I was gonna do a writeup but this author sums up my thoughts pretty well. I always hated how the movie portrayed Jenny. It’s like the movie tries to punish her for daring to move against the broader (white, patriarchal, militaristic, conservative) culture. Notice how she only receives redemption when she functionally gives up her counter-cultural ways and accepts her role as a mom. And even then she still gets “punished” for her “sins” by dying of AIDS like it’s some Grimm fairy tale. Feels a bit like incel fan-fiction, in hindsight.

And of course the movie panders to white reactionary notions of the Black Panthers. They were just angry black men who were reverse racists. Gross.

Forrest Gump is incredibly reactionary and it’s terrible. It’s the conservative boomers’ attempt to tell a morality tale in which they are the ultimate victors over their contemporaries who dared for something different.

  • Blottergrass [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Feels a bit like incel fan-fiction, in hindsight.

    There’s literally a scene of Forrest seething while listening to his mom and some guy fuck. Elliot Rodgers did the exact same thing with his sister.

  • Zizek [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Okay sho (schniff) Foresht Gump isch a movie yesh yesh a movie about the psychoshexual desire of all white americansh to be lobotimized it isch ableisht and reactionary and sho on and sho forth.

    Not a good movie, Tom Hanksh givesch a very mediocre performansch. It isch a liberal nostalgia for itsch arrogant preschumption about the end of hischtory. (gleeks wad of phlegm onto floor) A victory lap for ideological perverts to maschturbate over stripsch of celluoid and then literally project their maschturbation onto the eyesch of an entire nation!

    Foresht? He isch presented as a sort of parody of what the diseased neurotypical mind thinksch anyone that isch not the Aryan norm isch. (licking fingers, dipping them into bag of cocaine, then aggressively rubbing the cocaine into gums) The film isch also racist, it steals its conventions from old American minstrel schows. Tom Hanksch is only momentsch away from smearing schoe polisch over hisch face and singing “old man river” or schomething like thisch. Disgusting. The directors contempt isch clearly seen in their depiction of the Black Panther Party. Foresct Gump is racist.

    And the worscht part of thisch (snorting sounds, the crackling of cocaine being huffed by what could be mistaken for a truffle hog) yesch good shit okay - the worscht part of thisch is that America loved it!!

    For schome reason they make thisch Foresht man a reincarnation of Hermes, he can only run very fast and schow up in historical eventsch, but never change them. He isch an omen ov neoliberalischm and entropy. And like hisch counterpart Mercury, he isch profane and maddening.

    Lacan says that the anal neurosis can be impeded when it loses itsch natural antagonischt and rivalsch (clears throat, hacks up hairball of fiber glass, wool, and dandruff) and sho without the Schoviet Union, Amerika began to produce these filmsch of decay and celebration.

    To conclude, Tom Hanksch should be shot.

    :zizek-ok: okay? okay yesch

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Good article, but it’s pretty funny that they reference Natural Born Killers as a contemporary movie with more radical energy. That movie has aged like milk, whereas Forrest Gump is exactly as boring as it’s always been

  • joseph [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    i fucking hated this movie even before I became a communist. never understood the hype. it was funny to see the OG author lose his mind over all the changes they made in the adaptation though.

  • adultswim_antifa [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    I hate Forrest Gump. I’ve always thought of it as a boomer anthem. A man bounces from victory to victory through a world he is incapable of understanding and endless opportunity and success are lavished upon him and he doesn’t even really understand that this luck isn’t happening to everyone else.

  • DragonNest_Aidit [they/them,use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    For the longest time when I was a teen I had a more nihilistic take on this movie: life fucking sucks and you could work hard all day in your life only for some lucky chump to take it all.

    Jenny spend her life trying to pursue what she wanted while Forrest just bumbles through his life and got everything going his way. Lieutenant Dan wanted to become a big American warrior hero, something cruelly denied from him while Forrest became one without any intention to do so. Bubba died pointlessly. Then there’s the running sequence where Forrest who were just running for no reason at all came across numerous people struggle with their dreams and solves it for them unknowingly as he passes by.

    But yeah, as a leftist now the reactionary subtexts are much more apparent and my reading was the result of my at the time ignorance of American culture at the time, which says a lot that I perceived what was supposed to be a conservative triumph story into a story about how life is cruel and arbitrary.

  • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    I counted this as my second favorite movie as a teen (after The Matrix) but I’ve never watched it as a leftist adult to reasses. Maybe I should avoid doing so to preserve my childlike innocence about it :agony-shivering:

  • The_Walkening [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    I heard the source material was a satire of Boomers - I think in either the original book or the sequel, he goes to space with a monkey.

    Also the part where Tom Hanks as Forrest gets shot in the ass, narrates the line “It felt like something jumped up and bit me” and then screaming “It bit me!” is pretty funny regardless.

    • thirstywizard [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      Right, in the original, he did a secret mission for NASA and crash landed on an island of cannibals or someshit (still was questionable, in different ways from the film).

      The film stole Forrest Gump’s soul, he was a character with flaws, not just a saintly Murican observer, when he fucked up life quickly turned to kick his ass. He also swore on like every page, fucked all the time and smoked dope with Lt. Dan (who was a manipulative bastard). That’s what got me the most, they turned a mildly anti-war novel into an outright pro-war one.