Full Metal Jacket, a film about Marine boot camp, is the best film about football hazing. Does that make left tackle Jonathan Martin the Marine Private Pyle? In a film about the building of Marines in boot camp, we can see why hazing can work to make the few and the proud, but also why hazing can literally backfire. As someone who has been hazed himself, I certainly have empathy for Martin, but not in the reasons you might think.
In Full Metal Jacket, a misfit in the Marine corps barracks nicknamed Private Pyle just can't keep up with the other recruits--he's fat, he's weak and he's stupid. He is holding them back.It's not just his drill instructor who torment him, the other marine recruits beat him mercilessly. It works. In the next montage, the recruits become better and better Marines. Pyle does so along with them, or at least it appears so. Unfortunately in the end of camp, he takes the gun and shoots his drill instructor and then shoots himself. The full metal jacket is emptied.
Hazing worked at first, it did bring the recruits together. They did become Marines willing to die for each other. However ultimately hazing led to, not one but two deaths.
Hazing sunk the Dolphins. I can see why hazing was done in rookie camp and perhaps into the first season. Unfortunately, Martin was hazed well into the second season. That wasn't team building, that was torment.
Whatever Incognito was doing to Martin, it wasn't making him a better player or the Dolphins into a better team. The Dolphins are mediocre at best, and because of the scandal they've lost two good players. Hazing Martin during rookie camp and calling him the Big Weirdo, might have created team spirit. Hazing him for a second year was detrimental to the team and possibly a felony.
Like Pyle, Martin was wearing a Full Metal Jersey. Thankfully, Jonathan Martin left the team and checked into treatment before hurting himself or others. I doubt that Martin will play again, but I do see him being able to lecture coaches and players.
As for my own experiences. I was hazed at the first college I attended. I ended up wrestling a lot of wrestlers and somehow ended up getting thrown into the fountain on campus. At 150 pounds I was half the size of the Big Wierdo. This continued well into my second year. At first, I thought it was a rite of passage, but those rites kept coming every semester, so it was time to find a new passage. I transferred schools, and made Dean's List at the new place.
What eventually toughened me up? I found that when I wasn't worried about hazing I could concentrate on life. I didn't put myself in bad situations.
Ultimately, I put myself back into the ultimate rowdy locker room. Jail. As a criminal defense attorney, I visit jail several times a month. I am in a "pod" with sixty or so defendants and they do not want to see Attorney Pyle. I would be like Matthew Modine's Private Joker, except that I am all business.
Ironically, going to jail was a voluntary decision. Perhaps the hazing sophomore year toughened me up, but eventually I realized that the people around me wouldn't change, but I could change
Martin knew what he was getting into his rookie year, but when it continued, I think he made the right decision to leave. It would not have gotten better. Perhaps he could have become Jonathan Martin, Superstar had he asked for a trade and played for a more laid back team. Now, we will never know. We do know that the Dolphins won't be in the Superbowl this year.
In the film, I always wonder if Pyle had transferred to another unit, or perhaps to another branch of the military with less demanding standards would he have survived? I'd like to think he would have. He did show some signs of progress at first.
Still, no one wants to see a film called Half Metal Jacket, even though it might have had a happier ending for the drill instructor and Private Pyle....
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