I have to applaud the efforts of the filmmakers. Unintentionally or not, it is perhaps the most subversively right-wing propaganda film Hollywood had created since the WWII dramas of the 1950s. Here's the rundown for the people who've seen it, liked it, but missed the celebrated conservative principles and historical revisionism:

Forrest is a "useful idiot" who obeys orders. He is:

-a celebrated athlete
-a humble national hero
-a decorated war hero who doesn't leave his buddies behind
-a successful, charitable businessman
-a person that takes care of his family and embodies domestication

By contrast Jenny, the film's archetypal free-spirited female, has no depth. She:

-joins the counterculture, experiments with drugs, and becomes suicidal
-hangs out with black panthers and has an activist student boyfriend who beats her
-practices free love well past her prime, without reason
-gets knocked-up and becomes a single mother
-contracts a mysterious "disease" at the end of the film (which at this point is in the early 80s - so we can only presume what "disease" it is)

Equally indicative of the filmmakers' laziness is the soundtrack which cherry picks the proper pop hits from each era, as if the audience was too stupid to realize at what times the movie was taking place.

Now most intelligent adults will see right past the message, but clearly the film is also aimed at children. I suppose it could be viewed in an even more iconoclastic light, perhaps as a parody for what we'd expect from such types of patriotic trash. BUT, it's ultimately too melodramatic and lacks the cynicism and bile to be given such a consideration.

OR, of course, we could all just view the film as a melancholy tribute to an innocent man's life with some decent performances.

OR, of course, we could all just view the film as a melancholy tribute to an innocent man's life with some decent performances.

I just figured it was the result of a late-night studio brainstorming session around the question "how do we get more baby boomers into the movie theatre?"

I like 7th Heaven better.

This is what happens when you take too many film classes in college.

Classical Cinema GV.

i actually agree with GV.

neither, it's just a crappy/overrated movie as far as i'm concerned

winner.

and I don't see the movie as subversive propaganda- if anything it's a lesson about how only a true simpleton could exhibit all the behaviors that glorified mentions above and thus be 'worthy' of being a hero/upstanding citizen/whatever of the country.
It's a commentary on how dumb people are in the US by taking someone like Gump and elevating him to the level of celebrity demigod for being a simpleton.

case in point: George W. Bush, both terms.
'nuff said.

Yeah, yeah. And the Smurfs were communists too. Red propaganda. But to mask their sinister intentions, they made the Smurfs blue!

What a world, what a world!

good movie

I saw part of this movie a couple weeks ago, and there was some scene along these lines, I can't remember which, that made me think exactly this.

i'd have to watch it again, but i really think forest gump is more of a zen character than a conservative one. he has a very matter of fact acceptance of truths "after that there was no more football" "stupid is as stupid does"

i think its more philosophical than saying "hey guys be stupid and southern"

also, if you think the free love movement was all peace and fun, i think you're misled... i mean jenny wasn't a kid who went out on saturdays to do mushrooms, she was in it deep. plus i don't know how lieutenant dan would fit in your theory

Wow, it's Forrest Gump, how much is there really to think about? I just thought it was a good movie.

You forgot "illegally downloaded from, and uploaded to, OINK." Because everyone who does this, as well as the rest of the things that the slut Jenny did, dies of AIDS. And let this be a lesson to all of us (in case that didn't come through clearly enough in the movie).

its actually a really rich movie... there's so much in it. way more than that radio flyer movie

either way i think this argument applies less to forrest gump than it does to most horror films in the 80's

I totally agree, I just don't get why anyone would want to over-analyze this movie like that. I just don't think I could enjoy movies if I tried to think about them like that. If a movie is bad, I will usually comment about it, but I'm usually satisfied with most of the movies I see, even if I won't remember them in a month. At least it was a decent escape from reality for a couple of hours.

The problem with hypotheses like this is that you can pull parallels from any movie and shift/shape them into relating to whatever you want. If I tried hard enough, I could make a solid case that Sesame Street has undertones about/allusions to the Great Depression. That doesn't mean that below the surface that is what was intended. Per my earlier comment, about college film classes, I had a lot of arguments with film teachers about this type of deal. I'm not saying you're wrong, g_v, and it's certainly an intriguing argument, but this type of over-analysis does nothing for me, and I'm not a fan of such.

I think Forrest was supposed to be a man-child character. He was seeing the world through a simple, probably sugar-coated mind for the most part.