrown at the recruits so quickly they barely have a moment to question any of it.
When Hartman dishes out harsh and unnecessary punishment he typically frames it as if the recruit is inflicting punishment on themselves. “If there is one thing I hate it is an unlocked footlocker!” But actually the one thing he hates is the recruit he is talking to, Leonard Lawrence. Responding to Joker’s statement that he doesn’t believe in the Virgin Mary, “Why you little maggot, you make me want to vomit!”, followed by a backhand smack in the face.
Hartman’s attack on the personal background of the recruits is an attack on their identity, but it’s also a clever piece of reverse psychology. Indoctrination often involves the subject being told that their own personal history was a form of brainwashing and that the new leader is going to deprogram the subject, free them from their personal history and give them psychological freedom. Ironically, there’s often a string of truth to this, but the new leader takes the subject too far the other way, giving them some new strengths, freedoms and insights, but also brainwashing them in ways that defeat the point as far as the recruit is concerned.
The head shaving is also a bit of an insult because a lot of people have never been head shaved and it doesn’t suit them. Humiliation is an important factor in a lot of brainwashing and, oh boy, do we get an onslaught of this in Full Metal Jacket. Hartman’s constant insults to the recruits are so extreme they’re hilarious. There’s personal one to one humiliation and there’s the much more powerful public humiliation that Hartman specializes in. We could even think of military training as equivalent to an exorcism. The unique individual needs to be ridiculed, discredited, made to seem undesirable and purged through a repetitive succession of rituals.
This technique of framing the individual and their history as corrupt, delusional and unworthy is not only powerful, but in many brainwashing contexts it is essential. In many cults and membership organisations a view is aggressively promoted that everybody outside of the institution are the brainwashed ones, the blind ones, the indoctrinated ones, the weak ones and that only the brainwashing institution or cult leader can provide awakening, strength, truth and virtue.
Religious cults are a frequent context for this kind of only we can awaken you / only we can put you in touch with the truth tactic, often framed as being in touch with God … and Full Metal Jacket includes allusions to this such as the recruits singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, Hartman’s insistence that Joker should believe in the virgin Mary and his statements to the entire squad, “You will be a minister of death praying for war,” and “God has a hard one for Marines because we kill everything we see.” Later a helicopter gunner will be shown firing at and trying to kill everything he sees. It’s an interesting line actually. Does it mean the trained recruits see nothing?
As well as the claim that military training will turn the recruits into REAL MEN, Hartman hilariously makes suggestions that they have come to boot camp as gay men who need to be straightened out and insists that they give their rifle a girl’s name. And all along, successful military service is likened to losing one’s virginity. Joker knows about this and mocks it during an interview scene during his tour of duty, “I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.”
In my view REAL MEN and REAL WOMEN form their own personal opinions based on what they actually experience. They don’t wait for some group or institution to spoon feed them an oven-ready narrative, complete with dumb slogans and contradictory codes of conduct. Have a think about the membership groups you are involved in, especially the ones you cherish most, and whether you have been sold the BS line of thinking that non-members are blind fools or weaklings and that only the membership institution has access to the ultimate truth. If you swallowed that line and internalized it then you’re probably, to some extent, brainwashed.
Before we carry on with this study folks, there is one cult I do recommend you join and this is the cult of individual, self-determined, free thinkers. It’s a philosophy I weave into much of my work at www.collativelearning.com. You’re fine as you are of course, and I’m certainly not the only person supporting or promoting this free-thinking attitude. There’s probably others who are much better at it that I am, so if you find them then that’s great. Meanwhile, if you like this article and want to access a great deal more of my content then go ahead and join my cult. You’re not required to abandon your friends and family, I won’t tell you that I have all the answers, I’m not offering a single universal truth that will save you, I don’t even require you to wear a uniform, and you can leave anytime you like without being harassed. To join up you can either become a monthly supporter of my work on Patreon, which will give you access to many hours of additional content, or you can simply visit my website from time to time where you’ll find free in-depth articles on Kubrick films and other topics and you can order digital downloads from my library of offline videos and articles. Bookmark my site so you don’t forget about it and check in from time to time to see what’s on offer.
Ok, back to Full Metal Jacket …
FOUR
REPLACING INDIVIDUAL PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
WITH GROUP APPEARANCE
Next up, we have the technique of altering the physical image of the recruit. Hair colour, length and style tend to be unique to individuals so shaving this away is a direct attack on their identity. It’s also funny that shaving the head is something we do to people who are about to have brain surgery. And in some historical context, the shaving of heads is done as a public insult by lynch mobs.
The discarding and replacement of the recruits’ clothing and supplying them with identical bunks and other belongings serves the same effect. But it’s not just about discarding the existing personal-image based identity. You have to supply a replacement identity. And so the skinheads and identical uniforms are also about making the recruits look almost identical to each other. This is a way of forcing them to adopt a group identity and hence group behaviour instead of individualist behaviour.
