Blog #85 – Forrest Gump as Nostalgia
The movie, Forrest Gump, takes viewers on a ride through the 1950s, and tumultuous 60s and 70s right into the mid 1980s. Along the way, Forrest and Jenny represent two different paths that Americans traveled during the time period (albeit, for white people).
The movie also represents a way of interpreting that time period of history, and it brings to mind this quote from Joel Achenbach:
“History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning.”
Your job is to apply this quote to FG and explain how the movie is trying to tell a story about history, doing the things that Achenbach said.
Minimum of 300 words. Due Monday, May 16 by the beginning of class.
This can sort of be related to how everyone can tell a detailed story verbatim from when it happened just by the things they were doing. For example, I was on my computer looking up some music videos when I got a “Breaking News” notification on my screen, informing me about the Paris attacks. I immediately rushed upstairs and turned on CNN and sure enough, the TV was, on most channels, rushing in information about jihadist attacks on Paris. I started texting friends and word got around quickly. Our parents can reference similar stories to when 9/11 and the challenger explosion happened and our grandparents can reference the Assassinations of Dr. King, The Kennedys, the bombing of pearl harbor, and many can, like Forrest, easily reminisce upon the Vietnam war because they fought in it.
This tells a better story than just a guy living in the duration of major historical events- This shows a man with personal challenges living through the actual events by being involved with the events that took place. He showed Elvis how to dance, Earned the All-America award for football and met Kennedy and remembered the assassination, witnessed the integration of U Bama and picked up a dropped book for a black student entering the school, and a ton of other things. After every single thing happened, he would try to see the event from the other Person’s point of view. For example, when Presley died, Gump said “It must be hard bein’ a king”. His thoughts during these events weren’t even on the events themselves, he just kept relating them back to those he loved like Mama, Bubba, Lieutenant Dan, and Jenny.
I agree with the quote that history is a story and becomes different, new, shiny, or dull depending on who’s telling it and what is and what’s not included. Forrest Gump does a great job of telling the history of the U.S. from the 50s all the way to the 80s. As the quote said, history can be changed when causes are imagines, facts are debunked, and myths are invented. This is especially true in Forrest Gump, although many events and facts the movies creates a lot of new causes and spin-offs to large events. For example, the movie shows that the reason Watergate was exposed is because Forrest called the hotel on the burglars for keeping him up. The movie also says the cause of Elvis’s dance moves is that Forrest showed him how. He is also seen as the creator of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, which wasn’t made yet. The movie Forrest Gump also conveys history by simplifying it drastically. For example, when JFK was assassinated, Forrest just simply says “that man died.” He goes into no detail or explains why it happened. The same thing goes for when Wallace, Lennon, and Reagan were shot at. He also oversimplifys the situation in Vietnam, by only mentioning his company and the good aspects of it. The only thing he really states he dislikes about the war was the rain, and of course, his friend Bubba dying. He also simplifys the state of relations between China and the United States. He is one of the only Americans to ever go there and see what is happening, and all he says is that the citizens don’t have a lot of possessions and don’t go to church. Also, the Black Panthers, Forrest stumbles upon them in D.C. and really knows nothing about them except for the fact that they call themselves the black panthers. Forrest Gump also finds a lot of meaning, just like the quote states, in everything he does. Forrest is either working for Jenny’s love, his mom’s pride, Bubba’s legacy, Lt. Dan’s approval, and generally everyone’s happiness.
Forest Gump is a movie about a man named Forest Gump. Forest is a man with disabilities. He is a man that has a mental delay, which makes him non-intelligent. When he was younger, he was also not able to walk. Though his disabilities limited him from doing anything. He went to school, made a friend, went to college to play football, went to the military, made another friend, became a successful business man, got married and had a child. He was a very productive man.
Forest’s story starts off when he was a young boy in the 1950s and ends in the 1980s. He told stories about his experience during the decades, which is our history. Forest’s story really proved Achenbach’s quote about history because it is his (Forest’s) interpretation of what had really happened. This movie tried to explain a few decades from history through one man’s eyes, through his experience, rather than the stories that are about the history and not what is actually in it.
History isn’t always about the actual events that occurred, it is how a person interprets the events through experience and stories. Forest Gump is a great example. We all know about Elvis, the Vietnam War, hippies, etc. But we don’t know the personal experience of a person who lived through this, who fought through this life. Gump is one in many people who was able to tell his story of lose, love, and war. His encounters in life showed the audience how life in these time periods were, in his point of view of course. Though the movie tells a story of the events that actually occurred, there were many things that were left out, like Achenbach said. Forest didn’t mention how, for example, the Vietnam War started or other events that happened during the war, he told his story.
I believe that history itself is in the eye of the beholder.
History has many different points of view. There are some who change with time and adapt to where they are or what they’re doing. Others stay the same. The latter do not like change. This is a very conservative way of thinking. Jenny is a character who changed with the time period around her. She went through many phases, many of which were dangerous to her. For example, when she was a prostitute, men would try to touch her, hurt her maybe. However, throughout everything she went through she always had Forrest. He wrote her letters, protected her as best he could (which many times upset Jenny) and he always loved her. Forrest was always Jenny’s rock, keeping her grounded when she floated away from him. Forrest always stayed the same. He had the same thoughts, same take on the world, same innocence, throughout his life. When he was a boy, and he was not smart enough for school, he did other things in order to succeed. Forrest was really, really fast. He played football because his teammate would hand him the ball and he would just run around everybody. He played ping pong, joined the army which sent him to Vietnam, became the captain of a shrimping boat, which then led him to creating his own company making him rich, and then one day he decided to go for a run, and didn’t stop for three and a half years. All of this success brought many things to Forrest. With every new president and every important part of history, Forrest was there. When Negroes were accepted to go to an all-white school, Forrest was there, and he picked up a dropped notebook for an African American woman. There was also the myth brought by this movie that Forrest Gump had caught CREEP in the Water Gate Scandal. This was by far my favorite part of the movie. Forrest was a part of history. Forrest was what brought the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, all together.
The quote by Achenbach can be applied to Forrest Gump specifically when comparing the life of Forrest to that of Jenny’s. Without looking too much into detail Forrest life is similar to the “American dream”. He plays in college football, becomes a hero of the Vietnam War, meets two presidents, and creates his own successful business. Forrest’s actions can also be seen as him following political trends of the era as he was a part of wanting to end the war in Vietnam and, through playing Ping-Pong, traveled to China to ease foreign tensions. However from Forrest’s point of view, he was just doing as he was told and following the advice given to him from loved ones such as his mother, Jenny, and Bubba. Forrest’s innocence allows for an unbiased view of significant historical events including the integration of schools in Alabama. The enforcement of desegregating the University of Alabama was huge in that many people were angered by the allowance of African Americans into the same school as whites, while in the movie we see “real” video coverage of the event and Forrest not thinking twice about picking up the girls notebook and returning it to her. Jenny’s life is directly influenced by historical events, just as Forrest was, but in a different way. While Forrest was fighting in Vietnam and experiencing the death of a friend Jenny was a part of the hippie movement against the war in Vietnam and provides for a completely different view of the same time. Less significant events in the movie which Forrest was a part of also supports Achenbach’s idea of how the story can change through who tells it. Early on in the movie Forrest meets a young man playing guitar and dances for him in his restricting leg braces, and is one of the “myths invented” when this young man turns out to be Elvis and becomes famous for mimicking Forrest’s funky dance. Overall the paths Forrest and Jenny follow in life show how people are influenced by history and how people can live through the same events and still tell the story differently.
The story of Forrest Gump takes the audience throughout the major events of the conservative era of the late 20th century. Gump represents the conservative majority of the nation during this time period. He fought in Vietnam, received a medal of honor, became a self-made man with his company Bubba Gump Shrimp, and his overall attitude of patriotism. Forrest’s main love interest, Jenny, however, represented the complete opposite. Jenny was an anti-war hippie who never completely moved up on the social ladder or benefit from programs introduced in the conservative era. Despite this, Forrest and Jenny are not only friends, they end up falling in love. History textbooks hyperbolize the tension between these two sides of society to the extent that a relationship like this seems to be impossible. However, as Achenbach said, history is not a thing, but a story that we tell. We focus on things like Vietnam and the Hippie movement as if they are isolated events with isolated causality. Forrest and Jenny prove this wrong. Another example of this quote in the film is the life of Forrest in general. Forrest’s life from the outside seemed like a series of historically significant events. From his involvement in Watergate to his participation on the national ping pong team. The film helps bring home the point that to Forrest, these events were more than moments of American history, they were points in the story of his life, a story that doesn’t exclusively include events we find in our history textbooks, but also events that were personally important to him. When Forrest is sitting on the bench and talking to passersby, he doesn’t just tell of his success in the war or his meetings with three different American presidents. Forrest adds in the rest of his story. He tells about Jenny, his mother, and his relationship with Lieutenant Dan with equal if not more importance. It is true that history is not an event, and that’s why we will never truly know all of history. History is not a single story. It is a collection of many. We all have stories, and at the end of the end of the day, our stories may not be as eventful as Forrest’s, but they are, by definition, making history day by day.
