I always assumed this was the case, no?
Joker intentionally disregards authority to be funny. Gomer Pyle disregards authority because of who he is. By happenstance, the only one who is caught is Gomer Pyle, and he gets punished. Joker gets away with it and ends up getting rewarded later on too.
Gomer Pyle is the hero who resists authority and ends up dying for it. He is portrayed the way he is, so the audience disregards him, which is what the public often does with actual symbols of resistance.
Joker thinks he resists authority from within, but really, he is just getting assimilated and by the end of the movie, becomes just another soldier of the empire, perfectly willing to kill Charlie. He becomes just like the rest (or everyone deteriorates into a killer together, which is why they all sing at the end, while marching through fields on fire).
I don’t think Gomer was resisting anything. He truly seems like he’s simply less intelligent then the others in his platoon, or maybe even nuerodivergent, and he is bullied past the breaking point to which he suffers a classic psychotic break before committing a murder-suicide.
Any act of resistance was by complete accident. He was just pushed over the edge.
Any act of resistance was by complete accident. He was just pushed over the edge.
Are those two things any different, really? Some people, maybe most people, respond to unrelenting pressure by giving in. Hell maybe Pyle was mostly like this for the most part. Maybe most of us also have one thing we can't abide, one thing where we'd break before we aquiesced. Isn't that what resistance is?
It wasn’t really a situation of giving in or fighting back. He was deeply unwell and very obviously autistic, and the unrelenting pressure and stress caused a psychotic break and a spiral into a deep depression.
He wasn’t really aware of any “resistance”, as he was out of his mind and reverted to an almost animalistic version of himself which lost all ability to reason and stay in touch with reality.
He’s not Pyle anymore in the end scene, he’s gone. No well or sane person kills someone and then kills themselves.
He wasn’t always like that, anyone can trigger psychosis, and it turns even the sweetest most loving people into terrifying monsters as they lose control of their minds. That’s why he’s demonically smiling and laughing to himself while doing drill commands in his underwear at 2 in the morning. Before killing someone and then himself. Despite showing absolutely no desire to kill or hurt anyone for the entire training scene.
Yeah, that's my point. Gomer Pyle doesn't resist for shits and giggles. He has no choice but to resist. And they portray his character the way they do so you'll disregard him.
How do they make you disregard him?
That is a very logical response to the situation, but he is deeply mentally ill and psychotic by the end scene due to the extreme stress, despite not starting that way.
No sane or well person shoots someone and then kills themselves while doing drill commands in a bathroom in the dark with a rifle and trying to lure someone in to kill them.
He doesn’t die for his defiance. He kills himself in a psychotic break.
The very way you just described is how they make you ignore his resistance.
I'm not saying it's some sort of Marxist masterpiece by the way. I just think it was the intention.
The way I described it is simply what happens in the movie. He had no resistance, he had no plan, he had no ideology, or grand vision. He has a psychotic break. The military is hell.
You’re creating a story about a character that was never told. They don’t need you to ignore him, because they don’t paint him as a Marxist, or a someone who’s a stalwart resistor.
He had no resistance, he had no plan, he had no ideology, or grand vision.
I think the small difference in our opinions is perhaps our different meanings ascribed to the word "resistance", which does not (in my mind) have anything to do with a vision or an ideology. It can of course but a simpler, baser resistance is what he did, and what i mean.
Why couldn't Lawrence just become the killer the US military wanted him to be? Perhaps he himself didn't know, but in the end instead of moved by the inexorable power to change in to something he was not, he resisted this change. He could not be moved, could not be moulded into what they wanted him to be, "went crazy".
It wasn't a choice, youre right. He couldn't become it. And unfortunately (j/k fortunately. a speech would be dumb) he didn't have the screen time to write a speech on why he did what he did. We're left to guess why he made this decision. Now if we all had an assignment to write a paper on leonard's motivations but weren't allowed to use the word "crazy" or anything about his intelligence, what would one say was going through his mind?
Great movies that don't tell the audience everything also invite the audience to make these connections themselves. There's no right answer either of us will walk away with here but it's a fun exercise and a good one; one shouldn't just dismiss these ideas because they are not spelled out explicitly
Gomer was a victim of the intense mind crushing subjugation that the drill sergeant enforced. Wreaking his self esteem, crushing him with guilt and getting him hated and hostilized his fellow recruits. He just snapped, he didn't show any sign of resisting or trying to resist. Just a difficulty of performing his duties. Whether he would like to or not is uncertain, but he didn't show that he wanted to change anything, my reading is that he jsut wanted to get by, and he did not got his wish. He got broken and snapped, and it is not clear his intention while on the bathroom, he might have opened fire into his fellow recruits, or anything else, he loaded a whole lot of bullets. He just snapped, so I don't think it was meant as a heroic act, for as heroic it might seem as consequence to the drill sergeant's action, he was someone driven beyond his limit, in a desperate action.
It's worth noting that the book Joker grows out of his obedience to the empire and gets to know and relate to the people he has come to Vietnam to kill. The movie doesn't explore the second book of the duology (despite borrowing some imagery from it), where the consequences of serving the empire come back to bite Joker in the ass and, ostensibly, make him a better person.
All in all, I like the books a whole lot better.
Uh… I guess this a different Gomer Pyle from the one I know?
ETA: Also a different Joker; I see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Metal_Jacket
I think the Joker is an imaginary scapegoat. He is an attempt by the liberal entertainment at explaining away the evils of capitalism, by putting the blame at unrealistic "individuals with irrational minds" rather than realistic people in realistic circumstances.
He is also a symbol of violent anarchism, through which the media obscure the true solution that is revolution and abolishment of capitalist institutions.
Id consider that Gomer is meant to be a stand in for the 'special division' of draftees; they would literally pool togther the lowest IQ people they could find and put them into units togther.
http://medicinthegreentime.com/mcnamaras-folly-project-100000/
I think its a clear reference to this, Kubrick was making.
Given that its a reference to a mentally disabled man being tortured and forced to kill against his will, him killing his commanding officer is completely justified.