by Herbert H. Stein
Why was Forrest Gump so popular?
When I first saw it in the summer of ’94 , the answer seemed simple. Forrest Gump came out at a time when the main competition consisted of fantasies and explosion films that ranged from awful to mediocre, including Speed, North, True Lies, and It Could Happen to You. “In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” I was a little surprised to see that it maintained its popularity throughout the year. I wasn’t the only one. Siskel and Ebert did a half hour T.V. show about the Gump phenomenon, asking the same question. They gave a number of reasons, including that it was extremely well written and acted, used humor to cut into over-sentimentality, and touched on the public events and people that had most moved us.
My first take on Forrest Gump was that it is a simple love story disguised, stretched, and made more interesting by being set within and contrasted with the public events that we all remember. There are two stories, the love story in which Gump pursues the elusive love of his life, Jenny, and the public story of the forty plus years during which it takes place. That contrast has been used in other films, but in Gump there is a fantastical interaction between the private and public events in which Forrest Gump does not merely react to the events of his time, including de-segregation, the Vietnam war, the drug culture, the jogging craze, and AIDS, but also influences some of those events. This is done very effectively, with a light humor that allows us to accept this touch of magical realism. My initial thought was that these interludes in which Gump, for instance, innocently shows Elvis how to move his hips, tips off the guard at the Watergate, and gives John Lennon the idea for the song “Imagine” help distract the audience from the simplicity of the love story.
The story was also made more palatable to our sophisticated tastes because it is “a tale told by an idiot.” Forrest Gump is a mildly retarded man. We are told at the beginning of the film that his I.Q. is 75. Most of the story is shown through his eyes as he sits at a bus stop telling his life’s story to a series of ordinary people. Although we laugh at Gump’s view of the world, we are secretly pleased to accept it. We long for a straightforward gratification of our fantasies, but we have grown distrustful of films that seduce us with such a simple device. They appear saccharine and sappy. Forrest Gump gives us a more acceptable perspective. We maintain our sophistication by laughing at Gump’s simple view of the world and recognizing the complexities that he cannot see; but this allows us to relax our guard of maturity to identify with Gump while we indulge in romantic fantasy.
Gump is the perfect underdog, a mildly retarded man who is in love with a beautiful girl who befriended him as a child. In adulthood, they are continually separated. Through one of the film’s many happy accidents, Gump goes to college on a football scholarship and becomes an All-American. He joins the army after school, and goes to Vietnam, where he is a war hero. Jenny is kicked out of college for posing in Playboy. She works as a stripper in small clubs, then becomes a wandering “hippy,” joins the anti-war movement, and gets involved with drugs and the drug culture of the sixties and seventies. Gump experiences the culture of “middle America” while Jenny joins the counter-cultural revolution. Throughout the film, he pursues her and continually attempts to rescue her from men who use her and want to hurt her, while she ambivalently eludes him. With his child-like viewpoint and undying rescue fantasies, he makes an excellent Oedipal hero, a hero who represents the fantasies of a boy competing with his father.
It did not seem that the primary answer to my question about the film’s popularity came from its underlying dynamics. Perhaps every film utilizes fantasies that psychoanalysis can identify, but the fantasies that appeared to drive this film seemed on the surface to be commonplace and not of particular interest to an analytic audience. Nevertheless, both because the film was so popular and because I was still puzzled by the nagging question of its popularity, I decided that I would take a closer look at it whenever it became available on videotape. When I finally did see Forrest Gump again in my home, I was very surprised to find that I liked it better on second viewing than I had the first time. That led me to think that there was more to this film than I had thought at first glance. I decided to try to take it apart to see what makes it tick.
If you look at the “public” narrative, Gump’s interaction with public figures and events, a pattern stands out. Gump meets with a series of well-known, important figures. All of them are men. Nearly all suffered subsequent tragedy or a fall from grace. (The exceptions are Bear Bryant, who is never named or shown in original film clips like the others and Dick Cavett, who is the interview host who introduces Gump to John Lennon.) The point is reinforced with narrative comments that cap some of these interactions:
Elvis Presley: “Some years later that handsome young man they called ‘The King’—well he sang too many songs, had himself a heart attack or something. Must be hard being a king.”
