"Kill for Peace"...a phrase Kubrick himself could have coined. I think The Fugs and Stanley Kubrick were pretty much on the same page concerning the Vietnam War. The dark irony and sarcasm of their song "Kill for Peace" is perfect for Kubrick's equally dark and ironic film. The first section of the video (with music by The Fugs) deals with group indoctrination, the forging of a collective identity, and the drilling into the recruits the military mantra of "Kill, Kill, Kill". Need I add that neither my video nor the film it was inspired by are suggesting you should "Kill for Peace"? They're actually saying the opposite (i.e. being ironic). No one single soldier is the focus of this part of the video. In the second half of the video (The Green Manalishi), I focused on the perspective one individual soldier, Private Joker. The entire video is from his perspective. Along with Private Joker, we "see things we don't want to see, and do things we don't want to do..." to paraphrase the lyrics of the song. We chart his progress from an willfully independent and skeptical young man at the beginning of the film, to his final initiation into the philosophy of "kill, kill, kill", the gaining of the "thousand yard stare", and finally, being granted the dubious status of "hardcore" by the brotherhood of Marines. ------------------------------- So, why did I use "The Green Manalisihi" in Part II of the vidoeo, and just what is a Manalishi, anyway? I'll let Wikipedia explain: "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" is a song written by Peter Green and recorded by Fleetwood Mac. It was released as a single in the UK in May 1970 and reached #10 on the British charts. The song was written during Green's final months with the band, at a time when he was struggling with LSD and had withdrawn from other members of the band. "Faced with the band's refusal to give away all monetary gains, Peter Green decided to leave Fleetwood Mac, but not before writing the haunting 'Green Manalishi,' which seems to document his struggle to stop his descent into madness." While there are several rumours about the meaning of the title "Green Manalishi", one referencing a mysterious LSD drug called "Green Manalishi" associated with the drug scene of the 1960s and 1970s,[citation needed] Green has always maintained that the song is about money, as represented by the devil. Green has explained that he wrote the song after experiencing a drug-induced dream, in which he was visited by a green dog which barked at him. He understood that the dog represented money. "It scared me because I knew the dog had been dead a long time. It was a stray and I was looking after it. But I was dead and had to fight to get back into my body, which I eventually did. When I woke up, the room was really black and I found myself writing the song." He also said that he wrote the lyrics the following day, in Richmond Park. Supposedly, he was unable to record Robert Johnson's 'Hellhound On My Trail' following the incident; having conflated Johnson's hellhound with the green dog-demon of his dream. This is supported by his discography, in which Green's sole post-Manalishi cover of 'Hellhound' was sung by band mate Nigel Watson. ------------------------------- To me this song represented reflected the Jungian theme of duality mentioned by Private Joker in the film. The composer of the song is named Peter Green. To me, the "Green (same as the composer's last name?) Manalishi" was the dark side of Peter that came out subconsciously in his dream. Second, the song reflected had the nihilistic and nearly Occult tone of the end of Full Metal Jacket. Yes, those were Nazi swastikas and a pentagram in the sniper's nest, after being cleverly horizontall and verticlaly inverted by Kubrick. Is this perhaps a sort of hell Private Joker has ascended into, and are those flames perhaps metaphorically the flames of Hell at the end of the film? Certainly, Peter Green's hellish wailing at the end of the song seems to echo that aspect of Kubrick's film. ********************************************** My Kubrick Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkha80VyCsI&list;=PL782F7C9A15F73DB4&feature;=plcp or my Rock & Roll Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSP55IskL40&list;=PLC8E0E8D827C43D09&feature;=plcp ********************************************** *Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

• published: 21 Jan 2012
• views: 1325