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Marcella Massarenti Dr. Karin A. Waidley Film and Culture 28 February 2016

Forrest Gump: American History Through the Eyes of the Underdog Movies that can be re-watched many times, and enjoyed each time just like the first one, can be hard to find. Forrest Gump, with the richness of its content, the timelessness of its most memorable scenes, and its unforgettable characters, is one of those movies to many people. Forrest Gump is a story about changing times, love, friendship, the value of kindness, but before everything else, it is a lesson on American History narrated in a very peculiar tone. Coming out in the mid 90s, at the closing of the last century, Forrest Gump does not show us these variegated, eventful decades in the way a documentary or a school teacher would. Instead, it presents it in the way in which you would flip an old family picture album, or in which you would play an old cassette tape of your childhood – it is a lovingly look on those times, sometimes sprinkled with comedic criticism, sometimes painfully honest, and sometimes making us cry. And what makes Forrest Gump unique is the point of view that it chooses: Forrest Gump is a wrapping up of recent American history as seen through the eyes of the underdogs, and that is what ultimately struck with the public. As a movie that came out 20 year ago and is still 40th place in the top domestic grossing movies of all time, a chart mostly dominated by laser guns, dinosaurs, CGI explosions, and very digestible – when existent – cultural contents, Forrest Gump does a somewhat admirable job at negotiating with dominant ideologies of ability, gender and race. The main characters of Forrest Gump are a man with a low IQ, a woman who is victim of abuse, objectification, drug addiction

and AIDS throughout her life, an African American soldier who also has a mental impairment similar to the one of Forrest, and a disabled veteran with alcoholism and depression. Through their stories, a variety of different historical and social topics are covered: the availability of education for the disabled, child abuse and family violence, the objectification of women, the desegregation of American colleges, the Vietnam war and the condition of African American soldiers, the Hippie movement, abusive relationships, the Cold War, returning war veterans, the Black Panthers movement, drugs in the 80s, the spreading of AIDS. Although the movie puts these underdog characters and these complex topics in the spotlight, viewers attentive to detail and prone to analyzing films in an oppositional stance will be able to notice that it still makes constant negotiations with dominant ideologies, and sometimes reinforces them: Forrest is straight and white, Jenny is naïve and needs to be saved on multiple occasions, African American characters are secondary, several of the liberal or hippy characters seem to be purposely depicted as ugly and disheveled, Lieutenant Dan is “fixed” with a new pair of legs by the end of the movie and marries a really Americanized Vietnamese woman, the token character of Susan. Yet the movie still carries a lot of value which can be found for the most part in the way the story is narrated: through the worldview of Forrest, a child in a man suit who is completely oblivious of race, politics, and social issues, and therefore compels the viewers to challenge their own biases and opinions. Through the character of Forrest, the movie picks on blindly conforming people by being a character who cannot do anything but conforming and agreeing. He is praised for doing what he is told, he succeeds by nodding and not thinking, in a series of comically exaggerated occasions or edited historical footage. He does not understand anything of what is happening, but

has an ethical compass which is ultimately what matters, and with which he ends up making a difference in the life of those around him, even if it is mostly by accident. Throughout the entire movie, the characters fluctuate in the spectrum between accepting their destiny and fighting it, about conforming or not, which can be seen as a parallel in the relationship between the movie and the status quo. Some characters try to find a balance, some succeed, some fail. Bubba’s mother breaks the status quo thanks to Bubba’s legacy and the help of Forrest. Bubba, like other soldiers, diligently complies with what he is ordered to do, and ends up dying in the battlefield. Lieutenant Dan wants to do nothing but conform to his destiny at the beginning of the movie, but undergoes a complete transformation thanks to Forrest, becoming the most rebellious character. Jenny tries to change her status through prayer as a child, she rebels and travels as a young woman, she struggles to find her destiny for years, and when she seems to have found one with Forrest, she cannot conform to it at first and runs away, to return only once she is ready. The movie can be seen as a relatively cool form of media: most of the time, Forrest does not express his own opinion, so we have to interpret what happens with our own thoughts. Forrest makes conscious, heroic, non accidental decisions only when his morals are awaken in situations that he cannot accept, because we the viewers, as a whole, cannot accept them either. He cannot let Jenny be mistreated or hurt, we want him to intervene. He cannot let Bubba and the rest of the platoon die in the battlefield, we demand that he saves them. He cannot let himself lose to depression when Jenny leaves, we need him to run. With the movie as a whole being a negotiation of hegemonic and oppositional views, a celebration and at the same time a reflective introspection on the changes in American History from the sixties to the nineties, the neutral, lovable character of Forrest serves as a timeline and as a mirror on the viewers.

Works Cited "After Hours - 5 Racist and Sexist Messages Hidden in Forrest Gump." YouTube. Cracked, 12 Jan. 2015. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. "All Time Domestic Box Office Results." All Time Domestic Box Office Results. Box Office Mojo, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. "Movies We Hate: Forrest Gump." CinemaNerdz. N.p., 04 Apr. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2016.