Vietnam War Film.(2):
Forrest Gump
Forgetting History by
Re-writing it
Starting Questions
 1. What do you think about the following famous
lines from the film?
 e.g. "Stupid is as stupid does";
 "Mama always said life was like a box a chocolates,
never know what you're gonna get."
 2. What do you think about the ways history gets
presented in this film (e.g. Vietnam war, the
Hippie generation, Watergate, Pingpong diplomacy, etc.)? And the views of history?
 3. What do you think about the relationship
between Jenny and Forrest? And the way the
blacks are presented?
Outline
Forrest as a Disadvantaged Person
Forrest in American History –even a fool
plays a role.
Forrest as a savior to the People around
him
Why is the film so popular? (wins Oscar in
1995; 阿甘精神 was popular in Taiwan,
too.)
References
Forrest as a person and his Mother
 Three parts in his life: 1) discriminated against; 2) lucky
and persistent; 3) helpful and influential (without knowing
why)
(1) The mother’s practical wisdom;
 Mrs. Gump:
 You have to do the best with what God gave you.
 Life was like a box a chocolates, never know what you're gonna
get.
 You are no different from the others.
 "Stupid is as stupid does“
 Forrest – turns disadvantages into advantages by
persisting and mere physical strength; e.g. running,
eating ice-cream when wounded in the buttocks; stays
through the storm (“God showed up”) on the shrimping
boat.
Forrest and American History:
His Intersections with History—
Or Signs and Stereotypes in
History
1. History = chance (floating on a
breeze) and destiny
2. History = luck
(2) Lucky Coincidences
 Civil Rights Movement -- the first Black female student
enters the University of Alabama, Forrest carries her
books.
 Political Assassination -- football team all the VIP’s-JF Kennedy (mentioning the others being assassinated:
Robert Kennedy, George Wallace, John Lennon, Gerald
Ford, and Ronald Reagan are all equalized as victims of
lunatics but not Martin Luther King or Malcolm X) (*clip
1)
(2) Lucky Coincidences
 -- Vietnam: (*clip 2)
1) The good thing about
Vietnam is there was always
someplace to go.”
2) Simplification of Anti-war
movement, Jenny (“If you’re
going to San Francisco” the
flower generation) and the
Black Panther.
2) Withholding interpretation:
-- Forrest’s speech
-- Linton Johnson
-- acceleration of involvement
in Vietnam
Forrest’s Intersections with History—Or
Signs and Stereotypes in History
 the All-American Ping
Pong team
“somebody said that world
peace was in our hands.
But all I did was play pingpong.”
 -- meets Richard Nixon
 sees the men with flashlights
in the darkened offices of
Democratic Headquarters
cannot sleep  reveals the
watergate event.
Undifferentiated Association with
Celebrities and Politics
 Nathan Bedford Forrest -- whom Forrest
identifies as one of his own ancestors, as a
"great Civil War hero," and as the founder of the
Ku Klux Klan.
Forrest's explanation – a club of men who ran around in
bedsheets, pretending to be "ghosts or spooks or
something.“
 He sounds baffled by this, and says his Momma chose
his name "to remind me that sometimes we all do things
that, well, just don't make no sense."
Celebrities and Politics
 Presley – initiated the
dance steps
 Lennon Lennon (clip 3)
 – the source of “Imagine”:
Forrest’s talking about
China
 "Some years later that nice
young man from England
was on his way home to see
his little boy” 
assassinated for no
particular reason
Forrest and History
 Forrest – powerless and passive; influential
accidentally.
 History as chancy and purposeless  Forrest
does not act purposely, nor mean to change
things (only wanting to rescue Jenny.)
 History presented as a mess, filled with mad
people killing others, and lost souls wandering
around.
  a very superficial and stereotypical
presentation of counter-culture and the war.
The only moment of comprehension

(3) Forrest’s Influence on the
Others around him
Forrest => passive, obedient, run
away from trouble,
incomprehensive
Why does Forrest turn to be a
savior?
-- Lieutenant Dan
-- Bubba
-- Jenny
-- the followers
Bubba & Lieutenant Dan
Bubba –
His Mama
Shrimp business
Dan
 –violent, depressed, selfindulgent.
 -- commanding on the boat
 -- mad in the storm, shouting to
the ‘enemies’ (like Emmet in In
Country)
 -- surviving his trauma because
of Forrest.
Dan and Jenny


Jenny
 Molested as a child;
 Wants to be a folk singer:“Her dream had come true. She
was a folk singer. ”
 Rescued by Forrest many times. “You can’t keep doing it,
Forrest,” Jenny.
 On the road  hippie, anti-war activist in the Black Panther
group, drug addict,
 Prostitute  AIDS patient.
 Jenny: "How could you do it?" throw stones at the tumbledown house; "You don't want to marry me."
  In the novel, she is not ill but she chooses to leave
Forrest.
  In the film, Forrest gets the house bulldozed.
Why Does Forrest Run after Jenny leaves
him?
 "for world peace . . . for the homeless . . .
for women's rights . . . or for the
environment . . . or for animals. . . .?"
His responses:
“ . I just felt like running."
 "My momma always said you got to put the
past behind you before you can move on. And I
think that's what my runnin' was all about."
 “Shit happens.” Smiley. Gives people hope.
Why is the film so popular?
The film as
the “re-membering” of patriarchy (Byers)
 appropriated by political conservatives
and the uses to which it was put to further
the Republican "revolution." (Wang) –e.g.
their call for family values
Loss of ‘masculinity” in U.S.Society
 "sixties“ – (Cf. Byers)
The loss of the Vietnam War
 the rise of late capitalism's global economy and the
concomitant demise of American economic dominance
and security and of men's capacities to be sole
breadwinners;
 the reconfiguration of the family,
 certain aspects of the sexual revolution,
 and the emergence of second-wave feminism and gay
liberation as concerted political and cultural threats to
that masculinity's traditional prerogatives.
Conservatives’ ‘revolution’ in the 80’s and
90’s (For your reference)
 ‘Acting as a "discursive relay station," Gump's
presentation of the sixties counterculture thus
reinforced the discourse of disease and social
abnormality that conservatives (i.e. the
Republicans represented then by Clintom and
Gore) rhetorically associated with liberals.
Conservatives used Gump and its selective
spotlight on sixties images to identify publicly the
source of the disease-- [End Page 104] the
feminization and racialization of post-sixties
culture.’ (Wang 104-105)
Conclusion
What the film does to history: (Cf. Byers)
“In this periodizing and othering,
supersession of the bad father and
subordination of the (temporarily)
independent woman, patriarchal fantasies
of presence and selfhood, succession and
superiority, are re-membered and
restored. ”
References
 Jennifer Hyland Wang. "A Struggle of Contending Stories":
Race, Gender, and Political Memory in Forrest Gump Cinema
Journal 39.3 (2000) 92-115
 Thomas B. Byers “History Re-Membered: Forrest Gump,
Postfeminist Masculinity, and the Burial of the Counterculture”
Modern Fiction Studies 42.2 (1996) 419-444
