[Commlist] Call For Papers (Edited Collection): Rebuilding Saigon - 40 Years of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (working title)

2027 marks 40 years since the release of Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate 
film, Full Metal Jacket. Long regarded as one of the lesser entries in 
Kubrick’s filmography—especially when compared to his critically 
re-evaluated final work Eyes Wide Shut (now recognized as both a major 
film of the 1990s and a cult classic, Full Metal Jacket has received 
relatively limited scholarly attention compared to the director’s other 
work. This is surprising, given the film’s rich production history, its 
adaptation from Gustav Hasford’s novel The Short-Timers, and the 
compelling para-narratives surrounding it, including actor Matthew 
Modine’s detailed on-set diaries. The film also offers striking 
meta-commentary on the media’s portrayal of war, alongside complex 
depictions of race, gender, and violence.

This publication seeks to mark the film’s anniversary with a collection 
of diverse, archive-driven investigations into its creation and legacy. 
Topics might include the transformation of Beckton Gasworks in East 
London into a war-torn Saigon; the film’s reception and marketing; its 
place within Kubrick’s broader body of work; casting. performance and 
more. Together, these essays aim to explore how Full Metal Jacket 
reconstructs the Vietnam war reflecting both the American and Vietnamese 
experiences of the conflict. It will ask how the film fits into 
Kubrick’s wider discourse around violence, war and conflict.

Crucially, this collection seeks to engage with Full Metal Jacket’s 
media-centric commentary—its critique and exploration of how war is 
packaged, (re)mediated, and consumed as entertainment. It interrogates 
the film’s legacy, asking how it might be contextualized not only within 
Kubrick’s broader treatment of war, but also within the wider cinematic 
landscape of the 1980s and the evolving legacy of the Vietnam War on screen.

The proposal for this collection will be submitted to Liverpool 
University Press for their Stanley Kubrick series

Topics might include (but are certainly not limited to the following):

Full Metal Jacket  (FMJ) in the Stanley Kubrick Archive

Kubrick and War

FMJ and media commentary

Production Histories and development

FMJ as a British film:

Architecture and the rebuilding of Saigon in East London

FMJ as a star vehicle – casting and performance

 1980s cinema and the Vietnam War

Vietnam Histories and Full Metal Jacket

War Photography and Journalism (Kubrick’s use of Don McCullin and others)

Absurdity and comedy in FMJ

conflict and the  brutalisation

Marketing and reception

Cinematography and production design

FMJ as adaptation – Gus Hasford’s The Short Timers

Surrounding production para-narratives  - Matthew Modine’s production 
diaries

American militarism and the depiction of gender and race

FMJ’s legacy

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to Matthew M at 
(m.melia /at/ KINGSTON.AC.UK)



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