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Popular Culture Review
fantasy. Jenny’s independence places her at the mercy of the 1960s
countercultural forces from whose clutches Forrest must save her, often
employing violence in the process. By the film’s conclusion, Forrest restores
Jenny to the cult of domesticity, and she assumes the roles of wife and mother.
Nevertheless, she must pay for her digressions, and Forrest Gump seems to lend
credence to the ftmdamentalist maxim that “the wages of sin are death.” Jenny
dies, but Forrest is able to reconstruct the patriarchal order through his son.
This reading of the film’s reactionary politics was not lost upon all
critics. In a review of Forrest Gump for the New Statesman & Society, Jonathan
Romney stresses the film’s patriarchal values, writing that the film attributes
“America’s own waywardness to the influence of bad fathers—^to the presidents
whose image Gump lightly mocks . . . All that America needs, the film seems to
argue, is a good father—^which Gump symbolically becomes.” Interpreting the
film in a similar vein, David Denby describes Forrest Gump as “sanctimonious
and reactionary.” Denby concludes, “Forrest may be slow, but the smart,
ambitious, trendy people are meant to be the real fools—^presidents, antiwar
protesters, military heroes. Black Panthers.”^
Denby is on to something here. For as reactionary as the film is in its
depiction of women, Forrest Gump is even more appalling in its treatment of
African-Americans. Despite the fact that the film is set in the American South
and pretends to be concerned with the civil rights movement, only one AfricanAmerican character is developed in Gump, and he proves to be even more
simple-minded than Forrest. Bubba Blue (Mykelti Williamson) is an AfricanAmerican shrimp fisherman whom Forrest befriends during basic training. Even
though Bubba can only converse about shrimp, Forrest is captivated. However,
the naive and innocent Bubba is killed in Vietnam, seemingly suggesting that
only Forrest’s white innocence is destined for survival. Yet, Bubba’s legacy
lives on as Forrest uses his friend’s ideas to make a fortune in the shrimp
industry. To his credit, Forrest does attempt to share a percentage of his profits
with Bubba’s family, but, nonetheless, like a white performer making lucrative
profits with cover versions of black music, it is difficult to avoid that here is
another white man enriching himself at black expense.
An even more sinister interpretation of the African-American
experience is evident tn how the film depicts the BPP. After Forrest is wounded
(“shot in the buttocks^’ as he so eloquently terms It) and awarded a medal M
braveiy, he inadvertently ends up at an antiwar rally and finds himself on stage
at the Lincoln Memorial with Abbie Hoffrnan (Richard D’Alessandro). When
Forrest is asked to give his opinion regarding the Vietnam War, the plug to the
amplifier is pulled by the police, and we never learn his views on the conflict.
This is a case of ^ e film lacking the courage of its reactionary political
convictions. Denouncing the American involvement in Vietnam would mark a
major departure from the film’s ideological message, while embracing the war