Summer of '94: Forrest Gump

Do I hate this movie?

Jul 10, 2024

It’s not hyperbole to say that Forrest Gump was an instant classic and the kind of cultural phenomenon we rarely see anymore.

It opened in the #1 spot on July 6, 1994, and returned to that position several times, including taking the throne again for two consecutive weeks in September. Domestically, the film’s gross was $294 million, just $1 million less than the year’s champ, The Lion King; worldwide, its $329 million total made it the top film of the year – earning more than double the global gross of the third-highest-grossing film of 1994, True Lies.

It was an awards powerhouse, taking home six Oscars the following winter, including honors for best picture, best director, best adapted screenplay and best actor for Tom Hanks – his second consecutive year winning that honor. It became a cultural event, a political rallying point for nostalgia-loving conservatives, a source of endless quotes and parodies, and ultimately a representative for the battle between studio cinema and the independent movement upon Pulp Fiction’s release.

People loved Forrest Gump. Much of that is because they loved Forrest himself, played with charming simplicity and guilelessness by Hanks. Forrest is an innocent running (often literally) through an America that is by turns cynical, harsh and confusing. As the culture descends into strife over racism, war, AIDS and the beginnings of steroidal capitalism, Forrest doesn’t care about any of that. He only wants to be with his beloved Jenny (Robin Wright) and his friends. No matter that he’s met several presidents, survived the Vietnam War, opened a successful shrimping empire and basically created jogging – Forrest doesn’t care. He just does what he’s told, looks out for his friends and doesn’t form much of an opinion about anything (one of his favorite phrases is “that’s all I’ve got to say about that”). Forrest is a lovable character brought to life by one of our most likable actors.

Which is why people look at me as if I’ve drowned a puppy when I tell them I hate this movie.

It wasn’t always this way. I was 15 years old when Forrest Gump was released and, like much of America, I fell under its spell. I saw it several times in theaters. I cried when Mama and Jenny died. I laughed when Forrest mooned the president. I read Winston Groom’s novel as well as its sequel, and I bought the pocket-sized The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump so I could have all his quotes to guide me through life. I cheered it on at the Oscars.

But while the content of our movies stays the same over the years, audiences change. Looking at it with clearer eyes, removed from the conservative culture that I grew up in and with more of an eye toward what makes movies good, I found my relationship with Forrest Gump had shifted. It’s not just that it’s aged poorly or that I’ve noticed filmmaking flaws that I didn’t in my youth. It’s that, watching it again, I now see its “heartwarming” ode to Americana as shallow and cloying, and its message rancid. To paraphrase Forrest, movies are like a box of chocolates. And this one’s sweet outside masks a poison filling.

Running through history

Let’s talk about that sweet chocolate covering first, because I understand why so many people still love Forrest Gump.

First off, there’s Tom Hanks’ performance. Winston Groom’s novel is a more biting, satirical dash through then-recent American history, with a more acidic tone than Robert Zemeckis’ film. We’ll get to whether the tonal shifts made by Zemeckis and screenwriter Eric Roth are improvements on that material or not, but it’s worth noting that the abrasive tone of the novel extends to its title character. Gump in the book is slow-witted but also a bit of a lumbering behemoth, racist and misogynist. That Forrest Gump is, honestly, a bit of an asshole, from my memory (it’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve read it).

Film Forrest is sweet and gentle, compensating for his slow wits with a big heart. The character could easily be saccharine – indeed, the “Simple Jack” character in Tropic Thunder is a direct parody – but Hanks’ charm goes a long way. Forrest might be dim, but he’s characterized first and foremost by decency and good humor, things that Hanks conveys via shorthand. Hanks plays Forrest as a comedic character, one who is initially a bit annoying when he inserts himself into conversations and drones on about his adventures (there’s a funny running gag where Forrest will say something to set up a flashback and then a character in the flashback will repeat the exact same thing). But while Forrest is funny, Hanks also gives him humanity and heart – I don’t, for instance, buy the moment he tells Jenny “I know what love is,” but I do think it’s very moving when Forrest asks whether his son is “like me.” Gump is a likable character because he’s written as a lovable innocent and because Tom Hanks’ presence conveys decency. I understand why people like Forrest; I like Forrest.

And Zemeckis knows how to work audiences. While I don’t know when his last good movie was (Flight, if I’m being charitable; Cast Away if I’m not), there’s no denying he’s been behind some of the most supremely entertaining films of the last 50 years. Back to the Future is a strong contender for the most rewatchable movie ever made, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit is on a short list for the best films of the 1980s. When Forrest Gump was made, Zemeckis was at a point where he knew better than nearly any director – except, possibly, for Steven Spielberg – how to effectively manipulate viewers.