George Wallace: “A few years later that angry little man at the schoolhouse door thought it would be a good idea to run for president then, but somebody thought that it wasn’t. But he didn’t die.”
John Kennedy: “Some time later, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young president when he was riding in his car; and, a few years after that somebody shot his little brother too, only he was in a hotel kitchen. It must be hard being brothers. I wouldn’t know.”
John Lennon: “Some years later, that nice young man from England was on his way home to see his little boy and was signing some autographs—for no particular reason at all, somebody shot him.”
Richard Nixon: (Speaking himself in an actual broadcast) “Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. “
If the film is well made, we should expect a thematic connection between its public and private narratives. Gump does not disappoint. The scenes just preceding the first interaction with a public figure, Elvis, are very significant. In these scenes, at the beginning of the film, Forrest’s mother speaks with the school principal to convince him to accept Forrest into the regular public school despite his I.Q. of 75. The principal asks if there is a Mr. Gump, to which “Mama” replies, “He’s on vacation.” We next see Forrest sitting outside his house at night listening to very noisy lovemaking between the principal and Mama. When the principal confronts Forrest on the stoop, saying, “You don’t talk much,” Forrest responds by repeating the loud breathing sounds he has been forced to hear. In the next scene, he asks his mother what vacation means, and is told, “A vacation is when you go away and don’t come back.”
The themes that are opened by this sequence—the absent father and the child being forced to observe his mother having sex—add meaning to the series of celebrity contacts that follow. In the series of deaths and falls from power, the trauma of losing a father is repeated. We hear it, particularly, in the comment about John Lennon coming home to his son. The noisy sex and Forrest’s noisy reaction to it suggest a wish for revenge against the man who assumes his father’s place in his mother’s bedroom. I am reminded of Penelope and her suitors. The successful attacks upon kings, presidents, and other powerful figures satisfy this revengeful wish. Their fate also underlines the perceived danger of assuming the father’s role. “Must be hard being a king.” His own father has disappeared into total oblivion. There does not even appear to be any memory of him.
If we apply this insight to the personal narrative that follows, a definite pattern can be seen. Under most circumstances, Forrest is mild-mannered and timid. His reaction to the local bullies is to run, with Jenny’s encouragement. However, he becomes violent whenever he perceives Jenny as being hurt by a man. The first occasion is when he visits her at her college. He waits for her in the rain. She arrives in a car with a boy, but instead of getting out, they begin to kiss and grapple. Forrest hears her say “hurts,” and runs to her defense, punching her boyfriend. The next time, Forrest visits Jenny to see her perform musically. In fact, she is doing a strip tease with a guitar. When she argues with one of the men in the audience who is reaching for her, Forrest gets on stage and punches the offender, starting a general fight. The third time, Forrest has run into Jenny by accident at a peace rally in Washington. He sees her radical boyfriend slap her in the face, and again rushes to her defense, punching the boyfriend to the ground. (He then apologizes for interrupting their ” black panther party.”)
These otherwise uncharacteristic acts of violence make sense in light of Forrest’s experience sitting outside the house while his mother has sex with the principal. The lascivious men are abusive, violent interlopers like the principal, and Forrest is driven to interrupt them in a fit of rage and protectiveness. The film further reinforces this by making it clear to the audience that Jenny had been sexually abused by her own father. The film deftly creates a consistent picture by which Jenny is repeatedly used and abused by men who do not love her, so that we, the audience, are moved to privately approve as Forrest attacks them.
Forrest, on the other hand, is timid and naive with respect to sex. Jenny tries to seduce him in her dorm room, with her roommate pretending to sleep in the next bed, a reversal of the primal scene with Forrest in the center of the action. Forrest is excited, but very frightened. He is like a small child. Although it is not stated at that point, the film’s lesson about Oedipal victors is that it “must be hard to be a king.” Each of the fallen idols is testimony to the danger of ascending the throne, and with it the danger of being with a woman. We get an early taste of that danger when young Forrest and Jenny hide in a field while her violent, abusive father searches for her. Forrest’s innocence protects him from the brutality of Oedipal rivalry. How can he be attacked for something he doesn’t understand? The use of naivete as a defense is shared by many.
