Forest Gump

The role of film and video as an apparatus of the recollection of history is a technology that burns in our memories to create a form of visual relation to events that one has not personally experienced. It is a powerful way to form a cultural reminiscence. Forrest Gump, named after the great civil war hero General Nathan Bedord Forrest who started the KKK, is the tale of a low I.Q. man, played by Tom Hanks, narrating the story of his life on a bus stop bench to anyone who will listen. While the audience becomes more and more engaged and inspired by his story, Gump allows us to enjoy the comedy as he escorts us through the many historic moments with some of the most important people and events in America from the late 1950's through the 1970's: playing football, Ping-Pong, writing slogans, as well as meeting with Elvis Presley, George Wallace, John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, Dick Cavett, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, fighting in Vietnam, and reporting the Watergate break-in.

Gump basically gets everything anybody could every want but the one thing Gump really does want. He never seems to be able to hold on to his childhood sweetheart, Jenny. With a talent for making wrong decisions, Jenny walks a dreadful path through the same world as Gump, but without the benefits of Gump's simple good ways.

As we drift away from the some of the negative deterrents that might harm some others like war, racism, child abuse, poverty, political murder, death by AIDS. As the viewer just repeats after Gump "That's all I've got to say about that." We drift back, because like Gump, America is straightforward. Overcoming racism turns out to be easy for Gump. We can make that assumption because Gump understands a lot of American history through the popular music whose lyrics often echo the plot twists in the film and the never-ending snatches of TV images and pop songs with the way the audience is supposed to understand it.

Some events incorrect from the movie may it be careless writing of poor research skills but in the movie Jenny dies in 1982, and yet she shows Gump a clipping from a "USA Today" magazine which was not first published until 1983. Gump claims that Jenny died on a Saturday, and yet her gravestone says March 22,1982, which is a Monday. When Gump receives his discharge orders, he is playing ping pong in the corner of a basketball court with a three point line. The college three point line was not introduced