Forrest Gump's a movie about the joys of obedience. It's a revisionist history of the United States told by Forrest Gump, an athletic, good natured, and mentally handicapped man.
Gump's a trojan horse, a set of guileless eyes through which his country looks guileless. Gump's Vietnam War consists of marching, friendship, and his uncomplicated heroism. And Gump doesn't read newspapers, so the Pentagon Papers don't come up. And when Gump, an Alabama boy, happens on a militarized school integration, he picks up a notebook a black girl dropped, and hands it to her. He doesn't know enough to be racist.
The conceit of the movie is that Gump's there at these historic American moments, that he meets Elvis and witnesses Watergate and plays football for the Crimson Tide, and always contributes his dose of childlike goodnesses. Gump's a game tour guide for this Potemkin village.
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