Interestingly, the book from which the film was taken has few of the features that contribute to this dynamic and is probably less powerful because of it. There is no sex between Mrs. Gump and the principal. Forrest is put into the special school. Jenny is not a sexually abused child, and she has a sexual relationship with a relatively aware Forrest in the middle of the book. In fact, it is Forrest who destroys the relationship. The public figures that he meets are not the tragic fallen kings of the film.
Oedipal rivalry was only one aspect of the early scene. There is also the absence of Forrest’s father, and the subtle plaintiveness of his question about “vacation.” In the book, Forrest knew that his father had been a longshoreman who had died in an accident. The filmmakers have made his absence and identity a mystery, leaving open the possibility that he is out there, somewhere. It is easy to see that this point, handled almost imperceptibly, can bring the viewer into sympathy with Forrest’s search for a father. As I have suggested, it is conveyed through Forrest’s meetings with the various fallen kings, some of whom were father figures to the generation watching Forrest Gump.
In addition to male rivalry, the Oedipal boy also faces the threat of being emasculated and subjugated by a powerful maternal figure. (Loewald, 1980) In the underlying fantasy structure of the film, “Mama” is a powerful figure who has disposed of Forrest’s father and protects and controls her naive son with her homilies and distortions of reality. The film can be seen as a depiction of a gradual development of independence from this powerful maternal figure as well as from fear of castration by male rivals. (Both Forrest and Jenny’s experience represent a danger of growing up alone with a parent of the opposite sex.) Fathers and other male figures are important in that development. Forrest begins to relate meaningfully with male figures after his separation from Mama.
After the description of the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Forrest says, “It must be hard being brothers. I wouldn’t know.” The film then turns, for the first time, to Forrest’s close relationships with other men. We discover first that he has had a brother, Bubba, a mentally retarded black man whom he meets in the army. They become inseparable. When they arrive together in Vietnam and the lieutenant asks if they are brothers, Gump naively answers, “We are not related.” However, it is clear to the viewer that their relationship is one of brothers. Forrest wins the Congressional Medal of Honor trying to save Bubba during a fire-fight. As he looks for Bubba, he keeps finding other men from the unit and carrying each of them to safety. He does find Bubba, but Bubba dies in his arms. Part of Forrest’s charm, made believable by the device of his mental retardation, is his simplistic, unquestioning morality. Forrest feels obligated to carry out the plans he had made with Bubba to start a shrimping business. When the business is a great success through one of the film’s humorously presented deus ex machinas, he gives Bubba’s family his share of the profits, causing Bubba’s cynical mother to faint.
Forrest’s other fraternal relationship is with “Lieutenant Dan.” Although he is Forrest’s age, Dan starts off as a paternal figure. He is Forrest’s superior officer. He is also his guide in Vietnam, full of friendly advice. However, to the extent that Lieutenant Dan is a father figure, he is another failed father figure. After Gump saves his life, he becomes an embittered double amputee. He feels that Forrest has cheated him out of his destiny. He came from a line of military men who died in combat. Dan becomes a cynical alcoholic. But in time, Gump’s tenacious loyalty and optimism prevail. One of the messages that Forrest Gump took from his mother was that despite his disability, “You’re as good as anyone else.” He applies this wisdom to Lieutenant Dan, refusing to accept Dan’s view of himself as de-valued by his disability. This is another of the positive messages that the otherwise cynical viewer is able to accept from the innocent Gump in this fantastical comedic atmosphere. Dan becomes a success along with Gump.
Forrest grows with his repeated successes and increasingly secure aggressiveness against his rivals for Jenny. He is eventually able to declare his love for Jenny and to ask her to marry him. She makes love to him, but then leaves. As the flashbacks come to an end, we learn that Jenny has recontacted him. Forrest is at the bus stop on his way to see her. Now the film ceases to be a narrative of memories. We see action as it happens. With that, the fantastic brushes with fame stop. It is as if the “magical realism” can only exist in the form of memory, a blending of psychic reality and “objective reality.”
There is also no attempt at broad humor in this last section of the film. Forrest is more mature. Now he is capable of marrying Jenny and raising the son she had conceived with him. There are no more rivals. When Lieutenant Dan arrives at Forrest’s wedding to Jenny, he is walking with artificial legs and has his own bride by his side. In effect, castration anxiety is overcome and both Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan can become Oedipal victors. The audience appears to be able to accept this Oedipal resolution without protest, having laughed enough and having been gently brought to a state of reduced defense against unsophisticated “storybook solutions.”