Zemeckis weaponizes nostalgia more shamelessly than any film I’ve seen (and yes, I’m aware the Marvel and Star Wars films exist). Gump is a 2.5-hour dash through late-1900s America, lingering on the genteel South before blitzing through Bear Bryant-era college football, the war in Vietnam, the hippie movement, ping-pong diplomacy, the running fad and the age of AIDS. All of this is underscored by the most on-the-nose needle drops ever put to film, and news footage – with Forrest helpful inserted via then cutting-edge CGI – of some of America’s most historic moments. When Zemeckis isn’t cycling through the Great American Songbook, Alan Silvestri’s score yanks at the heart strings.

For non-boomers, this American History 101 mixed with a heavy dose of sentimentality and humor felt joyful and affirming. For boomers, it was a salve, assuring them that while they may have lived through some tumultuous decades, they were now safe and sound at the end of history. They’d made it through, just like Gump, and sure, Vietnam was sad and racism was bad, but in the end it was all about the friends we made along the way, right? It feels really good; we laugh, we cry, we repeat the catchphrases.

When you don’t think about what Forrest Gump is saying, it’s a perfectly amiable and enjoyable movie. And that’s the point – no one in Forrest Gump wants you to think about it. They don’t want you to think at all.

Don’t think

During the summer of 1994, I was sitting in Sunday School one morning telling my youth group friends about having just seen The Lion King and how amazing it was (even among youth group kids, I was a dork). My Sunday School teacher tut-tutted my recommendation; The Lion King, she said, was New Age pabulum filled with satanic hidden messages (this was a fun environment in which to grow up). I should, instead, see Forrest Gump, which was just about a man being nice to people.

I thought about The Lion King when rewatching Forrest Gump. Particularly, I thought about how the message of Forrest Gump is basically “Hakuna Matata.”

“Hakuna Matata” is, of course, the motto that Simba picks up from Timon and Pumba when he’s in exile. Rather than get upset, wallow in his misery and head back to make things right, Simba learns this “problem-free philosophy” about living with no worries. Eventually, however, he learns that while things are going great for him and his pig and meerkat friends, things aren’t great for everyone and he needs to get up off his butt, get involved and make a difference.

Forrest Gump doesn’t want us to be Simba.

It’s not a perfect comparison. Forrest’s life is not without suffering – he has to weather physical and intellectual disability, endure the horrors of war, watch his friends die, and get shot in the butt-tocks. But he emerges unscathed and with little to no opinion about the war, racial strife or the collapse of our nation’s institutions. When he stumbles into a speech on the D.C. Mall, the joke is that he gets a cheer even though his mic cuts out and no one hears what he says. The only thing we hear is “and that’s all I got to say about that.” Look how silly these hippies are, the film seems to say, they’ll just applaud anyone saying anything. How dare they care!

Forrest excels in the military because he knows his job, as he tells his drill sergeant, is “to do whatever you tell me to.” He doesn’t ask questions, he just follows orders. Forrest doesn’t have to think – he weaves in and out of history life a feather on the wind (a metaphor the film bludgeons us with in the opening and closing and calls out in dialogue in case we haven’t gotten it) and lives a great life because while he’s had a front seat to history, he hasn’t had to engage with what any of it means.

That could pay off if the movie were satire about the obliviousness of the American everyman and our propensity to bumble through culture without realizing the significance of the times in which we live. But Roth’s script and Zemeckis’ direction frame this not as satire but fable, and they make Forrest an aspirational character rather than a filter for their commentary. The result is a movie that asks us to imagine that we could be like Forrest – the film’s tagline was “Life will never be the same once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump” – the one character in the movie who never forms an opinion, never takes a side, and never sees reality as anything but a background to his own journey.

This is most infuriating in the film’s racial politics. Forrest Gump opens in the 1950s in Alabama; surely, there’s something to say about race in that time period. Forrest himself is named after the founder of the KKK, a fact the film tells us and waves away because “some people do things that, well, just don’t make much sense.” Forrest is at the University of Alabama when it’s integrated, but doesn’t do much more than give a student her books, wave dumbly and walk away. The only reason Forrest crosses paths with the Black Panthers and the movie gives any time to the ongoing racial conflict is because Jenny is dating a war protester. The movie’s sole major Black character, Bubba, is presented as nice but dim – and the movie is aware enough of America’s racial history to include a flashback showing that Bubba’s ancestors were slaves but treat it as nothing more than a visual gag. And let’s not forget that Forrest ultimately gets rich by appropriating a Black man’s idea (he does give money to Bubba’s family, to be fair).

