FAST-US-7 U.S. Popular Culture Papers

Building Icons: Forrest Gump's Journey
From a Mediocre Novel to a Six-Oscar Movie
Neea Paatero, Spring 2005 (US)
A FAST-US-7 United States Popular Culture Paper
Department of Translation Studies, University of Tampere


For many people outside the United States, America is synonymous with Hollywood, and Hollywood with movies. Millions, maybe billions of people have never been to America, but it would be difficult to find a person with no concept of America. How is this possible? The answer may be in American movies. In other words, it is possible that people would have read about America, or heard about it on the radio, or met Americans, but it is more likely that they have seen American movies about American life.

This paper discusses Forrest Gump as an American movie about American life. "American movie" here refers to a movie made in Hollywood for a mainstream, American audience, as opposed to an independent film. The author suggests that there may be some kind of a secret "recipe" to making successful American movies, which are purposely tailored to appeal to an American audience. The success of these movies in America often leads to success abroad, which in turn leads to the development of a certain image of American life and American people in other countries.

Forrest Gump is a journey of an American man through four decades of American history. The movie has Southern life, single mothers, childhood sweethearts, college football, Vietnam War, hippies, and building a million-dollar business from scratch. The movie has a certain majesty or dignity to it — possibly a combination of good cinematography, amazing visuals, nostalgic music, good acting, and an endearing narrator-slash-main character in the innocent, good-hearted Forrest Gump. It is no wonder that the movie won six Oscarsฎ in 1995: Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Director (Robert Zemeckis), Best Visual Effects, Best Editing, and Best Writing based on material from another medium — screenplay by Eric Roth based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom (Brussat).

The last Oscarฎ mentioned was certainly not the least. Eric Roth's screenplay goes beyond turning Groom's novel into a screenplay, creating something completely new instead. Granted, the movie is still about a low-IQ Southern man called Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) who loves Jenny Curran (Robin Wright), plays football, fights in Vietnam, has a friend called Lt. Dan (Gary Sinise), meets presidents and celebrities, and makes a fortune in the shrimp business. That's about it, though. Many of the book's sub-plots have been left out from the movie, and others have been added which were not in the book. The movie introduces some new characters, and leaves out many old ones. Some characters, including Forrest himself, go through great changes on their journey from the pages of the book to the silver screen (Hugo).

Why all these changes, then? As Giles Hugo says in his review:

... although I find some of the more saccharine romantic elements in the movie just a bit too gooey, those responsible for the transformation of novel into screenplay and six-Oscar movie have taken the best elements from Groom's quirky but slightly flawed novel, and turned it into a memorable new cultural icon for the toxic, cynical '90s. (Hugo)
This is only speculation and personal opinion, but the author too finds it hard to imagine that Groom's novel, had it been "translated" faithfully into a screenplay, would have won an Oscarฎ, much less six. Writer Eric Roth, together with producer Wendy Finerman and director Robert Zemeckis, took Winston Groom's amusing, quirky, racy novel and turned it into a cultural icon of epic proportions (Hugo).

Although both Zemeckis and Finerman have played a role in the forming of the screenplay — Zemeckis has been credited for writing entire scenes — for simplicity's sake the screenplay, and the changes that distinguish the screenplay from Groom's novel, are mainly credited to Roth in this paper (Mannion).

Furthermore, this paper will only discuss the American audience of Forrest Gump. While the movie has certainly been viewed in other countries, it was designed for an American audience, its cultural history and context, and thus would probably be less iconic for non-American viewers.

A Translator's Perspective

One of the most fascinating aspects of the character of Forrest Gump is his Southern accent. Forrest was born and raised in Alabama, and he never really loses his accent. His Southern identity is a big part of his character, but the accent makes for interesting spellings in the novel. The situation is not helped by Forrest's low IQ and low level of education. For example, Forrest says "axe" when he means "ask," "hundrit" when he means "hundred," and "settin" when he should say "sitting." He doesn't seem to know the word "are", so structures like "they is" are very common in the novel (Groom 47). While these creative spellings may or may not cause problems for the novel's readers, they will certainly challenge a translator. The novel has been translated into Finnish in 1994 by Erkki Jukarainen, but unfortunately there is no room in this paper for comparative analysis of the original novel and its Finnish translation.

