The Black Panther Party, Hollywood, and Popular Memory 7
of Woody Allen’s 1983 Zelig) employed by Zemeckis to place Forrest in
juxtaposition with historical figures such as George Wallace, John Lennon, John
Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. Conservative commentator Michael Medved
found the film delightful, observing that Forrest Gump’s “unshakable innocence
gives him a unique perspective on America’s loss of innocence during the 1960s
and ’70s.” Medved, the author of a best-selling diatribe denouncing
Hollywood’s embracing of anti-Americanism and a left-of-center political
ideology, encountered nothing to complain about in the Zemeckis film’s right
wing revisionist history of the 1960s as a period in which America lost its way
but eventually triumphed through innocence and righteousness.^
Less ideological critics than Medved were fond of Hanks and the
special effects, but discovered much to ponder in Forrest Gump's politics and
examination of recent American history. For example, Janet Maslin of the New
York Times foimd everything about Forrest Gump to be “a little too good to be
true.” David Ansen of Newsweek described the core of the film as
“disappointingly soft and elusive,” while Leslie Felperin Sharman, writing in the
film journal Sight and Sounds asserted that Forrest Gump was a “feel-good
movie” for wfiich it was “hard to feel anything at all.”^
Other commentaries, however, were perceptive to note that the politics
of Forrest Gump were more reactionary than glib or shallow. On an ideological
level, Forrest Gump seeks to discredit the political activism, social
experimentation, and racial and gender liberation espoused during the social
revolution of the 1960s. The film seems to suggest that what America needs is a
strong-willed, albeit innocent, male to restore the traditional patriarchal and
capitalistic order. In this scenario, Forrest Gump becomes Ronald Reagan
returning America to the Puritan vision of a “city upon a hill.” Thus, J.
Hoberman of the Village Voice concludes, “This bleak, yet saccharine tale of
simple goodness triumphing over retardation, amputation, assassination,
exploitation, intolerance, child abuse and AIDS embodies a sentimental
populism that suggests Oprah as well as Capra.
The right wing nature of Gump’s populism is evident in the film’s
uncritical celebration of American virtue. David Sterritt of the Christian Science
Monitor observes that Gump is a fairy tale about how great life would be if
Americans would “stop fretting about improving the world and put our money
on old-fashioned gumption.” The film’s warm embrace of capitalism and the
competitive spirit is apparent in that Forrest, a successful football player for
Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama, is able to make a small fortune in the
shrimp business. Thus, Harry Pearson, Jr., writing for Films in Review, argues,
“American values are what this picture is out to triumphantly trumpet, down to
success as a jock and success in building upon that vestige of the ft'ee enterprise
system, the small business.”®
Clearly, the women’s movement of the 1960s was a threat to the
capitalistic patriarchal order, and Forrest Gump turns into a male “rescue”