Forrest Gump uses this quote through the use of perspective/ point-of-view. Throughout the movie, a more conservative message is promoted through the protagonists as Forrest holds onto his traditionalist values that he was raised with. For instance, this creates a negative perspective of the Counterculture that was demonstrated in the movie. Forrest avoids this because he holds onto his traditionalist values he was raised with. Jenny however, is juxtaposed to Forrest to show the negative aspects of her life choices. While Forrest is a hard-working idiot savant, Jenny finds herself involved in the abuse of drugs, alcohol, sex (more so its side-effects such as AIDs), depression, and political turmoil such as the loony “Yippies”, or the violent Black Panthers. Forrest exemplifies the ideas of the American Dream and nationalism. For instance, the movie focused more on the more positive aspects of the war. The only major negative scope that was shown was the death of Bubba. Even so, something traumatic such as Lt. Dan’s injury is later turned into something happy as he eventually pulls himself out of his mid-life crisis, gets rich, finds a fiancée, and is able to afford Titanium- alloy prosthetics. Also, Forrest demonstrates the American Dream by illuminating the idea that with a little bit of hard-work and dumb luck, you can do whatever you want: whether it be an all-star athlete, a hero of war, a business owner, or even something as humble as mowing lawns and running. Perhaps the movie is portrayed this way because of Gump’s mental handicaps. Perhaps it is shown this way because Gump simply isn’t capable of fully grasping the concepts and all of the details in the turbulent world around him. For example, Gump explains the deaths of MLK Jr., John Lennon, Robert Kennedy and JKF in the way a four-year-old would explain it.
This quote can be applied to the movie Forrest Gump, because Forrest is the one who is narrating the movie of his own story, explaining the biggest turning points in his life that are being intertwined with historical events to strangers at a bus stop. Forrest’s narration of his own life story happens to be involved with significant historical events throughout the mid 1900s, such as him serving in the Vietnam War, being caught on camera during a Newscast about the desegregation of schools, and Jenny becoming a hippie during their rise in the 70s. His involvement with these events can be explained in the metaphor of the feather, of how everyone is just floating around in the world, on a journey of their own. Forrest is telling us his personal life story, and that he is one of many people that just happen to be floating around. In terms of the quote, I think Forrest Gump is a story about history, because whether we are actually remembered in history or not, we still are apart of it in some way, and have the ability to make it what we want, or influence it in any way we choose to. The quote also stated that history is a process of imposing on a chaotic process, which could also mean that the person who wrote the movie wanted to try to simplify a period of history and make it easier for people to understand. This person does this by trying to put this complex period of history in the perspective of someone who puts things in simple terms. Forrest Gump going on a run for 2-month long run could be showing how sometimes things that go down in history just don’t make sense. People made decisions that don’t make sense to us now, and Forrest going on a run could be showing, in terms of history, that sometimes things are just confusing and they happen without any specific explanation.
The movie Forrest Gump made a huge bang when it was first released. On July 6, 1994, when it first was seen by excited eyes, Forrest became a prominent figure. The movie has earned close to seven hundred million dollars worldwide, it has won six Oscars and been awarded numerous impressive awards for its soundtrack, and it has even started the chain Bubba Gump Shrimp seafood restaurants across the nation. However, all this fame has a story behind it. The actual movie’s plot is an interesting one, and can be reviewed multiple ways. Some see it as a strictly Conservative Republican moral which hates on the counter culture of the hippies in the 60’s and 70’s at the time of the Vietnam War. It can be seen as simple-minded Forrest as America’s blind view of its internal struggles at the time. Woman’s rights are never mentioned in the film. Forrest’s good friend Jenny is cast as a failing low life as she is flung from one humiliating set up to another. She is abused and used over and over again, which could either be seen as a metaphor for the huge woman’s right struggle raging at the time or some people see her early and unfortunate death as the result of her poor choices in life. As time goes on different themes in the movie Forrest Gump shine out more brilliantly than others. In today’s society prominent issues are those concerning equality between justice given to blacks and whites, and also the highly controversial presidential campaign. Forrest Gump reflects these themes in the display of the radical desegregation of school and the synopsis given to President Kennedy’s term in office. In both events Forrest happens to find himself right in the thick of things, and doesn’t affect the event particularly but watches it unaffected. The viewer of the film, therefore, has to make his or her own observations and conclusions of the importance of the scene. The way Forrest glazes over the assassination of Kennedy shows a lack of concern towards national affairs, and this is something most people don’t possess today.
Forrest Gump, aka Tom Hanks, tells his life story throughout the movie Forrest Gump but also tells a historical story of America. He explains lots of historical events that happened in the 1900s through anecdotes about his childhood and adulthood. Everyone has their own way of viewing things that happen in their lives. This leads everyone to have his or her own version of history. The movie is based on historical facts and events but from one person’s perspective, which makes it relatable but also personal. The only true history that can be created would be putting everyone’s histories together and creating one gigantic history of America and it’s People. Forrest Gump mirrors Joel Achenbach’s quote because each person that hears Forrest’s story interprets it differently and can add in his or her own parts of their history and compare it to his story. The word history is composed of the words “hi” and “story”, ignoring “hi” we are left with “story” which also contributes to Achenbach’s quote that “history isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell”. Everyone has personal challenges in their life that help create their history. Events change lives and events create and change history. I do agree with the quote even though it does sometimes seem like history is a thing itself, but textbook wise there are certain events that can and will always be seen from multiple opposing viewpoints because of course people will interoperate things differently. History is complex and confusing to many but this movie took certain events and high lighted them and made them simple and understandable by putting a comical twist on the events. Aside from Forrest’s true-American side of the story we also see Jenny, who changes with the times and gets involved in the counter-culture. Their two stories still are intertwined in this movie. It shows how different and crazy our lives can be and how even though the same events are happening they affect people and their histories differently.
In the story of our dear beloved mentally challenged friend, Forrest Gump, we see the course of history unravel through his interpretation of it. Since Forrest had been known to be stupid, one must take that into consideration of how the history particularly told. This means that history’s story will be told in a simplistic way that goes straight to the point. For instance, when Gump described how JFK, MLK, and John Lennon were killed he just said, that man was shot or, someone killed him. Another example is when he went to Vietnam he had no idea of romanticizing the war. Everything he did was to stay alive. He told the people on the bench how at one time a mate of his was next to him and the next moment he just disappeared. At the podium of the anti-war protesters, he told the truth about how the war was awful, but the army person messed up the audio to prevent him from revealing anything. If one looks deeper into the storyline of Forrest Gump, you can see how Gump’s simplisticness is like a conservative’s view. Forrest went to school as a child, received a scholarship for football and went to college, and then he served in the Vietnam War. All the while, Gump obeyed his mother and didn’t let the counterculture and change of society change him. Forrest Gump carried out the perfect and traditional idea of an America citizen. This conservative story of Gump proved to Americans that even though unplanned changes of culture occurred during the 1950s-1980s. Forrest was the role model for Americans in contrast to his childhood crush Jenny. She went off to become a guitar stripper, an anti-war hippie, a disco drug girl, and then a waitress in a breakfast stop; all the mean while being a call girl. In the end, she died from AIDS. As said in class, this appealed to conservatives because it showed that the wild spirited individual (Jenny) that veered from the traditional values perished early. The conservative model of Jenny would be to have her attend school and then go to college for a bit, until she met a husband. Then she would be the idealistic housewife by supporting her husband and taking care of the kids. Instead, Jenny lived a scattered life and like the symbolic feather, she went where the wind took her. Jenny was determined to start her singing career, but then she began to change with the era and became more spontaneously open to new concepts. This can be seen when Jenny begins to snort drugs at the disco lounge. Gump, on the other hand, had a successful and unexpected life. At the end, he lived to be a “gazillionaire” and a well-respected father. In essence, the quote by Joel Achenbach clearly applied to Forrest Gump’s story of history, because Gump’s life was that of a conservative. This conservative survived through the unexpected turns of chaotic events of history and made his own marks in history.
Forrest Gump is a film that takes the (at the time) past five or so decades of history and focuses on their impacts as they related to the life of one individual, and by extension those close to him. However, while others, especially Jenny and Lieutenant Dan, are changed by events and their own personal development, Forrest remains the same person at heart. Returning to the reason conservatives enjoy the film, Forrest holds a clear-cut, simple sense of right and wrong and in many ways embodies the American dream. His early life was often a struggle, being born with both mental and physical disability, and yet still he always kept his good-naturedness, which was the core of all his influence on this version of American history. He was a part of the American forces in Vietnam, yet the most noteworthy action we see him taking is saving the lives of many of his fellow soldiers, including Lieutenant Dan. Dan’s own “destiny” of dying gloriously was shelved, because to Forrest, it was simple fact that he deserved to live. He was polite, but rarely formal, and saw interrupting the desegregation of the University of Alabama to pick up an African-American girl’s dropped book as common courtesy. History is tweaked slightly and built around Forrest’s ideals and morals influencing it, yet still when he is telling his story on the bench, he doesn’t really focus on the big picture as we see it, nor does he need to. Significant focus is given to what he sees as important, but each person that sat with him likely walked away with a different part of his story hanging in their mind as more significant than the rest. Forrest, his mother, Jenny, Lieutenant Dan, and all other characters were one way or another thrown into the whirlwind of change and chaos that was the late 20th century, and all dealt with it in their own ways, none objectively better or worse. History is not one straight path, it’s millions running alongside each other, yet converging at more points than they stay apart.