It is interesting that the Forrest Gump in Roth's screenplay speaks a lot more clearly and uses only a few vernacular words, such as "Momma," "grandpa," and "real" for "really". This, along with the other changes made by Roth, would make it inadvisable for someone translating the movie to seek help from the book's translation, and vice versa.

When one is translating a book or a movie, it is important to know not only what the character is saying or doing, but also why the character is speaking or acting in such way. Understanding the cultural background of the character, the author, and the author's intended audience is crucial for the translator. Translating about a cultural icon or translating a cultural icon is easier if you know how the icon was constructed and how it fits into the source culture.

While this paper does not necessarily include information that is of vital importance for translators, it can be viewed as an exercise in critical thinking. A translator must always look beyond the surface of the text, which is what this paper strives to do as well.

What Makes Forrest Gump a Successful American Movie?

When The American Film Institute announced the winners for the 100 best American films of all time in 1998, Forrest Gump took place 71. It finished ahead of such big names as Ben- Hur (72nd) and Rocky (78th). According to the news release, "the criteria for winning included historical significance, critical recognition and awards, and popularity as measured by box office, syndication, video sale and rental figures" ('Citizen Kane').

As Richard Corliss said in his article The World According to Gump in TIME Magazine:

In retrospect, though, Forrest Gump seems a can't-miss proposition. Consider that the only three movies of the past two decades to win both the year's box-office crown and the Oscar for Best Picture — Rocky, Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man — were canny, poignant fables of men in domestic crisis. Throw in two other high-grossing Oscar winners, Platoon and Terms of Endearment, and you have the recipe for a "mature," feel-good smash. Let's see: retarded man, family man, Vietnam hero and lots of decent folks on their deathbeds. The movie is not only a greatest-hits rendering of 25 years of Americana, it's a distillation of humanist culture in commercial movies. (Corliss)
In this paper, Forrest Gump's success is measured not only by critical acclaim (of which the Oscar awards are presumably an indication) but also, or even more importantly, by commercial success — which in turn is often increased by the approval of the critics.

Critical recognition is all well and good, but money is what makes Hollywood go around. According to The Numbers website, Forrest Gump made a worldwide gross of $679,400,000. Its MPAA rating was PG-13 for drug content, some sensuality and war violence, and some soldierly cussing. The low rating guaranteed the movie more viewers (The Numbers).

So, what do viewers want to see when they go to the movies? The recipe for a successfull American movie might include the following: a hero, a romance, a tragedy or two, maybe some comedy, some action, visual treats, good music, and some deep insights (but not too many and in easily digestible portions). Forrest Gump has them all.

The Hero and the Romance

The movie version of Forrest Gump is greatly sanitized, or "Hollywoodized." Groom's Forrest smokes marijuana, farts at inopportune moments, play-wrestles for money, swears, and has sex. He loses his virginity to a boarder in his mother's house, has a long sexual relationship with Jenny, cheats on Jenny while on drugs, and the end of the novel finds him in a casual sexual relationship: "They is a girl here who works as a waitress in one of the strip joints an ever once in a wile we get together an ass around. Wanda is her name..." (Groom 247–248).

In the movie, Forrest's relationship with Jenny is very romantic. As Zemeckis said in the DVD commentary, "Forrest and Jenny is what I consider to be one of the classic sort of movie-type romantic stories" (Zemeckis).

While Groom's Forrest and Jenny still love each other, their relationship is much more physical. As Hugo says, even their first sexual encounter would be too wild for a PG rating:

Well, we done all sorts of things that afternoon that I never even dreamt of in my wildest imagination. Jenny shown me shit I never could of figgered out on my own — sidewise, crosswise, upside down, bottomwise, lengthwise, dogwise, standin up, settin down, bendin over, leanin back, inside-out and outside-in — only way we didn't try it was apart! We rolled all over the livin room an into the kitchen — stove in furniture, knocked shit over, pulled down drapes, mussed up the rug an even turned the tv set on by accident. Wound up doin it in the sink, but don't axe me how. When we is finally finished, Jenny jus lie there a wile, an then she look at me an say, "Goddamn Forrest, where is you been all my life?" (Groom 103)

Many movie reviewers remark on Forrest's innocence as one of the movie's carrying powers. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat call him a "holy fool."

