The Turner Frontier in Full Metal Jacket”

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In Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”, Turner’s Frontier is presented within the confines of Vietnam and shows the frontier in all of its brutality. Unlike other western style movies, which romanticise the frontier, Kubrick openly attacks the Turner Frontier myths, stating that rather than stripping the frontiersmen down and reforming them as the ideal example of American society, the Turner mindset, of completely stripping away one’s culture, actually transforms the frontiersmen into childlike figures, who are unable to think for themselves. In addition Kubrick states, when the frontier becomes an institutionalized idea, that the process of the frontier can backfire and end up creating a frontiersman with severe mental issues, which could lead to the death of many people if the frontiersman is pushed to the brink of self-destruction.
The film opens with potential American Marine recruits going through the process of basic training, in preparation for being sent to the war in Vietnam. They are subjected to the stripping down and rebuilding process overseen by Drill Sergeant Hartman. While most of the recruits take, and accept, Hartmann’s abuse, Private Leonard Lawrence does not fare so well. Hartmann gives Lawrence the nickname of “Gomer Pyle”, due to Lawrence’s constant failures to adopt the basic-training style mentality, which leads to Hartman punishing the others for Lawrence’s failures. This is the first frontier which, in Turner’s words: “[The frontier] strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin.” (Turner. 2.) As such, the other Marine recruits have already been stripped of their civilized outside world, and have adopted a primitive communal lifestyle in order to survive...

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...rontiersman himself.

Works Cited

Anderson, Mark Cronlund. Cowboy Imperialism and Hollywood Film. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Limited, 2007.
Ebert, Roger. (1987). “Full Metal Jacket,” [Online]. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/full-metal-jacket-1987. [2013 November].
Gruben, Patricia. “Practical Joker: The Invention of a Protagonist in ‘Full Metal Jacket,’” Literature/ Film Quarterly, Vol. XXXIII, No. 4 (2005): 270-279 [Online]. http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.uregina.ca:2048/docview/2036716/141FBFAE82564C172D3/1?accountid=13413 [2013, November]
Kubrick, Stanley (1987). “Full Metal Jacket,” [Online]. http://viooz.co/movies/4862-full-metal-jacket-1987.html. [2013 November].
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance Of The Frontier In American History.” In The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Holt and Company Incorporated, 1948: 1-18.

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