This is common in life. School uniforms in some countries like here in the UK reduce personal identity at the visual level. We have police and firemen uniforms, business suits, tuxedo uniforms for specific occasions, religious uniforms, and even social trend uniforms whether it’s goth, punk, biker, hippy or rapper. In fact the word uniform (uni-form) is directly related to making people look identical, uni means singular. I’m not saying it’s always bad. I’m just saying it’s there and sometimes is part of a brainwashing alteration of personal identity. So while we can argue that police uniforms, for example, are important so that the public can distinguish who is and isn’t a trained and certified police officer, the restriction of individuality is also present in that we hardly ever see cops whose physical image includes personal expressions of individuality. Tattoos, wild hair styles, prominent facial piercings or expressive adornments attached to the uniform are also conspicuously missing. And this is the case with many forms of physical image conditioning. The absence of expressed individuality is key so that the cop is viewed publicly as only a cop and nothing more.
FIVE
MANUFACTURING CONSENSUS OF OPINION
Next up is the tactic of manipulating everyone into expressing predesigned uniform opinions. There’s a lot involved with this, but of course a fundamental element is the denial of individual free speech. Hartman, “You will speak only when spoken too.” In particular, recruits asking questions that challenge the opinions of the brainwashing institution has to be declared a no-go area. Any expression of disagreement or refusal to express conformed opinions is responded to with immediate, aggressive shouting down or even with violence.
Unique to Full Metal Jacket, in comparison to other military training movies, is that the recruits are very rarely shown engaging in personal chit-chat and so hardly any personal opinions among the recruits are shown. In a toilet mopping scene Joker engages in a private chat with Cowboy and he first looks around to see whether anyone else is listening before he dares speak.
Having the recruits collectively speak prewritten opinions in a single group unified voice is also a means of manufacturing consensus, the prayers and marching sons being perfect examples. But this is also present non-verbally in the form of group shared activities. Having everyone go through the same brainwashing routines not only reinforces their identification with the group instead of the self, but also it promotes the idea that the physical and emotional torture of the experience is socially acceptable. It’s amazing how much abuse people are willing to take if they see other people around them enduring the same. Subject an individual to such harsh treatment and they might well complain or refuse to do as they’re told, but in a group each recruit’s lack of willingness to speak out against the activity creates an illusionary consensus, the false notion that everybody accepts and agrees with the orders.
The result of all this is that the recruits don’t express any thoughts of their own, but also they don’t get to hear any opinions outside of those supplied by the institution. This is immensely powerful because most people lack confidence in their own thoughts to the point that they need to hear similar opinions expressed from others in order to maintain their belief in it themselves.
Going beyond boot camp forced consensus, some governments even have laws prohibiting soldiers from talking publicly about what they’ve experienced in the military. This can be argued as a measure for protecting sensitive operational information from making its way into the hands of the enemy, but it also serves a function of preventing war atrocities and waste from being reported to the general public. And it prevents a lot of soldiers who have become disillusioned with their military service from communicating their ideas to the wider public. How often do we hear former soldiers publicly advising people not to join the military or advising them how to resist the brainwashing techniques of boot camp?
Suppression of personal and alternate opinions and repeating of predetermined slogans for creating false consensus is incredibly common. Many non-military institutions have strict rules on what their members can say publicly, with punishments at the ready if they do speak out of line. Public firings as a warning to other members, withdrawal of funds and general character assassination at dissenting voices …. These techniques are prominent in academia (even in the basic physical sciences), they’re also common in journalism, politics and many other contexts. It also occurs in terms of news media coverage of specific issues. The public are often denied access to dissenting opinions in terms of news coverage, pollsters often misreport public opinion giving the impression of consensus that doesn’t exist. And a lot of people hold a view that if something isn’t being reported in the news then it’s either not true or not important.
But of course the ultimate aim of manufactured consensus opinion is to persuade enough people to repeat the opinions of the brainwashing institution so that the institution itself no longer needs to speak those opinions. It can rely on those it has already brainwashed to do the speaking and thus keep up the false consensus illusion. And that brings up the next brainwashing tactic.
SIX
INCITING PEER PRESSURE AGAINST RESISTORS
Possibly the most insidious form of brainwashing is the covert encouragement of violence against a resistant subject by third parties. Hartman knows that by punishing the rest of the recruits for supposed mistakes by Leonard he is calling upon the group to violently gang up on Leonard. Note that when Leonard is howling in pain after the soap beating, which is known as a blanket party and apparently really happens in marine training, Hartman doesn’t come out of his quarters to find out what the noise is. But he knows and he wanted this to happen. If it had been reported by Leonard he would have done nothing about what is essentially torture.