"I don't want to sound like a bad version of 'the child within'," says co-producer Wendy Finerman ... "But the childlike innocence of Forrest Gump is what we all once had. It's an emotional journey. You laugh and cry. It does what movies are supposed to do: make you feel alive." (Corliss)

David Loftus, a Resident Forrest Gump Scholar at Forrest Gump Movie Review, calls Forrest "a somewhat retarded but good-hearted Southern boy ... There's not a drop of fraudulence, wickedness, or falsity in him ... Forrest has feelings, empathy, and a touch of wisdom."

That is true, for movie-Forrest at least. He is more placid and na๏ve than book-Forrest, who is much more cynical. The film's quote "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get" completely reverses the novel's sentiment (expressed in the very first clause) that "Bein [sic] an idiot is no box of chocolates." (Wikipedia)

Richard Corliss calls the movie "a ruthlessly canny face-lift of Groom's novel" and points out that Eric Roth has essentially transferred all of Forrest's faults to Jenny. In the movie, she is a fragile victim of child abuse, a self-destructive drug user. She is guilty of most of the excesses Americans committed in the 1960s and 1970s. According to Corliss, the suspense of the movie is whether she will allow him to save her, which is ironic, considering that in Groom's novel, Jenny is the one trying to redeem Forrest while he does drugs and cheats on her. She finally leaves him when his play-wrestling career and illegal gambling gets to be too much for her (Corliss).

Groom's Forrest does not get a happy nuclear family: Jenny marries another, and Forrest later finds out that Jenny has given birth to his child and named him Little Forrest. Forrest sends Jenny money to support them, and Jenny sends him letters and pictures. In the movie, things are quite different. Jenny, who has come to Forrest to recuperate from her drug addiction, sleeps with Forrest one night but leaves the following morning. Some six years later she sends him a letter and they are reunited, and Forrest finds out about his son. Forrest and Jenny marry, but Jenny soon dies of a mysterious disease (Antulov).

According to Dragan Antulov, the movie has been criticized for its "revisionist version of modern American history and less than flattering portrayal of individuals and movements that tried to change the status quo of American society." Forrest does not try to change things: as an embodiment of "proper America," he obeys his mother and other authority figures and just goes along with the flow. He is rewarded by his business success and his happy, if short-lived, marriage. Jenny, on the other hand, represents the counter culture, the rebels — she's a long-haired hippie, then a fast-living drug addict. Her dream is to become a folk singer, and she gets her chance on the stage — singing Bob Dylan naked in a Nashville nightclub covered only by her guitar, having drunken men holler and grab at her. Jenny dies at the age of thirty-six of a new virus that the movie hints may be AIDS, but that is never stated outright. One might see Jenny's death as her "punishment" for her restless youth and her struggle for a better life (Antulov).

Groom's Forrest and Jenny are human and faulty, but not especially innocent or fragile. While their lives (especially Forrest's) take some fantastic turns, the rise and fall of their relationship is quite realistic. They fight, part ways, and live separate lives, content if not blissfully happy — much like "normal" people. This is quite a contrast to the movie's star-crossed lovers. Roth's Forrest is an innocent, pure soul, and his Jenny is a fragile, lost child in the body of a beautiful woman. Their love is less worldly and their relationship more tragic; they find happiness after a long struggle, and only death can tear them apart — which it does, because no great love is complete without tragedy.