In the end, Forrest Gump finds his missing father in himself. He marries Jenny and becomes a loving father to his own son. In the film’s final tragedy, Jenny dies of AIDS, a result of her years of drugs and indiscriminate sex. Forrest grieves for her, and appears to come to terms with his loss. In the final scene, he is sending his son off to school on seemingly the same bus that he had taken when he met Jenny. But his son is not “stupid” and his son knows what happened to his mother and where she is buried.
Having seen the film twice, and “taken it apart” to uncover most of the dynamics I have just described, I was still left feeling that I could not really explain the film’s great popularity. I was not convinced that the Oedipal dynamics explained it. Oedipal dynamics are a feature of many films that are successful and many that are unsuccessful. Surely the way in which positive values were unobtrusively sneaked into the film played a part. We are always secretly eager to merge gratification of drives and conscience by enjoying the triumph of good.
It was only after I saw the film a third time that I realized what a dummy I had been. (“Stupid is as stupid does.”) This third viewing came about by accident. I was on a bus trip with a group of Vietnam veterans (most of whom, by the way, found the Vietnam scenes very true to life and very disturbing). One of the veterans had brought a copy of the film for viewing on the way. Again, I found the film touching and possibly even cathartic. (But I’m not recommending that everyone see it three times.) In taking the film apart, dynamically, I had indeed “lost the Forrest for the Gump.” This happens at times in working with patients, that we must go through the detour of understanding disconnected dynamics before we are able to see something that is right on the surface and has broad emotional meaning, something that brings together the various dynamics we have observed.
What I suddenly realized was that the impact of this “comedy”came from its effort to resolve trauma. People were going to see Forrest Gump to reexperience the major traumata of their generation, public and private, and to feel that survival and value were still possible. Through the laughter, the film depicts the tragic deaths of heroes, the wanton slaughter of war, the violent divisiveness of the Vietnam era, the traumatic effects of sexual abuse, the confusion and painful mistakes of adolescence, the loss of loved ones and the scourge of illness. The occurrence of trauma is incomprehensible, arbitrary, and irreversible. “Some time later, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young president when he was riding in his car”. “Some years later, that nice young man from England was on his way home to see his little boy and was signing some autographs—for no particular reason at all, somebody shot him.”
The film buffers us through a reversal, making us laugh by applying this arbitrariness to good fortune. Forrest experiences a series of fantastic fortunate accidents that seemingly undo the effects of his disability. As one viewer put it, “The boy who can’t walk becomes the fastest runner, he’s retarded and he graduates from college, he starts a shrimp business and becomes a tycoon.” We laugh with relief and surprise. We don’t expect positive events to occur arbitrarily, only tragedy. We laugh knowingly, thinking that such things can only happen in the movies. Gump’s serendipitous climb to success fits with his unbelievable interchanges with the famous. We laugh and accept it because it is presented as humor.
But this easy fantasy solution is just the surface that amuses us and helps relax our guard. Trauma is handled deftly, so that we continue laughing as Forrest Gump passes breezily through the absence of his father, the painfulness of his own disability, seeing his mother have sex to get him into school, the brutality of Jenny’s father, the horror of the war, the death of Bubba, the traumatic amputation of Lieutenant Dan, the death of Forrest’s mother, and finally Jenny’s death. It is only towards the end that he begins to show signs of awareness and true coping. When he learns that Jenny has borne his son, he asks if the boy is “like me.” He is reassured that his son is smart, for the first time showing that he understands the rationalization in his mother’s homilies. When Jenny dies, he grieves. We see him crying by her grave. But he truly copes. He is even philosophical at the end, describing life as a combination of fate and chance, arbitrary accidents and destiny (external events and character). This is out of character for Gump, but in a film that is built upon fantasy, we do not really care.
Forrest Gump’s message is that trauma is an inevitable part of life, but that we can survive and cope. We can even grow and become relatively independent of our deepest fears. I suspect that it is that message of catharsis and resolution that has made the film, Forrest Gump, so popular.
Previously published in the PANY Bulletin and in Double Feature: Discovering our Hidden Fantasies in Film by Herbert H. Stein, M.D. (ebooks)