Comments | scarlettina: Forrest Gump and the SNL 40th anniversary special

scarlettina

Forrest Gump and the SNL 40th anniversary special

Feb 21, 2015 10:53

Last night, I needed to detox from a really emotionally stressful week, so I stayed home and watched TV with the cats. I watched "Forrest Gump" and the SNL 40th anniversary special, switching back and forth between channels. Here are some of the random thoughts that occurred.

( Thoughts on Forrest Gump, its actors and its historical context )

tv, television, history, movies

Comments 4

allanh February 22 2015, 01:48:46 UTC

Chevy Chase was such a sex symbol that they had Paul Shaeffer write a song about it, which Laraine, Gilda, and Jane performed. The best video quality version I could find, oddly enough, was on RUTube:

http://rutube.ru/video/346d52cd653c4901352739da21542c39/

madrobins February 22 2015, 19:11:13 UTC

I admired everything about Forrest Gump except the movie. The feel of the times and events I lived through (I can give you almost a decade, I think) Hanks's performance, Robin Wright's performance (yes, she's brilliant in House of Cards, but if you're hoping for Jenny, don't even go there). And I admire Robert Zemekis as a director ( ... )

scarlettina February 22 2015, 19:37:11 UTC

My making this post and talking about it with friends in real time has generated some really interesting discussion about Forrest's relationship with Jenny and how it is, in many ways, abusive. I hadn't seen it that way before, but then I've been known to wrestle with obliviousness before. All these discussions suggest to me that, in fact, you're not alone in disliking the film, but there are a plethora of reasons for doing so among them the Jenny/Forrest relationship, and the film's manipulativeness.

I don't agree that the movie says that the way to get through life is to be stupid. It's doesn't endorse stupidity. It seems to endorse a simpler approach, via Mrs. Gump's homespun wisdom. The film is about the magic that sort of seems to surround Forrest as much as anything. He's the Fool. He lives this sort of weirdly charmed life. It's certainly not a story that could ever take place in real life.

madrobins February 22 2015, 19:47:08 UTC

I suspect that some of my reaction to the film is based on the reaction of people I knew at the time: what they were taking from the film seemed to be either that it is dangerous to be too smart or that fortune favors the fool. Which then got stretched to the point where it was celebrating Stupid. Having been the kid who was picked on for being a teacher's pet and a reader, this presses a sore, half-healed bruise for me.

I don't know that I'd missed the abusive relationship between Forrest and Jenny so much as that it struck me as one of the emotionally true things in the movie, and I just went right past it. I have my oblivious moments too...