The quote: “History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning.” is represented in the movie Forest Gump in two different paths through the late 1900s. One side is a man named Forest Gump who changes the story of history by doing so many things it seems like he wrote the “story” of history himself. Forest starts of by playing football for high school and then in college, then he joins the army and deploys into Vietnam. While in Vietnam Forest meets a couple of his good friends in the future. After Vietnam Forest plays ping pong for the army in China and then Forest returns home to start up a shrimping boat with one of his friends from Vietnam, after his boat business has a huge success Forest returns home again to take care of his sick mother. After his mother passes one-day Forest goes for a run and doesn’t stop until he runs all around America without stopping. Finally, Forest settles down with his only girl friend from grade school and their child. The other half of the “story” of history told in Forest Gump is the one of Jenny. Jenny story starts when she meets Forest Gump on the bus and they instantly become best friends. Next we see Jenny in college when she is at an all girl’s college and Forest show up and tries to protect her from bad guys. Then we she her at a Vietnam war protest were Forest and Jenny are reunited and the spend a bunch of time together. Then we see he alone doing drugs and sleeping with men. Jenny then come back home to her home town and stays with Forest until she suddenly leaves. Then she moves to a big city and raises Forest’s child in secret. Then finally she invites Forest to come meet his son and then they move back to their home town where Forest and Jenny are married. Shortly after Jenny passes away and Forest and little Forest are alone. These two characters both effect the “story” of history very differently but in the end are entwined until there stories meet again.
The movie Forrest Gump depicts a man and his journey throughout the late twentieth century. The movie tends to favour a conservative view point and even though Forrest is innocent, he still supported war and was from the South, which tended to favour a more conservative viewpoint. Forrest lives through various significant historical events. The events are also not played out to their fullest. When JFK died the movie simply had Forrest say that some man died rather than the whole story of what happened. Forrest went to Vietnam to fight in the war and when telling the story back to Americans, one of the negatives was the rain not revealing the extreme harsh realities to the public. This can relate to the idea of a forgotten or mythical history. Not hearing an entire story can cause people to make assumptions and making a situation either worse or better than in all reality, it is. Besides historical events, Forrest did have a love interest, Jenny. She was depicted as an anti-war hippie, the complete opposite of Forrest. History books tend to claim that these two very different types of people hate each other with so much passion and that they are unable to form a relationship with one another. This relates to the quote of terms of having a story being told. Everyone has a different opinion on historical events because everyone has either been told a slightly different story or have had influences to change their opinions changing the traditional scope of history. In terms of history “imposing order on a chaotic process”, Forrest Gump was an overly simplified movie in terms of how historical events were depicted. This may have been intentional for people to have a better grasp on twentieth century history. Overall, Forrest Gump shines a light on a part in history making it appealing and entertaining to most audiences.
I completely agree with the quote that history is a story, and it changes based off of who tells it. Forrest Gump is an excellent example of this, as he often oversimplifies things happening throughout history, mentioning JFK’s assassination by just saying “that man died”. He doesn’t go into detail about the reasoning behind the events, and simply states what happened in the most literal sense. However, this in itself is a way of changing the story. Forrest tells the event, but not what happened as a result of it, or how he felt about it. Thus, we are missing a lot of the bigger picture by listening to Forrest’s interpretation, and why each event happened. History is interconnected, and ignoring the connections between events takes away a large part of the story. Forrest doesn’t mention at all why or how the Vietnam War started, only that he went there. This leaves a lot missing about the War, and we can’t fully appreciate what happened to Forrest without knowing why it happened. As the quote says, history changes based off of who is telling it, and it makes you wonder, how would the story have changed if somebody else was telling it? What if Lieutenant Dan was the main character, or Jenny? I’m sure we would get a more complete and connected story of the time period, but it would be in a completely different, and possibly more biased light.
Forrest Gump is a movie told by himself about his journey through life. It starts with him as a child and being made fun of for his leg braces. He makes a friend on the bus, Jenny, and she is basically his only friend until he enlists for the war in Vietnam. He makes a friend in Vietnam by sadly he dies but Forrest promised him that he would be a shrimp boat captain one day. In a hospital in Vietnam he earns to play ping pong and is very good so he joins the US Ping Pong Team and travels to China. He comes back and he is now rich and famous so he goes home and buys a shrimping boat and Lieutenant Dan becomes his first mate. Jenny also comes home to live with Forrest then she runs away one night. Forrest decides to go for a run across the US which takes him a long time. He then comes home to find out that Jenny has a kid that’s his and she is very sick. He takes her home, cares for her and little Forrest after she dies.
This movie is trying to tell a story about history because everything that happened in his life is what the ideal white male in America should have strived for. On the other hand Jenny is everything that was bad or wrong with the time period. Forrest portrays the ideal man during this time because he was in the war (which everyone was supposed to do) and he was a self-made man (which all men strived to be). Every man thought that they could go to war, come home then get rich but that wasn’t the case which was portrayed by Jenny. She started out good and pure but as the movie went on she protested the war, got into drugs and became a hippie. All the hippies in the US at this time were considered bad because they didn’t support the war and got into bad things. At the end of the movie everything comes full circle because the self-made man Forrest gets really rich and gets to live out the rest of his days with his son. But Jenny gets what is coming to her and she dies from disease.
This quote from Joel Achenbach directly correlates to the film Forrest Gump because it proves that history is ones interpretation of events that have occurred throughput the past. Forrest Gump is an iconic movie because it tells several historical stories in the eyes of Forrest (clearly not the brightest bulb), and how he seems to have felt certain aspects of history were played out. For example, Forrest became a world renowned ping pong player and got to travel to China. This was unheard of because of the tensions at the time between both the United States and China. In absolutely crazy circumstances, Forrest travels and returns with very little to say. He rather discusses the people being not so religious as opposed to what was actually going on over there with the people, government, economics etc. Forrest, having a very small mental capacity, is unable to comprehend much of what occurred throughout the time in which he lived. Because he wasn’t smart, Forrest merely stated facts about the time period in which he lived, with very little detail. Another example of this can be found when JFK was assassinated and the majority of the world went into complete and utter shock. As opposed to weeping and grieving, Forrest just states that “the man died”, clearly not a reaction several others may have had. This would obviously change ones interpretation on JFK’s death because to Forrest, he made it seem like not a big deal while to others, it was the end of the world. This goes to show that the statement made by Achenbach is extremely accurate. Forrest Gump allowed viewers to see this time period in a new light. Most people would have reacted or interpreted specific events in history much more differently than Forrest, but ultimately, thats all history is, interpretations of the past.
Throughout American History, with all the events that occurred, almost everyone interprets them in a different way. Over time as these stories and events have been carried down through generations, people have interpreted them differently, based on their importance, and also the time period in which they are being reviewed. During this movie, we see Forrest explaining his life story to random people at the bus stop, he tells stories of important things that happened to him from the 50s through the 80s. He witnessed many important historical events, including meeting Elvis, fighting in Vietnam, meeting at least a couple presidents, witnessing the Watergate Scandal, attending a black panther meeting, and many others. When Forrest tells these stories, he obviously tells them from his point of view, and because he has a much lower IQ than everyone else, we see him refer to things as if they are not as serious as they are. For example, when he talked about people being assassinated like John Lennon, or Kennedy, he would just mention it unexpectedly as if it was no big deal. So if Forrest had told all of these stories to someone who was oblivious of everything that had been going on from the 50s to the 80s, they probably would have gained a different interpretation then they would have if they lived through the events, or heard the from somewhere else. I believe that history is basically the stories that get passed down by our ancestors, and it can be interpreted and viewed in all different ways that can either make it impactful, or useless. For example, slavery, now in history classes they teach us obviously that slavery was this awful, terrible thing, but a long time ago maybe when slavery was still being practiced, children probably would have been taught that it was a good thing because it helped with our production of cotton. Events that occur in history can be interpreted in all different ways and it is never just a sure fact.
The movie Forrest Gump is a great example of history being a story rather than a thing itself as Achenbach puts it. Forrest does a great job of explaining a lot of the main events that occurred during the time period from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. He does not, however go into much detail about a majority of the events that had happened. This greatly proves the point brought by Achenbach in his quote abut history being a story. History might change depending on whose eyes you might be looking through and how everything effected them. For Forrest these events might not have been as important because he did not feel so effected by the outcomes of them, but if you would have looked at history through someone else’s eyes they might go into more detail about certain events that Forrest did not. Achenbach also says that myths are invented when history is told. We saw this a lot in Forrest Gump. For example, the movie shows that the reason for Watergate being exposed was because of Forrest calling the hotel about the burglars that were keeping him awake with their flashlights. In the movie Forrest is also seen as the founder of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company which was not founded until the 90’s. Throughout the movie we saw two different ways in which this time period effected people. Forrest was like most who fought in Vietnam and became a self made man with an overall attitude of patriotism. Jenny on the other hand changed with the time period around her. She became an anti-war hippie and went through some dangerous times. However, despite their differences Jenny and Forrest fell in love. This is different than what we learn about these two sides not getting along well. This movie greatly proves Achenbach’s quote about history being a story that can be interpreted differently through different points of view.
