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?
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
Now that's just needlessly confusing.
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.
Wrong Joker.
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.