Tragedy

Although Forrest Gump is basically a light-hearted feel-good movie, there is still plenty of tragedy in it. As Corliss writes in his review:

... it's a movie that makes grown men cry. From I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to Field of Dreams, the male weepie has been a dependable genre. And Gump, to its credit, is not one of those cry-by-night (but you hate yourself in the morning) exercises in emotional blackmail. It's fairly honorable about picking your heart's pocket. (Corliss)

Some tragedies are transferred relatively unchanged from the novel to the movie. The death of Forrest's friend Bubba in Vietnam is one such tragedy, Lt. Dan's loss of legs and his consequent embitterment and vagrancy is another. However, there are many tragic elements in the movie that were not in Groom's novel. Some sob-stories were added to give background for the changes Roth made in characterizations. On other occasions, tragedy was added to change comic elements into touching ones, the better to reach the audience's hearts.

The story of Jenny, as summarized previously, is one of the most touching ones in the movie. It is fascinating to compare and contrast book-Jenny with movie-Jenny. Groom's Jenny is black-haired, and Roth's is blonde, but this is an understandable Hollywood transformation. What is much more interesting is how Jenny's home life changed when Roth wrote his screenplay. In the movie, Jenny lives with her father and unseen sisters. Her mother is long dead, and her father is a sexually abusive alcoholic. Supported by Forrest, she prays "Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far, far away from here" (Roth). God does not change Jenny into a bird, but we see ten-year-old Jenny taken by policemen to live with her grandmother. Movie-Jenny is "a frail soul in tailspin, a battered child in a beautiful woman's body" (Corliss).

Book-Jenny is another character altogether, with a very different history. Her mother is still alive and her father is nowhere to be seen. She is not particularly fragile or vulnerable — except to Forrest's disappointing actions. In the movie she dies at thirty-six, whereas in the book she lives on with her son Little Forrest and her husband Donald. They have a house and two cars, go to church on Sundays and to the beach or out in the country on Saturdays, and they are saving to put Little Forrest through college — quite the suburban dream (Groom 245).

Another added tragedy in the movie is the fate of Forrest's father. Groom describes his death quite explicitly, giving it a comical effect:

My daddy, he got kilt just after I's born, so I never known him. He worked down to the docks as a longshoreman an one day a crane was takin a big net load of bananas off one of them United Fruit Company boats an somethin an the bananas fell down on my daddy an squashed him flat as a pancake. One time I heard some men talkin bout the accident — say it was a helluva mess, half ton of all them bananas an my daddy squished underneath. I don't care for bananas much myself, cept for banana puddin. I like that all right. (Groom 3)

Roth, on the other hand, shrouds Forrest's father in mystery and uses him to make Forrest's mother (played by Sally Field) a more tragic figure. When the elementary school principal is reluctant to let Forrest into the school because of his low IQ, he lecherously asks her: "Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?" to which she reluctantly answers "He's on vacation." Forrest, waiting outside, hears this, and later asks her mother what "vacation" means.

Mrs. Gump: Vacation? Young Forrest: Where Daddy went? Mrs. Gump: Vacation's when you go somewhere, and you don't ever come back. (Roth)

In the movie, Mrs. Gump finally has to sleep with the principal before he lets Forrest attend the elementary school. She dies of cancer just as Forrest is on the pinnacle of his shrimping success. In the novel, Mrs. Gump is not as supportive of her son as her movie version. Her life is more eventful — she is put into the poor house but runs away with a Protestant, who then runs away with a sixteen-year-old girl. After that, Mrs. Gump works as a pants dresser in a dry cleaning store in Mobile until Forrest comes back home. She gets fired, upon which Forrest stuffs her rude ex-boss into a big laundry machine and turns the dial to "spin" (Groom 219–220). As soon as his shrimping business is set, Forrest hires his mother to keep the books.