Forrest Gump is a movie that represents trying to tell a story about our history. This is just like Joel Achenbach said in his quote. I believe the movie is telling our history by telling from normal people’s point of view. Most movies give us a hero’s point of view and someone that was very important during that time period. They kind of gave us that point of view through Forrest but they also gave us a different point of view through Jenny and how she never knew what to do and she would run away and never fully acknowledge what she could do until later when she had a kid and had to think about someone else. In Joel Achenbach’s quote he explains that history is how we tell the story and that works through this movie because they didn’t tell about the cold war and everything that was really happening or any scandals that could have happened they only told us about what was important to the story, they gave us information about what could have helped this story move along and keep people’s interest. This movie supports all the points that Achenbach is trying to make. It only gave the information that supports the movie but also it told us more information about Forrest Gump and characters that weren’t important in history but important in this story. When we learn actual history in class we don’t learn about all these characters because they weren’t real but for the sake of the story they are made real and that’s how you can differentiate history and a story about history. And I also think this movie supports the last point of Achenbach’s quote because he says history is about finding meaning and that’s what history is, you find the meaning and how it impacted the future. You have to understand why it’s important to the story you are hearing and how it impacted the future. You don’t hear about less important people in history class because they aren’t important and there is no meaning but you do hear about the president because he is important and in smaller stories like Jenny’s, you don’t hear about the president because he isn’t important to her story.
The movie Forrest Gump tries to tell a complicated story through a relatively uncomplicated man; Forrest himself. Some events that were illustrated in the movie that were influential in history are the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy as well as the many attempted assassinations on future presidents, the hippie movement in the 70s, the Civil Rights movements in the 60s, and—of course—the Vietnam War. The movie highlights the events of the second half of the 1900s and it does so while looking through the innocent eyes of Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump has a slower mind than those around him. Meaning, he’s not as smart as everyone else—or as cynical. Despite these impediments, Gump has an incredibly successful life starting with going to the University of Alabama and playing football there. Forrest took the philosophies that he learned from his friends, experiences and mother and applied them to his every-day life and this contributed to its simplicity. Another aspect of Forrest that contributed to the story is his overall innocence. Forrest was exposed to bad situations his whole life but he was totally unaware of their significance most of the time. For example, when bringing up the Watergate Scandal, the reason Nixon was caught was because Gump saw people in the hotel with flashlights looking around in one of the rooms and called the hotel front desk to tell them to turn on the electricity. Another way that this movie conveys the events of the time period is through the polar opposite lives of Forrest and Jenny. Jenny is a drug addict who has become a hippie and also has contemplated suicide more than once. Gump, on the other hand, fought in the Vietnam War and was subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, was the founder of Bubba Gump Shrimp Corporation and played on the US national team for ping pong. Through these two characters, the movie is able to show both sides of the country in the 1950s-1980s. There was the 1950s-1960s counter culture that is represented by Jenny and her escapades as well as the type of person that was able to succeed in life through all the chaos represented by Forrest. This movie is full of symbolism and most of it is shown through the two main characters and their experiences throughout the film.
I believe that the quote could be applied to Forest Gump because history is just a story that could change based off perspective. For an example, in Forest Gump the reason Elvis Presley became so famous is because of the dance moves he adopted from Forest when he was staying at his house, but from a critic the reason Elvis became famous was because of his sexual and controversial dance moves. This could also contribute to “causes being imagined” as said in the quote. Forest Gump also finds a lot of meaning throughout the movie. For an example when he enters into the war he meets Bubba. Later Bubba dies but he remembers all he every talked about was shrimp and how he had planned to star a shrimping business after the war, so once Forest got out of the war, he became an entrepreneur and lived out Bubba’s dream for him and shared the wealth with his family. Another example could be when he ran for 3 years straight for Jenny. Forest Gump also used the skill of leaving out important elements by barely acknowledging them. For an example, when he runs into The Black Panther, The Watergate Scandal, and in a way the Hippies Movement. Forest never really explains these major aspects of history he simply acknowledges them and never states their significance. With the Black Panthers he just states the name of their movement and continues to watch Jenny argue with her presumed boyfriend. With the Watergate Scandal, he just so happens to be at the same hotel and reports a complaint, which really involved the strange activity of the C.R.E.E.P, which none of this was explained. Lastly, the Hippie Movement was never really acknowledge it was simply “the group that Jenny was in” no mention to the real significance of the movement.
Forrest Gump is shown as making sense of history. While many different crazy things happen, Forrest Gump just accepts it and makes sense of it in his own way. He makes history by adding his own elements and causing events. Just by living his life, Forrest Gump makes sense of things and accepts what’s thrown at him. For Forrest, one of his “meanings” in life was Jenny. She was one of the only nice people to him and Forrest just wanted to return the favor. He went into the war and after became a war hero because he was just doing what he thought was right, not to purposely try and make history. Jenny told Forrest before he went that if something bad were to happen during the war, he should just run. And when the bombing started, he started to run. He ran for a while but then he thought of Bubba, friend who was nice to him. Just by Forrest thinking simply, he saved everyone else he found that was injured. Also after the war, Forrest continued to be nice to Lieutenant Dan even though Dan wasn’t the nicest to Forrest. Another example of Forrest making history on accident is when he started running. It didn’t make sense to him why people thought it was so cool. He liked running, and that much made sense to him. Along the way people talked to him and later that caused famous slogans because Forrest was just being friendly and talking to people. The movie “creates” myths, like Forrest exposing Watergate. He couldn’t sleep because of the flashlights and innocently thought there was a fuse problem. Obviously no one called and exposed Watergate, but the movie shows a myth. Forrest is like a stable force in history that simply makes things happen. He doesn’t change much, but changes history by just accepting things how they are.
I agree with Joel Achenbachs quote as it relates to the movie. Acenbach states how history is a story and how it can be shown in many different lights. For example, if I were to open my American pageant textbook and read the parts about the war in Vietnam, it would go into in depth details of the differing political views and what the war was truly about. The way Forrest Gump shows the war is very simple. Forrest Gump is drafted into the army, goes to war in a foreign land, does what he has to do, and gets a congressional Medal of Honor. The simplicity of the events are pretty straight forward. Forrest was not trying to show how he is a great American or anything, his life is shown as an accomplishment of humanity. If the war was to be seen through Jenny’s eyes, we would see how the American Government was an evil and lying group proud of their baby-killers. Jenny follows the counterculture and we the viewers, through Forrest’s eyes, see the negativity of this. History is all about point of view. Again, the Watergate scandal if shown in any history book would be multiple paragraphs describing the lies and deceits of Nixon’s administration. For Forrest, he just sees people waving around flashlights and thinks that the power is out. He then calls the maintenance to go and “assist” the residents. This again shows how all the major events in this time zone had something to do with Forrest. The movie Forrest Gump tells the history of events in pop culture, politics, life through the 1950s- 80s in the most simplistic form possible. While the history books often over complicate certain occurrences, nothing ever beats word of mouth as Forrest shows us how the main events of this time weren’t that big at all, they sort of just happened. And whether we are put on this earth with a destiny or we are all just floating around accidental like, the way we see things changes the way we see history.
Achenbach’s quote explains how although history is bases on a factual even, the real meaning behind history is based on an individual’s perceptions, experience, and biases of that specific event. In the move Forrest Gump, there are many examples of actual historical events. However, the true meaning of these events is shown though the stories told by the characters in the movie about the real life events.
The crisis of AIDS was a real historical development that happened during the 1980s. This disease has brought severe heartache to people and their families. However, there are individuals who do not have sympathy for AIDS victims because lifestyle choices can bring on symptoms. In the movie Forrest Gump, the crisis of AIDS was portrayed through Jenny and her ultimate death. We saw Jenny engage in numerous behaviors that could possibly lead to her contracting AIDS. She was a part of the drug culture and practiced in free love. To some, Jenny was responsible for getting this horrible disease. It is through Forrest’s innocence and compassion that we witness generous empathy to an individual facing an untimely death. The fact is, AIDS is an awful way to die for any human being. As Achenbach’s quote mentions about history, the story of AIDS is much more than just a disease; it involves the perceptions of others on the victims. Saying that history is told through stories can be seen with the Vietnam War played a big role in the movie Forrest Gump. As Achenbach suggests, the actual war itself was not the only thing that shaped its history. It is through the tales of lifesaving actions, heartbreaking losses, and continuous emotional toil that complete the entire story of the Vietnam War. We saw Forrest save the lives of Lieutenant Dan and most of his squadron. Forrest is shown as losing his best friend Bubba, and Lieutenant Dan is seen as having to deal with his war-related disability. These stories tell how actually happened and give history a more emotional tone.
The quote applies to Forest Gump for various reasons. The quote describes history as a story that is constantly being changed, modified, and retold. Similar to the game of telephone, an event in history tends to change over time. The quote can be broken down into pieces and each piece applies to Forest Gump, and often these part can be interpreted differently considering a persons perspective of history. For example, Forest Gump is a movie with a conservative point of view, for many other people, this point of view may be very different. This part of the quote, “new elements are added”, describes that often times new causes, facts or reasons are added. Sometimes it can be verifiable, by having new artifacts or the elements, can be changed by the author. In Forest Gump, Forest is placed in many important and influential pieces of events in history, and thus changing them. For example, helped the African American girl who dropped her things at the desegregation of the University of Alabama. “Others are forgotten”, depending on the point of view of the story teller or author, they will make the decision on what to cut from the story from what they think is necessary or not. In Forest Gump many things are forgotten throughout the story, for example at the bus stop some people don’t believe Forest Gump is the person he says he is because they either didn’t ever heard about him or forgot about what he did to become famous. This part of the quote, “myths invented” is an enormous part of the Forest Gump movie, the author created a multiple scenes and changes in famous events. For example how Forest called the cops on Nixon’s plumbers when he stayed at water gate. Or how Forest met Lyndon B. Johnson and received a medal, and then mooned the president. The Watergate part of forest Gump could also work with this part of the quote, “causes imagined” since in this story, Nixon’s plumbers where caught by Forest.
