"Like a Box of Chocolates": Forrest Gump and Postmodernism
2001; Salisbury University; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoForrest Gump is more than Robert Zemeckis's movie or Winston Groom's novel; it is popular culture phenomenon. In course becoming one top money-making American films all time, it has garnered praise from some for being parable about innate worth so-called common man, and blame from others for being merely celebration stupidity. Many serious film critics either ignored it, or took delight in making fun it, yet it swept major Academy Awards for which it was eligible. It has been widely marketed, praised, and blamed in turn as lightweight, if moderately amusing, piece mindless entertainment; yet it refused to fade quietly away way most lightweight pieces do. It was still, more than three years after its release, being sold and rented with apparently unbridled enthusiasm; some video stores still featured it in their arrivals section, now in letterbox format. The Martin-Porter Video Movie Guide enthusiastically calls it the feelgood movie 1994 and gives film its highest possible rating, five stars out five; other video guides concur with that judgment. It has even contributed words and phrases to popular lexicon: gumpism is recognizable kind expression; Life is like box has taken on whole new levels meaning. In short, as Dave Kehr has written, Gump, with amazing speed, has become part America's iconography (45). Even if icon is overstating case, Forrest Gump is notable for several reasons. First, and most obviously, it is miracle marketing and pop culture. Just as Gump himself notes string marketing successes that he initiates or inspires in film, Forrest Gump has made a lot money. In one more ingenious pieces its marketing strategy, two Christmases after its initial release, movie, newly available on video, was packaged together with box chocolates: you bought chocolates and copy film was included. Winston Groom has seen his original novel reissued and selling very well (much better than it did first time around); Groom's other novels are suddenly available in uniform paper bindings; he has produced new volume full sayings Forrest Gump (Gump thus has become fictional character who has developed writing, as opposed to written, life his own). There is movie sequel in works, and follow-up novel on which it is based, Gump & Co., is widely available. All this marketing is not done innocently. Within film itself, Gump frequently poses, often rather self-consciously and parodically, in product-placement shots: outstanding example is probably Dr. Pepper placement in sequence in which Gump meets JFK. More significantly, Gump's entire success is based on fraudulent commercial endorsement: he is paid $25,000 (his Bubba-Gump seed money) to claim, falsely, that he used particular ping-pong paddle. Accounts this film that laud Gump for his enduring all-American honesty and forthrightness tend to gloss over this fact: Gump's vast fortune is built upon lie. Thus Gump's honesty is explicitly presented and praised, only to be undercut when it is sacrificed to his commercial desires, just as Dr. Pepper endorsement (complete with Gump's drinking bottle in profile) is undercut immediately by Gump's embarrassing need to go pee part way through his meeting with president. 23 Forrest Gump novel-turned-movie-turned-industry is, in fact, embodiment postmodernism that Fredric Jameson has described as symptomatic late capitalism; it is perfect example consumption as an ideal, of sheer commodification as process (x). All Gump's (and Gump's) enterprises are profoundly commercial: everything he touches makes him money. Their capacity to make money becomes true value various enterprises: Shit Happens bumper sticker and Have Nice Day happy face tee-- shirt both make their inventors (or at least their marketers), those people who had passing brush with Gump's Midas-like aura, a lot money. …
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