The war is naturally a big setting for tragedy, but both Groom and Roth deal with it in a relatively light manner. Groom shows the senselessness of war through ridicule; Roth's humor is warmer and more forgiving — like an absolution:

And to those who raged, suffered or sinned through that insane decade, the movie offers absolution with a love pat. Whaddaya know? We waged a stupid war that destroyed both another country and the best part of ourselves; we tore up our streets and our psyches in a kind of Cultural Revolution; we practically killed ourselves with drugs — and it turns out we're not guilty. By allowing us to relive all the evils of recent history through invulnerably innocent, uncontaminated Forrest, the movie lets us achieve a vicarious virtue. Thank you, Forrest Gump. We feel so much better. (Corliss)

While Roth uses tragedy to make the viewers sympathize with the characters, the tragedies of the movie are also used to make the characters into tragic icons that are, in a way, larger than life. Mrs. Gump in the movie is the embodiment of a mother's love. She may not be a saint, and she may not be very bright, but she loves Forrest, believes in him, and sacrifices much to give him a good life — quite unlike Groom's Mrs. Gump, who calls her son "idiot" and is much less self-sacrificing. Same with Groom's Jenny: she is an independent, flesh-and-blood woman with a healthy dose of selfishness, whereas Roth's Jenny is a symbol of feminine weakness and vulnerability, a hurt and restless soul who only settles down a short time before her tragic death.

Groom's tragedies are often told in a comic way, and while Roth sometimes uses the same technique, his approach is more delicate. He does not go for snorts and laughs (which may be the novel's readers' reaction), but rather for tearful smiles and bittersweet, heart-melting moments.

Comedy

For all its tear-jerking elements, Forrest Gump is a humorous, warm-hearted movie with plenty of comedy. Famous historical figures and events are juxtaposed with the fictional character of Forrest Gump, and his "cluelessness" causes many hilarious incidents. Forrest may not realize the significance of the Apple logo on the letter from the "fruit company" he invested money in, but the viewers do. While staying in the Watergate Hotel in 1971, Forrest innocently calls Security: "Yeah, sir, you might want to send a maintenance man over to that office across the way. The lights are off, and they must be looking for the fuse box or something, 'cause them flashlights they're, they're keeping me awake" (Roth).

Forrest sure gets around. He accidentally invents the Smiley when wiping mud from his face with a yellow t-shirt and the "Shit Happens" bumper stickers when he steps on a dog turd (Mannion at DVD Corner credits these scenes to Zemeckis rather than to Roth). Forrest moons President Johnson after receiving his Medal of Honor because the President, after hearing that Forrest was shot in the buttock, says that he would "kinda want to see that" (Roth). Movie-Forrest also meets Elvis, John Lennon, Bear Bryant, and JFK, to name just a few famous faces glimpsed in the movie.

The movie finds comedy even in tragedy; the Vietnam War is more like a long camping trip with lots of walking. Roth also gently mocks Americans and their war culture:

FORREST (V.O. = Voice Over) Lt. Dan sure knew his stuff. I felt real lucky he was my lieutenant. He was from a long, great military tradition. Somebody in his family had fought and died in every single American war.

EXT. (Exterior Scene) VALLEY FORGE/THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR - DAY (1778) A distant relative of Lt. Dan's, wearing a revolutionary war uniform, falls dead in the snow.

EXT. GETTYSBURG/THE CIVIL WAR - DAY (1863) Another relative, wearing a civil war uniform and bearing a striking resemblance to Lt. Dan, falls down dead.

EXT. NORMANDY/WORLD WAR II - DAY (1944) Another relative, wearing a World War II, falls down dead on the beach at Normandy. (Roth)

The scene is directed in an ironic manner with amusing sound effects, so that the tragic potential of the events is turned into a comic moment.

Alabama is the main focus of the film, but other states do get a humorous mention:

FORREST (V.O.) Now, I don't know much about anything, but I think some of American's best young men served in this war. There was Dallas, from Phoenix. Cleveland, he was from Detroit.

CLEVELAND Hey, Tex. Hey, Tex. Man, what the hell's going on?

Tex holds up his hand, motioning that he doesn't know.

FORREST (V.O.) And Tex was, well, I don't remember where Tex come from. (Roth)

Of all the humorous scenes and events described above, only Forrest mooning Johnson can be found in Groom's novel. Groom's humor is more explicit and dirtier, perhaps too dirty for Hollywood sensibilities. For example, Forrest's first night in Pleiku is spent lying on a field which is covered with "about five hundrit pounds of officer shit" after the Brigade Headquarters are bombed and one of the bombs hits the officer latrine (Groom 53).