The movie Forrest Gump tries to tell a story about history because it portrays Forrest in almost every major event during that time period. He was shown during the Civil Rights Movement, several major assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the peace movement that came after it. The whole movie is Forrest narrating his past to various people while he waits for the bus, and he makes this time period out to be simpler than it really was. This directly relates to the quote because Achenbach says “History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process”. The fact that he also said that “history isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell”, shows that Forrest’s stories are really historical excerpts, and what may seem like a far-fetched tale can actually be true events. New elements were added when Forrest was shown picking up a book that a black girl dropped when trying to get into college during the integration period, and when he called the Watergate Hotel after seeing someone “looking for the fuse box” in one of the offices, when they were really part of Nixon’s Watergate Scandal. He was also shown as the only shrimper to survive Hurricane Carmen, and suddenly became a billionaire because of the near monopoly he had over the Louisiana shrimping business. Forrest fought in the Vietnam War, spoke in a peace movement upon his return home, and had an altercation with the Black Panthers. In the part of Achenbach’s quote that said “inventing causality”, the first thing that comes to mind is when Forrest said “it must be hard to be brothers” when he told of Robert Kennedy’s assassination after JFK’s own assassination. He basically implied that Robert was killed because he was John’s brother, which was him inventing causality. I think this movie and the quote go hand-in-hand with each other because the main idea of the quote is that history isn’t set in stone. It changes with people’s opinions, and with their own experiences, which Forrest constantly shows throughout the movie as he gets caught in the middle of more major events than can be listed. He shows a point of view that really has no opinion, and the fact that he is simple-minded helps to provide a story that people can base their own opinions on, and make their own version of history.
I agree with the quote, “history isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning,” and how it relates to the film Forrest Gump. This quote is proven through the movie while following Forrest’s life throughout the late 1900s. The movie shows how history is a story by telling it revolving around Forrest; he is in the center of all of these important movements and the Vietnam War. He also doesn’t go into detail on any of his stories, such as the JFK assassination, Regan shooting, and the Wallace shooting. This lack of detail is altering the story. When he says “that man died”, about the JFK assassination he is changing the story by not telling all of it. He didn’t say how that affected the decade or Americas policies through the change to LBJ. He said nothing about how this ushered in the civil rights act, and voting rights act of Johnston that wouldn’t have occurred under JFK. The perspective aspect of the quote is also exemplified in the film. Forrest is displayed as this morally upright, what someone should have been like during this era. He plays football, goes to college, joins the army, and doesn’t go into any of the counter culture movements such as the black panthers. However Jenny is shown as the opposite, this girl whose childhood wasn’t so good and that followed her into adulthood. She is part of the counterculture, there are tons of scenes in which Jenny is doing drugs, and she has sex with anything that moves. This changes the story of this time period, Jenny’s story is one of what a person towards the bottom of the spectrum, however Forrest’s story is at the top of the spectrum. All in all I feel like this quote is a great example of what the movie is about.
Forrest Gump narrates his life’s story as we relive these historical events with him. When he was taking part in events such as the desegregation of the University of Alabama or the Vietnam War, Forrest and others with him did view it as history. However, when he is sitting on a bench recollecting all he as done throughout his life and sharing the many adventures he has been on, those listening are aware that the young mans life is history. Other who lived through the same events would tell it differently. Everyone has a different perspective and opinion, which makes history the story being told and not the actual event. As different people tell stories, different things are added or removed. We would not be able to fully understand history if we weren’t hearing different point of views. In the movie, Forrest being mentally retarded and a very simplistic man has an interesting take on everything he has been through. He tells all of his stories unbiased and as they are. Forrest doesn’t follow society in the sense of segregation and hating hippies. For example, when his school was being integrated, one of the African-American students dropped her book. Forrest was the first person to pick it up for her. He sticks to his morals and how he was raised throughout the film. He treats everyone, as he would like to be treated. When Forrest was in Washington D.C. to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the Vietnam War, he runs into Jenny. She takes him to a Black Panther meeting and introduces Forrest to her boyfriend. Forrest sees her boyfriend slap Jenny and then Forrest attacks him. Although being a veteran and mistreated by many war protestors, Forrest loves Jenny and would do anything for her. Without this point of view of the era, one might assume that soldiers hate hippies and hippies hate soldiers. Like many other events in the movie, Forrest disproves commonly thought ideas by showing how he went through those situations.
The movie Forrest Gump and the character himself personifies Joel Achenbach’s quote about the nature of “history”. The protagonist, Forrest Gump is used to humanize the epic scale of significant historic events. Forrest provides a humorous and relatable focal point from which the impact of all these dramatic changes can be viewed and understood. Even though Forrest Gump is a comedic fictional character, he is an “Every Man”. Forrest Gump is a simple person that tells “His-story”, participates in “His-story” and becomes “His-Story”. Forest illustrates Achenbach’s idea that history is an evolving story, used to interpret, impose order and find meaning. Forrest is central to most of the major historic events occurring in his lifetime, frequently in comedic and outlandish ways. But Achenbach’s point is perfectly illustrated in this movie, because history really is comprised of individuals’ experiences as they relate to events in the larger world. Starting from the beginning of the movie, Forrest Gump tells viewers the origin of the name Forrest “When I was a baby, Momma named me after the great Civil War hero, General Nathan Bedford Forrest… She said we was related to him in some way. And, what he did was, he started up this club called the Ku Klux Klan. They’d all dress up in their robes and their bedsheets and act like a bunch of ghosts or spooks or something. They’d even put bedsheets on their horses and ride around And anyway, that’s how I got my name. Forrest Gump. Momma said that the Forrest part was to remind me that sometimes we all do things that, well, just don’t make no sense”. This quote shows us the history of Forrest’s family and their descendants but the last sentence best proves Achenbach’s point. Forrest Gump’s ancestor actually started a horrific and shameful chapter in American history. As in many families, the elders pass down stories of their ancestors, but with this oral tradition comes opinionated views of the ancestor, thereby shaping the history of those ancestors. Forrest Gump’s mother sees Bedford Forrest as a hero and a brave general in the war, but also views his legacy after the war as distasteful and confusing . This brings up the point that history is a forever changing and opinionated story, in some places Bedford Forrest would be viewed as a traitor and a terrible racist while other places he is a hero and a true American. This makes up one of the examples of why Forrest Gump illustrates relate to Achenbach’s quote and can truly show people the common man’s view of historic events.
This Quote by Joel Achenbach represented the movie Forrest Gump in many different ways. One way this quote represents the film was by showing that history isn’t as important as the stories we tell about it. For example when Forrest dances to the young guitarist that was renting a room at his house, the young man turned out to be Elvis Presley and used Forrest’s dance to make it his famous dance he always did on stage. One more example would be when Forrest was running ad had gotten mud splashed on his face, and the T-shirt salesmen handed him a shirt to wipe his face off and from that had gotten the idea of the smile face T-shirt design. Another way on how this quote was represented in the film was by the teachings of Mrs. Gump. Forrest’s mother was a simple religious woman who throughout his life taught Forrest the differences between right from wrong, and love from hate. Forrest was a simple person who lived his life through his mother’s teachings and would often quote her when situation arose. For example Forrest would often say “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” As a result he lived his life without pre-conceived notions and took life on as it came to him. One more example of this would be that Mrs. Gump said “You have to do the best with what God gave you.” This quote led Forrest to becoming the great man he grew up to be. While even though Forrest wasn’t the smartest man he used all of the brains he had to succeed in any task he was doing, leading him to receiving the Medal of Honor and lots of fame for his doings in and out of the Vietnam War. Clearly this quote was a driving force shown throughout Forrest Gump’s life in the movie.
Forrest Gump is a movie about a mentally challenged man, Forrest Gump, and his journey through the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as he rises to fame and fortune through a combination of luck, and his own hard work. The movie also follows Jenny Curran (later Jenny Gump) on a very different journey. Jenny, though not disabled, was physically abused and through Forrest’s comments, it is also implied she was sexually abused, both by her alcoholic father. This abuse affects Jenny throughout her whole life; it leads her to drugs and a string of abusive boyfriends. Her spiral downward contrasts greatly with Forrest Gump’s success, and though she recovers from her drug use, and her life becomes more stable, her past catches up with her when she dies from a “viral disease” (most likely aids).
The quote presented in the blog ties into the movie, Forrest Gump, through Jenny and Forrest’s different experiences. Both lived through the same periods, but both had very different experiences. The quote states, “History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked.” This is very true for both Jenny and Forrest. Jenny sees the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as a time of turmoil, where wars killed off hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, and Americans turned to drugs to get through their struggles. Forrest, most likely sees the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as a time where he could find a place where he fit in best in the war, meet his best friend, earn a fortune by creating his own business and travel the world playing ping pong. Though these statements are very specific it is obvious that Forrest experienced prosperity while Jenny struggled during this time period. Their stories are two very different views of this time, and fit in very well with the quotes idea of a fluid, constantly changing history.
