"Ain't War Hell?": Stanley Kubrick's War Films

This thesis traces Kubrick’s movement from conventional genre storytelling to subversion within the war film genre. While Paths of Glory relies heavily on the traditional structure and archetypes of the WWII combat film—despite being set during WWI—Full Metal Jacket deconstructs those very conventions, resulting in a colder, more fragmented representation of war. The study further explores how each film engages with questions of realism, propaganda, and the romanticization of war, revealing Kubrick's increasing skepticism of the war film's capacity to represent truth. Central to both films is the portrayal of soldierhood, which shifts from humanized victim to dehumanized participant. In foregrounding genre, this thesis situates Kubrick not just as an auteur, but a filmmaker in dialogue with—and ultimately in defiance of—the genre traditions that shaped American cinema.<p></p>