Netflix’s Stranger Things star Matthew Modine compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler in response to the former president using footage from the actor’s famous movie Full Metal Jacket in a political ad about weeding out wokeness in the U.S. military.
“We will not have a woke military!” Trump said in the caption on X while sharing clips from the film juxtaposing R. Lee Ermey’s drill sergeant insulting fresh recruits with TikTok videos of military transgenders.
“In the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda films ‘Triumph of the Will’ and ‘Olympia,’” Modine told Entertainment Weekly in a statement. “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.”
“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 continued. “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.”
Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Full Metal Jacket director Stanley Kubrick, said in a recent statement that her father would have approved of Trump using the clips if he were still alive.
“I’m sure the irony of using FMJ footage is not lost on Trump or his team – Trump is always seeking to end wars and use peaceful methods,” she wrote. “However, that’s primarily what FMJ is about, the shocking and complicated paradoxes of human nature. And thus, on this tooth and claw planet, you need a very strong military[.]”
“[S]o I’m going to stick with the idea that FMJ footage was used primarily [by Trump], because of its powerful, realistic portrayal of boot camp, juxtaposed with the entirely demoralizing and inappropriate injection of WOKE ideology into the USA military,” she added.
Vivian Kubrick also said her father supported the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