I agree with the quote in the sense that history is a story and is constantly being added to. Because we can never know all the points of view or the causes of the actions in history it can forever be theorized and questioned.
In Forrest Gump we see a completely unbiased view of the historical events from a person that clearly has no understanding of their significance. Part of the comedy in the movie is the way in which Forrest simplifies all of the significant parts of American history. He doesn’t understand how huge of an effect that he had on America nor does he think of himself as extraordinary. This lack of understanding and unbiased nature of Forrest yields a significantly different story than that that could have been produced by someone who has lived through similar things such as lieutenant Dan. Forrest treats things that are only his stories or only significant to him in the same way he goes about speaking of presidential assassinations or traveling the world as an all American. In the same movie a completely different path of life in the same time period is shown in the form of Jenny. Her choices affected by her childhood lead her through a life of self-destructive habits and allows herself to be put into dangerous situations. While jenny and Forrest grew up at the same time and lived through the same significant points of American history their views would be completely different. Through the two main points of view the movie does a very good job of showing history because of the multiple perspectives. The difference in points of view, understanding and interpretations of the same story lead to a different story every time, the culmination of all these stories is what I would consider history.
I very much agree with Achenbach’s statement about history. It’s all about the perspectives in which it is being told through because no one will be telling the exact, dictionary definition of history. Depending on who is telling the story, or the “history,” can drastically change the so called “facts.” This is very much exhibited in Forrest Gump where we are able to observe two different perspectives on the time period from the 1950’s to 1980’s. In my opinion these are the perspectives of the Republicans, being Forrest, and the Democrats, being Jenny. This is really a great example of history finding a meaning. The movie itself, follows Forrest Gump’s whole life up until the point in which he was at the then present time. It uses his life to tell the history from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. An event that played a large role in Forrest’s life was the Vietnam War. From the perspective of Forrest, the war wasn’t all that bad and he even gained a lot personally from it, such as his ping pong skills. However the movie also touches on how Forrest’s girlfriend, Jenny, felt about the war too. Jenny was a hippy and part of the counterculture movement. Her life greatly differed from Forrest’s. She spent her time sleeping around, doing drugs, going to concerts, and protesting things such as the Vietnam War. She was ideologically against the idea of sending American troops into Vietnam and believed that we had no business being there at all. This supports Achenbach’s quote about history not really being history at all anymore. If this movie was about Jenny, instead of Forrest, it would have been focusing on the negative parts of this time period more, and would have been a much less happy story than Forrest’s was. This movie shows how different the lives of everyone can be even within the same time period. However even these perspectives are still limiting. They really only touched on the paths that white Americans could have taken on during that time. Achenbach’s quote on history is extremely accurate because it never truly does go off of facts. The winners are the ones who write the history books.
Forrest and Jenny lived through very different experiences throughout the 1950’s to the 1980’s; because they were different people raised with different ideals and morals, but that goes for everyone else during that time period. Race, gender, demographic, and political stance also played major factors. For example older conservative men and women likely viewed the sex attitude during the 60’s repulsive and a disgrace; while the younger liberal demographic of the sixties though of it as experimentation and expressing themselves. The African American students that were going to previously segregated schools felt that they were advocates for desegregation and better education for African Americans; but white racists and bigoted discriminatory protested and boycotted what they saw as a violation of principles. Even the Silent Majority and the Yippies/protesting college students could tell completely different stories. Those of black communities could tell a drastically different story than the discriminative, segregated areas of the American South.
Forest was an extremely lucky person who had been met with a lot of succes. Though he was born with a back disorder that didn’t give him the use of his legs he still ended up being cured and able to run faster than any average kid. He was able to go to college with a football scholarship because he could run. Though he may not have understood why there was a commotion around African American’s joining his school in Alabama, others did because they were raised in a way that taught them to hate blacks. Forrest wasn’t raised with that hatred so it wasn’t out of character to help return the notebook when she dropped it, rather than throwing it at her as other would have seeing it had been recorded that sometime protests would throw rocks and sticks at the students. In Alabama the governor, George Corley Wallace, even put the state police in front of the building blocking the African American students from entering which led to the U.S. army being called in to escort the students to school, around the school, and home from the school. Forrest even talks about the attempted murder of George Wallace that left him paralyzed.
After the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s Forrest returns to America and is given a gold star then he gets dragged into a “Veterans against the War” protest, which showed the divide in America of those against the war and those who trusted the government to know what it was doing. Though people would start to distrust the government after the Watergate scandal, that Forrest later reports two years later. Forrest meets Jenny again and they discuss what they had been up to since the last time they meet. Jenny tells Forrest how she had traveled from Alabama to California and her escapades as a hippie; and Forrest tells her of the war and ping pong. Later Jenny would introduce Forrest to the Black Panthers though he was more focused on Jenny and her abusive boyfriend. The Black Panther Party was part of the shift in the Civil Rights movement from peaceful protesting to intimidation. The BPP stood for freedom of oppressed blacks, full employment of blacks, the end of robbery of black communities, decent housing fit for the inhabitants of human beings, and education for blacks.
In the 1970’s Forrest starts his own shrimp company with Lieutenant Dan, Bubba-Gump Shrimp Company, while Jenny is in New York experimenting with drugs and having one night stands. Hurricane Carmen hit leaving Forrest’s boat the only shrimping boat left they then expand their company, investing in Apple, and becoming millionaires. Which is the ideal “American Dream,” while Jenny is out and partying. Which shows the rift in society and the difference in mindsets across America. Old fashioned and hard working versus freeform ideas and easy going, that’s not only reflective in the trends but the music and attitude/rebellion.
Not everyone has the same opinion one history and those who’ve lived through it would interpret it in different ways. That will always be the case, and the point of view people have will affect how people retell historic moments. I agree quote with the quote in that, “history isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell,” as we’d all have different stories to tell about a specific day or a specific year.
Forrest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, tells the story of his life while showing and involving historical events. People have seen history many different ways. Joel Achenbach is saying in the quote that history is made up of these different stories told. Each story has different elements and additions, which is how Forrest Gump is. He fictionally influenced history and history influenced him.
He overcame things like not being able to walk very well, not being very smart, and his unrequited love for Jenny. Forrest was a simple man during this time, but he played football, fought in the Vietnam War, and started a business. Jenny’s life compares to Forrest’s by showing another side of the time. Forrest’s love for Jenny showed another point of view for this time period, showing the hippy movement and drugs. The counterculture against conservatives.
Forrest has a successful life. He becomes rich, is seen as a hero, and experiences happiness and loss. Forrest was simple and not very bright, but he overcame this by being hardworking and loyal. He was seen as a hero for doing things like fighting in the war and saving Lieutenant Dan. He also made a lot of money with businesses, including Bubba Gump Shrimp.
At the beginning, he couldn’t walk very well and was being bullied. Jenny told him to run and he ran. This led to him playing college football, which was becoming more acknowledged and liked at this time. He also ran for three years and during this he fictionally created trends in that time: the smiley face t-shirt and running shoes. He played ping pong and met the president.
The story doesn’t show anything about the feminist movement during this time which is an element forgotten. Throughout Forrest Gump’s story, historical things are shown but not necessarily how they actually occurred. That is how this story about history is told.
In the movie Forest Gump, a simple-minded man with a kind heart named Forest, was born in the 1950’s with a mental disability. he wasn’t as intelligent as the average American, though he had good intentions. His mom teaches him the way of life as he faces the many tribulations, scary, crazy and incredible situations to come his way, and his mother later leaves him to choose his own destiny. Never has he once let anything interfere with his happiness, let alone his love for his old childhood sweetheart and best friend, Jenny. He succeeds in life through a mixture of what seems to be dumb luck and destiny and by believing in his own self. The quote by Achenbach can be applied to the lives of both Jenny and Forest; in a compare and contrasts matter. Forests life story depicts a time during the era of the late 20th century, where his journey intertwined with a series of historical events which we are familiar with today. He began his life near the middle class and within due time he gradually moved up in the social class. It all started with his legs; his legs took him far in his journey. before hand he faced many difficulties with the lower half of his body needing the assistance of a brace to walk. We find out his braces were the only thing holding him back in life, as he discovers the power he has within his legs. Forest was the fastest boy the town had ever seen running, with that being said he was discovered by a football team and was the teams runner to make touchdowns. He received a scholarship to college where he played college football for the University of Alabama. During the time, The desegregation of University of Alabama was taking place and Forest was seen on film handing the black student her book. After college he goes to the military and makes a friend he calls Bubba. There he makes a promise to his new best friend to invest in the shrimp business subsequent to the their fight in the Vietnam war. In the war he saves his fellow soldiers in battle and his friend, Bubba, dies; it is then that he makes a full commitment to the Bubba Gump shrimp business. Forests was awarded by President Lyndon B. Johnson for his life saving actions in the War. Later he discovers his pingpong skill and runs with it participating in a pingpong game in China which supposedly eased foreign intentions; he was the best player on the team. over those couple of years alone, Forest makes an incredible amount of money which he puts towards his shrimp business (becomes a millionaire/ businessman) and donates the rest. The author of the movie cleverly wrote the story out to where someway somehow Forrest met important figures and participated in the many important events during the time of the late 20th century. Him meeting John Lennon, President Nixon (watergate), Nixon’s presidency, invests in Apple computers, etc. Not to mention Him running across the country for two years. While Forest was the conservative portion of the Nation and basically lived the American dream without even realizing it, Jenny was apart of the hippie movement, anti-war, and was caught up with drugs and prostitution. Her life went down hill just when we thought it wasn’t going up after she pushed away forest and ran off trying to pursue her dreams as a superstar. Major plot twists in the story because Forest exceeded to become a very successful man nobody would’ve imagined, Jenny included. I believed Jenny pushed him away because she thought she couldn’t be in love with a stupid man and chased after what she thought was destiny (to be a singer). Throughout his life he is told by other characters what life truly is about and whether or not its all random or destined to happen. Towards the end of the story it is clear as day what his true destiny is and the meaning of his life after the two always end up back in each others lives, and her having his child. The quote “History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning” specifically hits the story because at the end of the story Jenny and Forest ends up becoming a married couple along with a kid, but Jenny soon dies from sickness. She wouldn’t have passed if she hadn’t ran off and ruined her life by chasing what she thought was destiny. Their lives consisted of a history of chains of events. The history of their lives alone and the order of how the history of events had gone led them to the position they were at the end of the story.
