"Stupid is as stupid does": The Gumpification of America, 30 years later

"Stupid is as stupid does": The Gumpification of America, 30 years later
Robert Zemeckis' "Forrest Gump" is aging poorly. What's worse is how we're creating more bliss through ignorance

By MELANIE MCFARLAND
Senior Critic
PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2024 1:30PM (EDT)


(Salon) You know, it’s funny how you can remember some things, and some things you can’t. Memory has reduced “Forrest Gump” to a few lines of dialogue and the ubiquitous meme of Tom Hanks “running like the wind” blows down the country road outside his home in Greenbo, Alabama.

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Five years ago major news organizations like CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today marked the movie’s 25th anniversary with coverage remarking on the film’s polarizing nature in the most neutral terms: it’s either heartwarming or manipulative, conservative or apolitical, an introduction to history, as CNN describes it, or an airbrushing of it.

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“One of the main complaints about the film is that it appears to be anti-intellectual, and anti-progressive,” wrote critic Noel Murray in the Los Angeles Times. “. . .The movie seems to argue that ignorance really is bliss.”

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In the "see no color" 1990s liberal America sold itself on the false idea that bigotry and racist terror were such distant relics of a bygone age that this could be played for laughs. The idea that groups like Moms for Liberty and other conservative activist groups would threaten school boards, force a curtailing of access to literature, and push to excise accurate teachings of history from public education was inconceivable. We couldn't even picture a future time when provable facts about our nation's history would be rewritten to protect some of us from being offended by nasty truths. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/07/forrrest-gump-movie-anniversary-america-problems/