While the movie's humor derives greatly from Forrest's innocent cluelessness, the novel relies more on Forrest's cynical, jaded narration combined with unlikely, outrageous events. The movie's comedy is more "sanitized" and wholesome than the novel's quirky, often dirty, humor.

Action

While calm and uneventful films (an extreme case being Andy Warhol's Sleep, basically eight hours of a man sleeping) probably have many good points, most moviegoers want to see some action on the screen. Forrest Gump certainly has that.

The novel and the movie are both eventful, and some plot elements are transferred to the movie with changes only in style: Forrest plays football, goes to Vietnam and sees battle, cluelessly joins anti-war demonstrations, and plays ping-pong. He meets celebrities and historical figures.

However, it might be that Groom's novel is a bit too eventful. It is a series of outrageous events, and the movie leaves out many of the novel's important sub-plots. For example, Groom's Forrest is an idiot savant who plays the harmonica by ear, solves complicated mathematical equations, and has a short but successful career as a professional chess player. Forrest joins a demonstration in Washington and is told to throw away his medal, but he accidentally hits a Clerk of the U.S. Senate on the head. Forrest is put in a mental institution, but his savant status leads to his being handed over to NASA, who launch him into space with a female astronaut called Major Fritch and a male orangutan named Sue. Another series of unfortunate events lead to the shuttle crashing somewhere in Papua New Guinea, where the trio spends four years farming cotton for a tribe of cannibals, whose chief Big Sam is a chess-loving Yale graduate. They barely escape the village with their lives and are running from murderous pygmies when NASA finally comes for them. Too eventful for Hollywood? One would assume so, since nothing of that (except one passive demonstration) is seen in the movie.

It is no surprise that Forrest's career as a professional wrestler was also left out from the movie; Hollywood wanted Forrest to be wholesome and innocent, and Forrest wrestling under the name "The Dunce," wearing a diaper and a dunce's cap, against wrestlers called "The Turd," "The Human Fly," and "The Fairy" would have ruined that image (Groom 177–178).

Other sub-plots were also left out, such as Forrest's recruitment tour after he came back from Vietnam, his saving Mao's life in China, his borderline-success with the band The Cracked Eggs, with whom he played harmonica, his Hollywood stint as the Monster of the Black Lagoon, and his little walk on the Hollywood hills with a naked Raquel Welch. Again, Groom's novel either had too much plot or the plot was too much.

On the other hand, Roth also added several things to the screenplay that are not in the novel, such as many of the humorous events mentioned in the section Comedy. After Jenny leaves him, the movie has Forrest running across America and gathering a cult-like following — an apt tie-in to the beginning of the movie, when Forrest runs so fast that the braces fall off his legs. The running sequence also offers the opportunity for some amazing visuals, which are essential for a movie (Hugo).

Visual Treats and the Soundtrack

When one compares a book and a movie, it is important to keep in mind that these are two completely different media. Novels rely more on the reader's imagination and consequently leave more room for interpretation, whereas movies have a visual dimension with colors, shapes, and movement, and an aural dimension of music, voices, and sounds.

Forrest Gump was one of the first movies to use the digital technology that made it possible for Forrest to interact with historical figures, which might be the main reason why the movie got the Visual Effects Oscar (Hugo).

As already mentioned, Forrest's little running jag of three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours gave the director an opportunity for a cavalcade of amazing views: "Forrest is running along the highway. Forrest runs down a road between fields of wheat. A Mountain river. Forrest runs across a cobble-stone bridge. The Rocky Mountains are behind him in [the] distance. Forrest runs through some meadowland" (Roth).

A small but visually important change is Forrest's method of "shrimping". In the novel he grows shrimp in shallow water, but the movie gives him a shrimp-boat, which he naturally names Jenny, "the most beautiful name in the whole wide world" (Roth). Forrest captains the boat, with Lt. Dan as his first mate, and together they ride through a dramatic hurricane which wrecks every other shrimping boat in Bayou La Batre, leaving them a monopoly — and which makes for some very impressive footage (Hugo).