The movie, Forrest Gump, shows a story being told by Forrest Gump himself on a bus stop bench. The movie is trying to tell a story about history through Forrest, a white male, and his experiences throughout the 1950s-1980s. We see him live during significant times in American history. First, his high school in Greenbow, Alabama when the major court case of the century, Brown v The Board of Education, desegregated schools. When Forrest arrived at school that day to many reporters and news broadcasters filming black students going into school with white students. This scene of the movie represents the part of the Achenbach quote that says, “new elements are added”, the element in this case being the historical moment when segregation in schools was declared unconstitutional. Another event Forrest experienced that supports this quote was meeting and creating a dance move for Elvis Presley. Elvis was a highly influential figure of the 1950s because rock ‘n’ roll brought together both black and white audiences. Forrest also met three presidents: Kennedy, LBJ, and Nixon during his lifetime. These scenes of the movie represents the part of the Achenbach quote that says, “and finding meaning,” because after he met three of them, he defiantly knew that he was special. Most of his life he has dealt with being made fun of and these scenes showed him his life has meaning. Another event Forrest experienced was fighting in the Vietnam War. Forrest fighting in Vietnam represents the part of the Achenbach quote that says, “History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning.”
The war was complete chaos when Forrest pulled many men out of an ambush while risking his life. He then received the Medal of Honor for this brave act, giving his life more meaning.
History is very much a story that is influenced by the person who tells it and the way they do it. Forrest Gump is a perfect example of this. His personality helps to move the story forward, and the outlook that he has on life impacts the way his story goes. When studying history out of textbooks, it is a different experience from hearing about it from a personal perspective. When studying the time period that Forrest lived through, we didn’t get all the personal aspects of someone’s life, the way things went day to day. This was seen in Forrest Gump in the fact that his innocent outlook impacted how he told his story. He lived through a time of political turmoil, fought in a war, played college football, and did many other remarkable things. He didn’t see his legacy as remarkable, he simply saw it as doing what he was told. This allows history to be told in an interesting new way, giving the full story from the perspective of someone who doesn’t fully understand the tensions of his situation. The quote can also be seen in Jenny’s story compared to Forrest. Though they live through the same events, their lives impacted the way they saw things. Forrest saw only what happened, without a lot of opinion mixed in, while Jenny viewed life through the lens of someone who had suffered greatly for most of her life. Forrest lives what could be considered the “American Dream”, while Jenny goes down the path that most people would consider to be wrong, she gets herself into a lot of trouble. This trouble impacts her outlook, and the way that she might tell her story. If there was a movie from her perspective, the events of history would be told in a different light that may be more negative or positive, depending on what it was. People’s experiences in life affect the way that they see things happening around them, and the way that they will tell their stories after the events have passed.
The movie Forrest Gump can be seen as a film that takes its viewers on a journey throughout the history of the second half of the twentieth century. The movie details two very different paths that could be taken by people of the time, the conservative route, which was taken by Forrest, and the more liberal route, taken by Jenny. In a quote on his perspective of history, Joel Achenbach states that “History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning” (Achenbach). I agree with this point of view, that history is not just one thing; it is a collection of stories, which are continually being added upon as time progresses. This passage directly relates to the movie Forrest Gump, which could be thought of as a story of the history of the time. The movie is told from the point of view of Forrest, who narrates his whole story to people sitting next to him waiting for a bus. He tells this story in a way which goes over most events separately, and jumps around from various points in time, making connections along the way. Forrest tells stories of his childhood, going to war, living through the civil rights movement, and even how he ran all across the country, and all of the beautiful elements of the nation he saw. He gives viewers stories about his mother, Lieutenant Dan, the counterculture movement, and even his brief run in with the Black Panther Group. He witnessed the racism of the time firsthand, and by giving viewers his thoughts, the theme of history as a story is shown even more. This technique allows us to begin to view the history of this time as a story, in which new elements can continuously be added, and dropped. Oftentimes, history is not about the actual events that may have occurred, but rather how these events were viewed in the eyes of the people.
The quote about history relates to Forrest Gump because the quote means that history is interpreted differently by every person so elements are changed and Forrest Gump is a perfect example of that. With everything that happens in our world, people receive different facts and interpret it differently based on their backgrounds and perspectives. History is shaped by many people who may not have seen all events the same way. For example, the 2016 election will one day be something that people analyze. Depending on what political party you are a part of or how up to date you were on the debates, this election could be viewed in thousands of ways. Forrest Gump takes place during a time when many controversial events were taking place (Watergate and the Vietnam War, for example). The writers and the directors of this film chose how to show their interpretations of these events and turn it into a story, just like the quote says. By adding certain elements, in this case the characters and the things they did, the movie was able to portray history. Although they chose what events to go into detail about and others to avoid, I believe that without the added elements they stuck to the actual story of what happened quite well. Watching the movie makes the watcher look for new meanings in these events like the quote says through the perspective of other people that they may not have considered before.
The quote “history is a story” is very relevant in Forest Gump. Throughout the movie, Forest tells the story of his life to people while waiting for his bus on a park bench. Forest has lived a life full of adventure, historic events and controversial moments, in other words he has lived through many turning points in U.S history and many large events in U.S history. He has lived through history and through his point of view it has become the history or the story of his life. The movie itself is trying to tell a story through Forest Gump and his experiences. Through Forest, the movie can tell a unique story based on a single person and focus on a certain audience just as Forest focused on his audience on the bench. This story has an appeal to conservatives as Forest was raised in the south and fought in the Vietnam War. Jenny, in contrast, shows the opposite, as she is free love, traveling anti-establishment hippie. Jenny as the opposite suffers the AIDs epidemic, abusive boyfriends and low self-esteem. Like you said (Mr. Wickersham), this movie is loved especially by conservatives because of Forest’s story and how he exemplifies the American dream. Even a dumb kid like Forest, with hard work and luck, can become a millionaire, be a great athlete and fight honorably in the war. During the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s the conservative viewpoint is taken and always shown in a good light, weather it be the war efforts, working hard and meeting the president or being an entrepreneur and becoming a successful gazzilionaire. When we see the more liberal path chose by Jenny, we see her living a bad life consumed by drugs and self loathing. This is how the movie showed history through a story and through Forest Gump.
Forest Grump is trying to tell history as story by putting a man (Forest Gump) at the center of crucial moments in American history. Forest is often times throughout the movie present during big moments whether it be by mistake or his own merits. He has a front row seat to the changing cultures of the times. Forest remains much the same throughout the story. He doesn’t change very much through the story and this could be because he, like many main characters, is just a medium for the audience to experience the story through. This could also be an examination of the everyman’s plight, as Forest does almost every quintessentially American thing you can possibly do. He is a football star, a soldier, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, an activist, a global citizen, a celebrity, the list goes on. He is a man of simple values and simple needs, he doesn’t care much about his wealth. He is the ideal american citizen in these ways. The movie does however touch on the other side of history. We see the backlash from the Vietnam War in the form of the protests in Washington. We see lieutenant Dan as a forgotten veteran. We see the rise in crime and the drug culture of the 1970s as well as ideas of the “American Dream” debunked because of circumstance. The reason Forest Gump does as the quote says and ‘shows history both its good and bad parts’ is by showing human reaction to these events and human emotions in relation to these events. History wasn’t just a thing that happened and we read about it and forget about it. It affected real people and real places. By giving the audience a character to hold on to a follow through these events we see this. The audiences has a human connection to history through Forest Gump.
The quote “History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning.” Relates to the movie Forrest Gump because of everything he goes through in the movie is like history changing, with culture, war, and just how people lived. It starts out with him as a child and everything is by the book normal except him, he has leg braces and people think it is strange just like how we in society think anything different is strange. Then culture starts to change with Elvis and his hips, then when Jenny gets older and goes more into rock/disco and drugs, showing how people got more into music and drugs, then later she turned into a hippie showing how people went from partying to rioting against war then moves into more recent culture working single mom. Forrest because he wasn’t smart enough to get into school but then in high school was the star running back or whatever for the football team then went into the draft/military to go to Vietnam where he meets his new buddy Bubba who comes from a poor big family wanting to start a shrimp company, who later dies in battle. Later in the movie Gump starts a shrimp company in honor of Bubba called BubbaGump. Which becomes super successful and turn Forrest into a billionaire entrepreneur. Later goes on a long journey finding himself just to get married to his first love and grow old. He shows the change in history in the time frame that he lives in, which is kind of the point of the movie really. So I agree with the quote.
