‘Full Metal Jacket’ Star Matthew Modine Compares Trump to Hitler After He Used Kubrick’s Film in Military Ad: It’s ‘Perverse, Homophobic Propaganda’
Matthew Modine is comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler after Trump used footage from the actor’s iconic movie “Full Metal Jacket” in a recent campaign ad touting the U.S. military. Modine starred as the wisecracking marine J. T. “Joker” Davis in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 anti-war movie. Trump used clips from the film in an ad that he shared on social media with the following caption: “We will not have a woke military!”
“In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda films ‘Triumph of the Will’ and ‘Olympia,'” Modine told Entertainment Weekly in an emailed statement about Trump’s ad. “These two films are considered among the most effective propaganda ever made. Riefenstahl denied any knowledge of the Holocaust, repeatedly invoking the ‘how could we have known?’ defense. Ironically, Trump has twisted and profoundly distorted Kubrick’s powerful anti-war film into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.”
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“Shortly before Riefenstahl died, she acknowledged her connection to Adolf Hitler in a BBC interview. ‘I was one of millions who thought Hitler had all the answers. We saw only the good things; we didn’t know bad things were to come,'” Modine added to EW. “It is no exaggeration to see Trump’s reflection in the terrible figure Hitler was. Please listen to Riefenstahl’s final warning: ‘…we didn’t know how bad things were to become.’ Trump has shown us who he is and made no secret of what he intends to do.”
Trump’s ad features clips from one of the most iconic scenes in “Full Metal Jacket” where drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) verbally bullies Modine’s character and other new military recruits into obedience. Vincent D’Onofrio played Pvt. Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence in the movie and also appears in the scene Trump used.
A rep for D’Onofrio told Entertainment Weekly that “he did not provide any consent for this usage by the Trump Campaign.”
The campaign ad contrasts the sadistic Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, who Trump compares to himself, with modern military-service members dancing in drag.
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