Kill the Authority Figure

I have issues.

The whole "Drill Sergeant Nasty" and "training from hell" trope.... You know the one, where the unsympathetic immature lout protagonist is turned over to an organization of screaming psychotics and subjected to violent abuse in order to beat him into shape-- generally while someone sings "I'll make a man out of you" in the background.... It produces a disturbing visceral response in me.

I know I'm supposed to applaud how the protagonist gets virtue and nobility violently beaten into him by his superiors; what I end up doing is fantasizing about the protagonist sneaking into his authority figure's room at night and driving ice picks into his eyes.

I'm a little frightened and maybe ashamed of what this might say about me psychologically. But the my reaction against it, visceral or emotional or mental, won't go away.

Every fiber in me screams out that this is not right, this is not helping and improving someone, this is a brutal tragedy--no matter how allegedly necessary it is. Yes, they come out the other side stronger: but so, arguably, do holocaust survivors. And the fallacy that this makes a "better man" out of anyone is demonstrated by the fact that the Nazi SS went through boot camp too. It doesn't make better people, it makes SOLDIERS. Tools for the State to use, trained to execute orders, to kill people and to break things. The only manhood that comes out the other end is what he had going in, and any soldier is only as virtuous as the last set of orders he carried out.

Maybe I am just an immature man-child with poisonous authority figure issues. Maybe I just am horrified by people who treat military and-or prison style brutishness as a way to "fix" children that disappoint them. (side note: those "reform camps" are generally unmonitored, unregulated, run by people with no actual training in dealing with problem kids, and have psychologically broken, maimed and KILLED kids in their care.) Maybe I'm just horrified at the notion of going through such myself, and have a strong suspicion I'd go out like that fat guy on "Platoon"-- psychotically broken and eating a bullet after blowing my drill sergeant's fricking brains out. (Note for fans: In that movie R. Lee Ermy is supposed to be a condemnation of what's WRONG with military training methods, not an ideal.) Maybe being a victim of bullying as a kid has bent me so that I can only see an abuser in these characters rather than a leader and trainer of men. Maybe I'm horrified by some of the DISTURBING psychological quirks I've noted in more than one military man, past and present. Maybe a little of all of the above.

Either way I'm still disappointed when, at the end of those "training montages," the drill sergeant in question doesn't have so much crap kicked out of him his corpse is transparent.