Forrest Gump is a different type of individual. Not in the way his doctor said, but in a way that paints the picture of history through his definitely different story. Because this story is told from Forrest’s point of view, all of his descriptions depend on the way he interpreted the situation. Forrest imagines Jenny as the most beautiful girl; Forrest talks about the good aspects of Vietnam, excluding of most the disastrous attacks. Forrest looks at getting shot as an opportunity to eat ice cream and learn how to play ping pong, a change in the regular accounts of getting wounded. Forrest forgets all of the times Jenny abandoned him because he only wanted to create a world in which Jenny truly loved him and was able to accept it. Forrest runs to fill a void in his life, one he describes as the years without Jenny. Forrest tells history as a promise, one that needs to be kept through a shrimping boat. Also a part of Forrest’s story is Lieutenant Dan, who imagined the cause of his rescue to be a break in his destiny, when truly it was the gateway to the rest of his life. Jenny refuses to accept the fact that Forrest loves her, running from him because she doesn’t want to face the fact that she needs help with her life. Mrs. Gump imagines life to be sweet, taking each challenged as they come; like eating a box of unknown chocolates. The next chapter in Forrest’s story is hinted in his son. This too will become part of history in Forrest’s story. In the end, Forrest creates a reality that, though plenty different, resolves questions and problems; it explains the life where things were forgotten, invented, imagined, determined, in a perfectly relatable and information history lesson.
This movie is one of my favorites because it does not simply tell the story of one guy, but the story of America. Forrest stumbles chaotically throughout the decades and somehow lands on the front page of every newspaper in and in the front of every event. The quote is correct, as History is subjective. Julius Caesar killed more than 1,920,000 jews, yet history forgot that (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/romestat.htm). History shows Caesar as a power-hungry tyrant who was literally stabbed in the back by his own friends. Yet the real Caesar was different, but that doesn’t matter. History is what modern people remember, and what lessons they learn. I was not alive in the 70s. Barring some technological breakthrough, I will never actually see the 70s. My opinion on the 70s is simply from the story I’ve been told. A story that has been stitched together from songs, from articles, and from anecdotes. My knowledge of the 70s is equal parts Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Grease, Go Ask Alice, and stories from my parents. As you might have noticed, those sources have exactly 0 minority groups in them. As a result, I only have the history of whites during this time period. If anyone asks me what happened in the 70s, I will give them the limited history I have, and that will be passed down until the accidental whitewashing is complete. This shows how history is only what I remember, and only what I tell. During that time period there was the Great Migration of African Americans, as well as race riots, and other tensions. Yet I knew nothing about that until this class, simply because the “history” I’ve been exposed to was not based on actual events, only how those events affected other groups. The movie uses Forrest as a symbol to tie that time period together. Forrest is the only constant between the Little Rock Crisis, Vietnam, the Black Panthers, and AIDS. This movie uses Forrest as both the cause and the result of all these seemingly unique events and melding them together into one cohesive event: America. The movie itself doesn’t show the actual history, as it leaves out the women’s movement, as well as a lot of foreign affairs. But the movie shows the history as America remembers it and reflects a kind of nostalgia that becomes history. Forrest Gump did not even exist until 1994, yet is a part of the history in previous decades because we remember him being there. One key illustration of the quote was the watergate scandal. Now, history remembers Nixon as a lying crook and and is currently viewed unfavorably. Yet during his first term, Nixon had an approval rating of upwards of 60%. The story developed into history, regardless of the actual facts at the time. Overall, the movie is great because it shows our values as a nation. We don’t care about facts, we don’t care about the overall war, we don’t care about other nations, but we care about the individuals, the soldiers, the survivors. We don’t care about the military leaders, we only care about the soldiers who fight under them. We don’t care about the stunning politicians, we feel for the people who voted for them. Forrest reflects the image we, as a nation, want, and his story will become the history we will tell.
I agree with the quote from Joel Achenbach; ““History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning.” This is portrayed and identified throughout the plot of Forest Gump. To start things off, in my opinion, the strict perspective of history is portrayed with Forrest, and his “girlfriend” Jenny. Throughout the 50’s through the 90’s the perspectives of the two different people could actually resemble both political parties. In the sense that Forrest would resemble the republicans, and Jenny would fall under the category of the democrats. Forrest Grump was born in a country town in Alabama and was raised by his mother. After his dramatic realization that he had a strange power to never stop running, Forrest Gump’s life took a turn. After becoming an All-American football player, serving honorably in the Vietnam War, competing in the Olympics for ping pong, and even spontaneously becoming a successful business man after the collapse of every other “shrimping” company on the coast of America, Forrest is experiencing all of the best perks of a true American lifestyle. Contradicting this statement, Jenny is accurately anti Forrest. Jenny enjoys spending her time doing drugs, protesting the idea of sending Black soldiers on the first line, and attending numerous concerts. This represents the quote from Achenbach in the sense that there are different stories for the same time periods, it’s a matter of how you carry out and create your stories. If the movie was based on Jenny and respectively Forrest would have been the counter plot, the movies mood would have significantly changed to a less eventful, more boring story line. Joel Achenbach’s quote is extremely valid and is supported significantly with different theories of evidence, and this quote will be carried out for centuries to come.
I agree with this quote that history is always changing and new components are always added. People will always change stories or make stories up. It is similar to a game of “broken telephone.” Someone always whispers a word or phrase into another person’s ear and the statement always turns out differently. History will always change based on different perspectives or different sides of the story. This quote relates to Forrest Gump in a few different ways. To begin, this quote mentions how new things are always added into history and this relates to Forrest Gump. Throughout the movie, Forrest appears in different historical situations. Forrest Gump was obviously not a real person, so this proves the point that things are always added into history. Second, the quote mentions that history is only a story that we tell. This connects to this movie because Forrest does a great job of summarizing the main historical events during this time period. He goes over all of the most famous events that occurred from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. This proves that history is yet another story being told by an individual. Next, this quote relates to this movie in that it mentions how history will always change. This occurs frequently during the movie because the stories that Forrest tells are sometimes different from the stories that are typically told and heard about history. Myths are created and stories will always change no matter what. The same exact story will never be told twice. Finally, this quote says that history will always exist from different perspectives. This is proven within the movie in that Forrest tells the stories of history in his own point of view. He tells the stories of history accurately, but always adds his own little twist on the story. For example, sometimes he does not really understand what is going on so he modifies the story to make it easier for him to understand. Clearly, this quote is true and relates to Forrest Gump in multiple ways.
When Joel Achenbach says that “History isn’t the thing itself, but rather a story we tell, and the story changes, new elements are added, others forgotten, myths invented, causes imagined, facts debunked. History is a process of imposing order on a chaotic process, inventing causality and finding meaning” many thoughts come to mind. When we are in any history class, we learn about the facts and exactly what happened at a certain place. For example, when we are studying a war we learn that one side was angry with the other for some stupid reason and then a whole war was fought and nothing was accomplished until the two sides met and had an actual conversation. That’s the facts we learn but in Forest Gump you are introduced to a whole new take on the history lesson. There are actually characters and a story behind the history as you see with Forest and Jenny and how they live their lives and take their different paths in life just like Achenbach has said. Forest is outgoing, eventually joins the war, doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, helps may others along his journey, and makes his way back to Jenny. However, Jenny tries to find herself, is used by many different men, becomes a hippy, and finds her way back to Forest. I think that the quote supports the story behind the raw facts and gives a new point of view to many history lessons. Forest Gump is a movie that reflects a story of events that have happened in history and adds a story to the background and a synthesis of this is the movie Titanic. As you know, the Titanic was the ship that couldn’t sink, and it did hit an iceberg and sink. Although, the movie is much more than that, it shows a love story between two people on the ship who learned about each other and changed both of their lives. As you can see, the quote shows a whole new side the history lesson and adds adventure to the people that lived in these eras and experienced more than just the history that we learn.
It’s nothing more than human nature for us to recollect events based off of our original perception of them. Everyone remembers exactly what he or she was specifically doing on September 11th, and we are often unaware of what is happening around us unless it directly concerns us. I agree with Achenbach’s quote because it is true that everyone will always have his or her own interpretation of events throughout time. This is exemplified throughout the entire film. Forrest becomes invested in a “fruit company,” which the audience then, and especially now, recognize to be Apple. Though we are aware of the company’s success, Forrest does not necessarily think anything of it. When Forrest is in Washington, he calls to inform the hotel staff that the people across the street seem to have lost power. Forrest most likely went back to bed afterwards, however, the audience recognizes this to be the Watergate Scandal in action. Though we all remember the Civil War, some of us remember it in different ways. I can almost guarantee that if I was a student enrolled in Little Rock Public Schools, my perspective of the Civil War would be much, much different than it is now because I live in Michigan – a gosh darn Yankee state. The film in itself is essentially proof that the quote is accurate. The events that occur around Forrest are perceived differently by other characters, and by the audience, regardless of whether or not Forrest is completely aware of the significance or meaning of them. This is due in part to his limited intelligence, but also his generally optimistic outlook on life. “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” This analogy is introduced in the opening scene of the film and remains relevant as Forrest goes from a borderline cripple to a college athlete, war hero, ping pong prodigy, millionaire business owner, and finally a volunteer landscaper.