However there doesn’t have to be actual violence for the peer pressure to work. The threat of violence from the peer group is often enough. By engaging in this blanket party beating of Leonard the group are reinforcing the brainwashing message among each other that Hartman’s orders must be followed without fail. They are effectively contributing to their own brainwashing.
Beyond violence, simple peer rejection for not conforming to the brainwashing program is often enough. It amazes me how few people in society are willing to stand their ground for something they believe in when they feel that group opinion is against them. But often it’s not really the case that everyone else disagrees. Sometimes it’s just that others are afraid to express agreement for fear of being targeted. Social media is a funny context for this. I find that what people will say in person about what they believe is often very different to what they will admit on social media. It only takes a few hard core brainwashed idiots to attack someone who expresses an opinion they don’t want others to hear, and in turn a lot of people avoid expressing that same opinion lest they be attacked. In some ways it’s mass cowardice because the ramblings of the brainwashed attackers are usually easy to defeat.
SEVEN
REPETITION OF FALSE MESSAGES
In itself repetition isn’t very powerful. You can tell someone something they don’t believe over and over and end up being ignored, but repetition is powerful when combined with other methods.
A key example is from boot camp is to physically and mentally exhaust the recruits, which distracts them consciously but also breaks down their cognitive ability to resist verbal input. They lack the energy to put up a mental fight so you can hit them hard with repetitious verbal messaging with a better chance that it will sink in and become subconsciously embedded. A variation on this, apparently used by Charles Manson, was to drug his followers and then verbally program their beliefs while they were spaced out and unable to resist. Whether it’s exhaustion or drugs the result is similar to hypnosis. Get someone into a trance and a lot of their usual conscious defences are lowered.
Another aspect used by Hartman is that if a recruit is bombarded very rapidly and constantly with lies then they don’t have time to mentally process what they’re being told and so the messages sink in. Hartman is constantly screaming orders and indoctrinating statements to his men to the point they probably hear his voice and slogans echoing in their sleep. For example, in a slow motion shot of the recruits running through muddy water, Hartman’s non-stop shouting of orders ought to be slowed down and distorted, but is heard at normal speed.
I’ve heard this overload and repetition approach used a lot in ideological indoctrination. Like Hartman, ideologists usually have memorized an extensive internal library of verbal arguments with which to influence others. When each of those arguments are heard in isolation and you have time to formulate questions and notice contradictions those individual arguments fall apart. But the ideologist gets around this by spewing out a non-stop bombardment of internally prewritten dialogue and they deliberately keep changing topic s before any of their statements can be challenged. If you pin them down on specific badly thought out statements and demand discussion of its merits they start to squirm and get angry because they don’t want their belief system to be successfully challenged. So if you’re under a bombardment of such rhetoric, you can break the pattern by forcing the speaker to slow down and debate the merit of each isolated statement. It really trips them up.
Before we move on, one more variation on the use of repetition, and this is a powerful one, is Hartman’s requirement that the recruits memorize military slogans, lyrics and bureaucratic orders. If they don’t memorize them he punishes them. Part of the reason this is effective is because the memorizing process requires that the recruits internally repeat the messages to themselves over and over again, thus programming themselves.
EIGHT
DEMONIZING THE ENEMY
This one is extremely common in brainwashing and arguably a requirement. The brainwashing leader or institutions has to persuade the recruit that there is a terrifying enemy threatening them, their loved ones and their future. With Hartman the enemy predictably is Communism. It’s funny that he talks about the “free world” to the recruits, who are virtually prison inmates, many of whom will have been drafted against their will.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of Communism, but the throwing about of over-simplistic ideological labels is standard in political indoctrination. Left wing, right wing, liberal, conservative, capitalist, communist, libertarian, socialist – these labels create division and justify us vs them politics and the brainwashing that goes with the resulting conflict. There’s no such thing as a completely socialist or capitalist country, you need elements of both and if there is a devil at work it can be found in the details unique to the country in question. Vietnam specifically had a long and complex history that led to “communism” taking root. I seriously doubt that most marines were taught that history.
I won’t dwell on this aspect of brainwashing though being that Hartman only makes minimal use of it. I expect though that in real life military training demonizing enemies with the use of over-simplistic ideological labels is probably more central to the brainwashing process.
NINE
BRIBING THE RESISTORS
Hartman initially makes Private Brown squad leader, possibly because on the first day of training brown shouts his answers the loudest and so he seems to be the most committed to doing as he’s told. But when Hartman discovers that Joker is the most intellectually resistant to his brainwashing he fires Brown and makes Joker squad leader. He even compliments Joker, “Private Joker is silly and he’s ignorant, but he’s got guts and guts is enough.”