Yes, Forrest helps people, but it’s often unintentional. Any contributions he makes to society are accidental. Sometimes that’s a funny joke – his creation of the smiley face shirt and the phrase “shit happens” are the few times the movie makes a satirical mark, this time about the mindlessness of advertising. But for the most part, we’re asked just to be like Forrest and not engage – and if we do, we just do what we’re told until the next person tells us what to do. And be careful if you care or deviate from the mainstream: it could get you killed.

Stay in line — or else

Forrest is the only character in the movie with a happy ending. Anyone who cares about anything is punished. Bubba wants life beyond being a soldier – he dies in Vietnam. Lieutenant Dan wants to die in Vietnam and instead goes home a cripple. Several times, Forrest meets famous people – Elvis, John Lennon, President Kennedy – and then tells us about the tragic deaths they suffered years later. They care, they push boundaries, they die. In a film with a more fatalistic edge, it might be poignant. But only in Forrest Gump can assassinations feel nostalgic. Just be like Forrest; don’t think too deeply, let life bounce you around, and you’ll be happy.

There is one exception to this rule, and it’s Gary Sinise’s Lieutenant Dan. Dan believes he’s destined to die on the battlefield like his ancestors, but instead Forrest saves his life and he returns to the U.S. without his legs. He catches up with Forrest later, homeless and an alcoholic. The two spend a joyless holiday season together, but later Dan joins Forrest on his shrimp boat. During possibly the film’s best scene, Dan unleashes all his anger, climbing the ship’s mast during a thunderstorm and raging at God. In the morning, he swims away, at peace, and later in the film, we see that Dan has gotten artificial limbs, found a wife, and is happy again.

It’s still in line with the film’s ethos to just accept what happens and move on – which isn’t a bad theme – but it’s the one time in the movie that a character is given any agency to voice their anger and put up any fight about their plight. It’s one of the few scenes where the movie has a pulse and feels emotionally authentic – the other being the aforementioned moment when Forrest meets his son – and Sinise is great in the moment. But once Dan swims away, it just leaves Forrest to keep bumbling upward – including, of course, benefitting from Dan’s investment in “a fruit company” that is revealed to be Apple (ho, ho).

The film’s most egregious treatment is with Forrest’s beloved Jenny, a character consistently viewed as a sexual object. The film introduces her as a victim of sexual abuse and then mostly views her only through the lens of sexuality. Forrest meets her at college when a boyfriend is getting handsy; while in the Army, he learns that she first sold photos to Playboy and later is performing at a topless bar1. Jenny’s attempt to leave her small town life and live outside the norm, protest or take unconventional paths constantly result in her being abused, drug addicted and suicidal. She only finds peace when she goes back to Forrest, marries him and briefly gets to have a traditional nuclear family – before the film reminds us she must be punished and die of AIDS. It’s a mean-spirited depiction, not because it’s affirming conservative values but because Jenny gets no choice or agency other than to suffer for making any choices the mainstream might disagree with. It’s rancid and gross, and it makes me furious.

But yet, say something negative about this movie and people won’t see that. They’ll see Forrest’s unwavering love. They’ll see that all things worked out in the end. They’ll say that it captured America in all its dysfunctional splendor, and we just needed to go through these events and not lose our niceness. They see Jenny as a wayward soul saved by Forrest Gump, not an abuse victim trying to do her best who the film constantly punishes for straying from the path. They’ll see a film that takes them through a shallow lens of American history, one formed entirely out of stereotype and cliché. “That’s how it was,” they’ll say, glossing over the fact that the movie never engages the very real political, racial and cultural struggles that brought about these events.

Imagine a Forrest Gump made today in which Forrest blithely misses a flight on 9/11. In which he just walks by Eric Garner being killed by police and waves, or wanders into a Black Lives Matter protest so he can see Jenny. In which Forrest sneezes and starts COVID, explaining “and the entire world got a cough due to cold.” In which he wanders into Trump’s Access Hollywood interview and says “and this man must have liked cats, because he liked to grab them.” It would be a shallow reading of things we (rightly) take very seriously, making light of the very real threats to freedom, safety and democracy. But in Forrest Gump, issues of war, racism, sexuality and abuse are just the wallpaper of one man’s life, and it doesn’t matter as long as he comes home safely to save his girl and raise his kid. It’s mean-spirited, it’s shallow and it’s ugly. Forrest Gump is a bad movie.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Previous Summer of ‘94 entries

I don’t have time to delve into the movie’s very weird and, as the kids would say, problematic approach to sexuality, which also includes Mama Gump seducing Forrest’s principal and treating it as a cheap gag or the two occasions on which Jenny a.) comes on to Forrest and b.) sleeps with him, which, given his mental impairments, is hard to see as consensual.