Teaching Forrest Gump: Sort of

[Mike Gange]

By Mike Gange

 

I really like teaching the movie Forrest Gump in my media studies classes. Its strength is the endearing story of a special boy, who seems to be at the right or wrong place in history and how he handles everything with grace and honesty. It is supported by a soundtrack that has to be one of the best in movies for timing and placement as well as for the subtextual message it sends.

The movie opens with a feather blowing in the wind. It comes to be a symbol of destiny, of course, and by the end of the movie, the audience recognizes the feather as way of saying we are all “Dust in the Wind,” as the group Kansas sang in the late 1970’s. “What’s my destiny, Mama?” Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) asks his mother (Sally Fields) in one scene.  “You have to figure that out for yourself,” she answers. And indeed he manages to find himself in some historic spots throughout the story: That feather is as much an entry way – a portal – to the magical time and place, as is the opening to the Batman show on TV in the 1960’s, or the original Star Trek series that opened with “Captain’s Log” or as are the Chronicles of Narnia, where Lucy entered the wardrobe leading to the magical land.

The music in Gump is as good as any music in any movie. I say this because of the timing, the placement and the subtextual message each song brings on. A subtext is a message within a message. When Forrest is sitting in the rain, waiting for his friend Jenny to come back from a date, we hear the song “I Don’t Know Why I Love You (But I Do) the early 60’s song by Clarence “Frogman” Henry. Then Jenny and her date drive up in a Karmann Ghia.  The message at first is understood to be I don’t know why I love HER, when she is out on a date with another guy. Then the date starts to put the moves on Jenny, getting rough with her despite her protestations. Forrest comes to her aid, yanks open the door, and the volume increases as it would if the radio were playing in closed in car, and Forrest leans into the car and lands three or four good jabs on the chin of the amorous date. Special needs or not, my money is on the army guy over the university kid, especially when he has completed his basic training before going into combat.

A later incident has Forrest Gump and others arriving by helicopter in their forward base, and he and Bubba (Mykeltii Williamson) salute their new platoon leader, “Lootenant” Dan. The song in the background is “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. This would have been a 1967 release, so it sends the audience a signal as clear as a date stamp: this was happening, at a time and place while the western world was in turmoil. While on one level this is about soldiers saluting their superior officer, it is also a message that the U.S. Army was not respecting the country of Vietnam.

Still later in the movie, Forrest Gump is in personal turmoil, so goes for a long run, first across the state, then to the ocean, then to the other side of the country. Bob Segar’s song “Against the Wind” is playing. The message again works on several different levels. We know we are now in the 1980’s, and that Forrest is running to get away from a tumultuous experience and trying to be true to himself. He is running away, physically, but mentally trying to figure out his own destiny. Remember the feather being pushed against the wind in the opening sequences?

I use Forrest Gump as a model for how to write a movie review too. The lead line in a review has to be the hook for the reader, and great reviews should somehow find a connection between the opening hook and the closing line. Like a circle, the lead and the conclusion should come together, leaving the reader a sense of “A-ha!” A good review is, after all, an editorial and an argument. It is an opinion on the movie that can be argued one way or the other. Just ask Siskel and Ebert, who made a career out of ‘he said, she said” kinds of movie reviews in television journalism.

My students learn that an opening line might be “There will never be another movie like Forrest Gump.” Then they have to go on to say why. Their ending then might be “There will never be another movie like Forrest Gump. Too bad” or “There will never be another movie like Forrest Gump. Thanks goodness.” Either way works, depending on the student’s opinion and writing.

A woman I know uses Forrest Gump every year in her media class. It takes three days to see the whole movie when it is broken in hour-long classroom periods. Playing the movie in its entirety buys her three days to sit at her desk and mark assignments. I doubt the value of this for the students, however. I am clearly not against teaching the movie, but I am against the use of buying time on the part of the teacher.

There are certainly some media studies moments in the movie, such as the sound track, the computer generated (C-G) graphics and SFX, even the metaphorical feather and its message. The movie is well acted, with Hanks playing a realistic representation of a special needs kid. But this is a movie that needs to be taught, and by that I mean, there are so many explanations that need to be made to a fairly unsophisticated audience, such as the high school classes, that three days is either too much or not enough.  There are so many things behind the scenes that the kids just don’t know or understand and a good teacher needs to explain them, outlining them on a chalk board or poster paper adjacent to the screen.

When I teach Forrest Gump, I snip out pieces I want the students to see. I build it into a presentation that takes two days. The movie is on TV on such a regular basis, that students can watch the whole thing on their own time. Forrest Gump certainly has some eye-opening moments, some teachable moments, but it should be a spring board to other fine movies. The movie is based on Winston Groom’s novel, which in my mind, is mediocre. This is proof positive that one can’t always say, “the book is better than the movie.”

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism courses at Fredericton High.

 

[Frank W. Baker]

If you don't already know about the extras on the Special Collector's Edition of the DVD, they are more than worth the price.  "Through the Ears of Forrest Gump" explores Sound Design; "The Magic of Makeup" is good, but the best extra in my opinion is "Seeing Is Believing" which shows the various special effects throughout the film.