Popular Culture Review
representation, but to uncover the images and discourses that resist or escape
that process—images and discourses that allow us to glimpse, however briefly,
more egalitarian societies and the collective transformations of social
structure.”^
Hollywood’s empowerment of dominant whites framed against the
subordination and caricature of black culture and characters is most evident in
the commercial success of Forrest Gump (1994), while the possibilities of a
more diverse and egalitarian cinema depicting the struggles and achievements of
black liberation are suggested by Panther (1995). An analysis of these two
films, produced almost thirty years after the founding of the BPP on October 15,
1966, provides an entry vehicle through which to address the dominant culture’s
effort through such a film as Forrest Gump to trivialize, marginalize, and
ridicule the black liberation struggle epitomized by the BPP.^ On the other hand.
Panther, despite a number of historical and esthetic problems, demonstrates the
potential of popular cinema to educate the public regarding the AfricanAmerican experience and move beyond black representation as the other in a
society defined by whiteness.
Forrest Gump was released by Paramount Pictures in the summer of
1994, and by January 1, 1995, the picture had grossed $298,535,927."* Starring
popular Academy Award winner Tom Hanks and directed by Robert Zemeckis
(whose commercial appeal was apparent in his Back to the Future trilogy with
Michael J. Fox), Forrest Gump earned critical praise from the Hollywood
community, gamering six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director,
and Actor. The screenplay (which also earned an Oscar) was adapted by Eric
Roth from the novel by Winston Groom.
Forrest Gump tells the story of a young white man with less than
average intelligence growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s.
Although mentally challenged, Forrest, with his innocence and honesty, is able
to persevere through the chaos of the 1960s—including the civil rights
movement, Vietnam, political assassination, campus unrest, and the rise and fall
of the counterculture. In fact , Forrest not only survives, but thrives, becoming a
successful businessman in the shrimp industry and fathering a son with his
childhood sweetheart Jenny Curran (Robin Wright). Jenny, however, is not as
fortunate as Forrest. An object of child abuse, Jenny becomes a victim or
symbol of what the filmmakers apparently perceive as the excesses of the
1960s—free love, drugs, the antiwar movement, political protest, and the
counterculture. Her venture into the dark side of the 1960s culminates in Jenny’s
death from an unnamed virus (the film refuses to utter the word AIDS) after
bearing Forrest a son to whom he may bequeath his philosophy of life, “Life is
like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Critics generally responded to this fable with the same enthusiasm as
film audiences. Praise was lavish for Hanks as a Jimmy Stewart-like everyman,
and filmgoers and reviewers were captivated by the special effects (reminiscent