An element of Hartman’s decision could be that it’s a form or bribery. It appeals to Joker’s pride, but also Joker is excused from some of the training routines on account of him taking time out to train Leonard. At the same time, tasking him with training Leonard cleverly reframes Joker’s situation. Joker is encouraged to help brainwash another recruit. He may do it more calmly and effectively, but he’s still helping to mould Leonard and it gives Joker an opportunity to be proud of stepping into Hartman’s shoes. This is an interesting dynamic because, those of us who have a tendency to defy authority often find that being made to be an authority figure is an eye opener. It makes us realize that sometimes authority figures have good reason to act the way they do.
In general life this method of bribing the resistant is quite common. Higher wages, greater perceived social status – these gimmes are used across the board to get intelligent, capable people to assist in the brainwashing and control of others. It certainly works, though I’ll add that the extremely resistant aren’t usually bribed like this because they’re too good at rocking the boat if they’re promoted. In most of the organisations I’ve worked for before becoming self-employed, I noticed that the willingness to “tow the line” and not “rock the boat” was the key trait upper management were looking for when filling mid-management positions. The secondary trait was management capability. And so I met many mid-level managers who were inefficient, but approved of by high management. Brainwashing institutions have to operate in this way. Otherwise, strong-minded individuals will climb the ranks and restructure the institution into something else.
TEN
THE BRAINWASHER MUST EXPRESS CONVICTION
Onto my final point. Given that the logical, rational and moral arguments used to brainwash people tend to easily fall apart under calm scrutiny, brainwashing leaders and institutions tend to compensate with over-emphasis on emotional conviction. Hartman absolutely relies on this, screaming his slogans right in the faces of recruits and using violence when they resist his claims. And of course that’s what the close up shouting is all about – it’s a constant reminder … accept and agree with my statements, no matter how ridiculous, or I will physically hurt you.
However, it’s not always all out shouting and screaming that communicates emotional conviction. In general life Hartman’s behaviour would be rejected by most people, unless they had already been brainwashed into his belief system. So in general life, strong emotional conviction in the form of underhanded threats is a lot more subtle – prolonged uncomfortable eye contact combined with a slight frown and jaw tension, a voice that is slightly raised in volume but deep in tone, rigid stone-cold non-reactive posture can be very intimidating to people. And these things can be done consciously or unconsciously by the brainwashing party. Then there’s more positive forms of conviction that don’t convey overt hostility, but give the impression of firm belief in what is being spoken … over enthusiastic delivery in the forms of exaggerated facial expressions, hand movements and vocal emphasis of key words and phrases. These things in themselves don’t make the rational arguments stronger at all, but they give the impression that the speaker thoroughly believes what they are saying and that they don’t feel emotionally or intellectually conflicted. A lot of people get fooled by this, but if you go listen to delusional schizophrenics who strongly believe the things they say, they also can come across as having total conviction. So it’s important to remember that, while conviction can be an indicator that the speaker does not feel emotionally conflicted, it does not mean that what they believe is actually true. They might be flat out wrong and blind to that fact.
It is possible for people to convey strong conviction even when they know they’re lying, but from what I’ve seen that appearance is superficial. It falls apart under close scrutiny and especially under cross-examination. And so, as with many cult leaders and ideologically driven tyrants, if the brainwasher personally strongly believes in their own lies then they are more likely to convey persuasive conviction. Hitler’s famous speeches are an example – he conveys total belief and, actually, his screaming and shouting are similar to that of a drill sergeant. Of course I’m not saying that drill sergeants are mini-Hitlers. There were drill sergeants who trained people to fight the Nazis. I’m talking about the generalized patterns of persuasive conviction that are familiar to many contexts
To this effect, the leaders and high level members of brainwashing institutions are usually brainwashed themselves. They believe their own garbage. And so, in the boot camp scenario of Full Metal Jacket the most brainwashed character is Sgt Hartman himself. He’s like a robot. He lives and breathes the lies that he speaks. If we could hear his internal dialogue, the things he says to himself, would we find his internal voice to be calm and rational or would we find that he constantly shouts at himself too? I think it would be the latter. At least the recruits have an end date for their training and, if they make it, an end to their tour of duty, but Hartman seems to be brainwashed for life. Don’t forget that there was once a time when he too was a maggot recruit being screamed at by another drill sergeant who he may have consciously forgotten for the most part. Drill sergeants get trained too. They don’t make all this stuff. They get conditioned and they end up shouting endless slogans to others that they mostly didn’t even think up themselves.
Ok, that’s a wrap. I’ve no doubt that some of these points you already knew, but I hope you picked up some extra insights here or at least some considerations that you can go away and think about in terms of what kinds of brainwashing you’ve experienced, witnessed or even subjected others too.
Make sure to check out my other articles and videos on psychology and film analysis at www.collativelearning.com
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