Forrest Gump is turning out to be the movie phenomenon of the summer, reaching $100 million at the box office in less than three weeks. While higher-profile films are drawing fire (The Lion King for violence and allegedly racist cartoon characters; True Lies for the usual blood splatter excesses and some crude treatment of women), Forrest Gump seems to please everybody and warm every heart.
Gump started out as a good but obscure novel by Winston Groom. Many interesting things happened on the trip from book to movie. Gump gained 5 IQ points, rising to 75. Instead of saving Chairman Mao from drowning, he accidentally gets involved in exposing the Watergate scandal. His downbeat saying, "Bein' a idiot is no box of chocolates," was changed to a more benign version, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
The story becomes more benign and upbeat, too. In the book, he ascends into space with an ape, lands in New Guinea and is held captive for four years by a chess-playing cannibal with a degree from Yale. In the movie, his outlandish story is reimagined and converted from rough satire to a smooth fable about courage, decency and luck.
The movie's success can be accounted for by its great humor, its computer tricks and the performance of Tom Hanks. But the word of mouth about the film probably has something to do with the shaping of Gump into satisfying myth and fable. And naturally enough, anyone who produces a wildly popular fable in America is bound to attract the attention of columnists. The bluntest analysis so far may be that of Frank Rich in the New York Times. Rich thinks that a great many Americans are responding to Gump's moral progress because they yearn for such progress in Bill Clinton but haven't found it yet.
Virtue and riches. That may be a bit much, but there is no doubt that Gump is a figure of some moral force -- the indomitable simpleton who always does the right thing. And because he gets richer and richer simply by being decent, he acts out a bit of old Protestant theology, that wealth is a sign of moral worth. Apparently because of his dazzling goodness, every break seems to go his way. This produces an endearing but inherently ridiculous message that there is no need to choose between virtuous living and the accumulation of great wealth. The first automatically brings the second, even if you are floating through a chaotic society equipped only with sweetness and an IQ of 75.
The movie's careful ambivalence about the turmoil of the 1960s helps broaden its appeal. The Vietnam War is presented as a crazy business, but so is the druggie, antiwar counterculture. When the baffled Gump is shoved toward the microphone at a massive antiwar rally, the sound system goes dead, so we never know what he said or what his point of view (or the movie's) really is. Director Robert Zemeckis said he was able to "present this generation without commenting on it or taking a position or explaining it. Because of Forrest's blankness, everybody could sort of bring their own bottle to the party."
Gump treats everyone evenhandedly and equally, black and white, male and female, enlisted man and officer. He lives a dream of being free of hierarchy, social expectations and almost all complexity. He is even blessedly free of America's therapeutic ethic. When life gets unbearable, he doesn't buy self-help books or join a 12-step program; he just jogs coast to coast a few times until he feels better.
This movie fable serves up a double message. It tells us that the retarded are a part of society and can function in the mainstream. But beyond that, it asserts that the retarded are somehow better off because of their disability, possibly because they can't quite grasp all the factors that are corrupting the rest of us. Gump's moral superiority is clearly supposed to be connected to his low IQ. As Anthony Lane writes in the New Yorker, the movie "foists upon us the myth that we can know better, and do better, by being dumb." This is a message guaranteed to reassure us at a time when our school system is being steadily dumbed down in favor of self-esteem and good- hearted social attitudes.
Gump's blankness is of course part of a long literary tradition: the innocent, the fool, the retarded as sources of wisdom. In Hollywood, this has hardened into a sure-fire formula, where the maimed and the damaged are always morally superior. If you spot a dysfunction in any kind of Hollywood movie, you can be sure you are watching a genuine moral guru.
Forrest Gump is a sort of updated, hip version of a Frank Capra movie. Capra's heroes were no great shakes in the brains department either, but at least they didn't make the point that being slow-witted was a big social and moral advantage. The good news is that the central Frank Capra message is in this movie too -- that character and courage can prevail over all obstacles. The wonder is that a hip, hilarious movie has been made without bitterness or cynicism about good behavior in awful times. It's almost enough to make you forget the message about the great value of being blank and dumb.
