I understand and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie except for the door gunner scene which I found jarring, horrific and unrealistic. Even the stereotypes were ok and fun. I just think that part was over the top and should be noted as a part of Hollywood anti-veteran propaganda.
“...jarring, horrific...”
I think that that is exactly the emotion Kubrick was trying to invoke.
But there has been savagery in every war, in all times, not just Vietnam, by ALL peoples.
There’s a famous WWII picture, published in LIFE magazine; it’s a decapitated Japanese soldier’s head, staked onto the front of a disabled Jap light tank, on Guadalcanal.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/be/1c/16/be1c16223db1b30be7226f53de5d2217.jpg
Dont look if you are easily disturbed. I never forgot that photo after the first time I’d seen it.
Some 19 year old American kid, who’d just seen his people - his buddies - killed, spiked that head there.
But that’s war. It’s horrible, and passions/emotions override a lifetime of conscience sometimes. You watch your friends get killed, and you want revenge, so things happen.
One of my uncles was almost killed in the Pacific. He made it through 7 amphibious landings before getting badly wounded on Okinawa, midway through that months-long slugfest. He HATED the Japanese until the day he died. He was pinned under an overturned jeep, and a Japanese patrol bayonetted him, laughing about it. He lived, but barely so.
It is what is, and those of us not there, not living moment to moment in a vicious, horrifying environment, can’t judge what those who ARE or have been there do/did.
There is a difference between wanton barbarity - such as what the Japanese did to our men on the Bataan Death March, or in Nanking with the Beheading Contests, or the SS bastards mowing down our Prisoners at Malmedy - and what is done in the name of survival.
So your point about mowing down innocent people is understood; my only contention is that anyone, anywhere, can be barbaric, and when societal and moral constraints are removed - or perceived to be removed - it shouldn’t be surprising.