The movie's soundtrack has also been called impressive. In a review at Amazon.com, "Irishgal" from Ohio calls it a truly American soundtrack: "Finding the right tunes to play as a backdrop to more than three decades of American history is quite a daunting task, but those who assembled this collection of songs rose to the challenge."

The best of the best are here, with American artists giving a true representation of what the world was like in Forrest Gump's time. From the first time young Forrest saw Elvis gyrate (`Hound Dog') to his shrimping expeditions (`Sloop John B'), each song has been chosen for its sentimental value and classic addition to the film. This is a brilliant collection, with great hits from Bob Seger, the Mamas and Papas, Beach Boys, Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, and so many more. (Irishgal)
Another interesting fact about the soundtrack is the way Roth actually wrote some of the songs into the screenplay, not just by name but by lyrics. For example, Forrest's arrival at the Mekong Delta in 1967 is heralded by an appropriate song: "Some folks are born made to wave the flag. Ooh, they're red, white and blue. And when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,' ohh, they point the cannon at you all. It ain't me. It ain't me. I ain't no Senator's son, no. It ain't me. It ain't me..." (Roth).

The music is important to the story. Sometimes the lyrics tell what coming, like when "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield starts playing right before Forrest's platoon is attacked: "There's something happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there, telling' me I got to beware."

Roth made many changes to Groom's novel in order have more "photogenic" scenes and panoramic views, but this is understandable — the visual dimension is of utmost importance to a mainstream, epic movie. The nostalgic soundtrack, on the other hand, validated the movie's portrayal of four decades of American life. Each song is a landmark in a picturesque, American landscape — and even when the scenes are taking place in another country, such as Vietnam, the events are intimately tied to American history.

Deep but Easy Insights

In 1994, Winston Groom published Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump. It is a collection of Forrest Gump quotes and sayings, but this is Groom's Forrest, not Roth's, and so he is rougher around the edges and more pessimistic, with some swear words and irony in the mix (Poole). For example, "Honesty is the best policy, unless you are a crook."

The movie's insights are more wholesome. The movie's "lesson" is condensed in the film's quote "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get," which basically means the same thing as the metaphor of the feather floating in the wind at the beginning and the end of the movie: man's fortunes may rise or fall for no apparent reason.

Some might say that the movie also makes a case for "ignorance is bliss," but Forrest's life is far from perfect, even the Hollywood version. It is more that he takes things as they come and does not try to change the status quo — but is this always a wise or a responsible thing to do? It seems like the movie would encourage humility and accepting your lot in life, and discourage ambition and independent thought.

Forrest Gump: From "Icky" to Icon

Forrest Gump is many things, but above all it is an American movie: an attractive product that has influenced many people. It provides another way of looking at the world, which is a valuable thing, but its most important aims are materialistic.

The movie is a sanitized interpretation of parts of Groom's racy novel with some additions and alterations. The changes made to Winston Groom's novel in order to produce the movie Forrest Gump seem to follow a certain recipe or rough outline of making a successful American movie. The movie has a hero whose inner strength is the backbone of the movie, a tragic love story, and great emotions. Forrest's low intelligence is idolized and his innocence is lifted onto a pedestal — he is something of a "holy fool" and larger than life. The movie's characters are more tragic from the novel's characters, who are more ordinary human beings.

The movie has action, but not in the excessive amounts of Groom's novel, and in far more plausible and dignified dimensions. A skilful use of visual imagery and songs adds to the epic feel of the movie and makes it seem all the more all-American. Groom's novel appeals to its readers' sense of humor and the absurd, but the movie goes straight for the viewers' emotions. Again, events and language have been sanitized and altered to provide a balanced, wholesome, and visually pleasing end product.

The movie gives people something to think about, but not too much — cultural icons are not about logic, but about emotions and instinctive reactions. The movie combines pieces of American history in the form of places, events, songs, and famous faces with somewhat stereotypical, yet admirable characters with a lot of emotional and emotive baggage, to create a movie that is something new and original, but which contains familiar, even sentimental elements that resonate in the collective American consciousness. And that is what icons are all about.

Appendix

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Last Updated 13 September 2006