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‘Forrest Gump’ – Film Review and Analysis

One film that captures both your imagination and your heartstrings is the classic American film, Forrest Gump. Released in theaters over two decades ago in 1994, it has become one of the most beloved films of all time and enjoyed high amounts of praise from both critics and moviegoers alike. The film was notable for the fact that it won many different awards and accolades such as the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, among many other distinctions. I would argue that this film along with Big helped to launch Tom Hanks as one of Hollywood’s rising stars and set him on a monumental acting career, which included many future box office hits. Five years ago, the U.S. Library of Congress recognized Forrest Gump as being a film that is historically, culturally, and aesthetically significant and selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Forrest Gump is about an everyman who has a slight disability of not being as smart as everyone else with an IQ of 75. However, despite him learning this fact as a child and being bullied about it, he manages to not let this handicap ruin his life but instead learns to preserve and make the most of things. The story of Forrest Gump takes place over the tumultuous and transformative decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when America went through a number of political, social, and economic changes. One of the true delights of this film is seeing how many of these changes Forrest witnesses and is actually apart of.

During the film, we see him shaking his hips with Elvis Presley at his mom’s guesthouse in Alabama, serving in the U.S. Army after being drafted in the Vietnam War, starting a fight during the midst of a Black Panther group meeting, and meeting Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Despite his lack of formal intelligence, Forrest does not let that stop him from being an ‘All-American’ college football player, a veteran of the Vietnam War, a shrimp boat, a wealthy man due to his investments in a little company called Apple Inc, and lastly and most important, a loving son, friend, father, and husband. In addition to serving in Vietnam and witnessing Elvis Presley in person, Forrest also helps a black woman become the first African-American to integrate into an all-white school, helps to break the seal on the Watergate scandal when he sees people breaking into DNC headquarters, and becomes an international ping-pong star while helping to improve relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. He’s an every man who takes life as it comes regardless of the good or bad and finds himself involved in extraordinary events that shape American history.

As Forrest gets wrapped up in these events over the course of the film, he takes an almost child-like innocence to them even in the cases of war, violence and prejudice. He’s aware of these things and knows right from wrong but tries to live a simple and uncomplicated life despite all he’s been through. He wants to be a good son to his mother; he desires to be with the love of his life, Jenny, to have good friendships with his fellow soldier Bubba and Lieutenant Dan, and to be a responsible father to his son at the end of the movie. He may lack intelligence in terms of critical thinking and solving problems; he has the ability to display maturity, show emotional intelligence and is able to show kindness and love towards others despite his differences with them.

While he may not know his father, and his wife Jenny disrespected and left him in the cold over the years when she was dealing with her own demons, he has the ability to look past these grievances and live a good and fulfilling life. Forrest endures other traumas and heartbreak in the Vietnam War when he sees his fellow soldiers and friends killed or disabled like his good friend Bubba and his lieutenant, Dan Taylor. While he could have given up on life or become bitter and disenchanted, Forrest instead finds new purposes in playing ping-pong around the world, starting a very profitable shrimp boat company with his old Lieutenant Dan, and runs around the United States for three years straight to help get past those losses and betrayals that has haunted him. Forrest is an example of a man who never gives up and keeps moving forward despite his past. He simply does not let his past define him. Like all of us, he’s been giving good and bad fortune but he makes the best of things regardless of the circumstances.

During the long run scene of Forrest’s, people become inspired by his example and ask him for advice and guidance. He doesn’t have much to say to them but they happen to find comfort in the fact that he’s doing this just for its’ own sake. Forrest simply can’t help them all figure life as they have to each follow their own path and find inspiration wherever they can. Once one path ends, another one opens up to be explored afterwards. As Forrest states when reporters ask him why he’s running, “I just felt like running.” Sometimes, you don’t need a reason to be doing something if you feel like it.

While many other people are inspired and are given hope from Forrest’s example, Forrest is inspired by other people such as his mother played by the wonderful Sally Field, along with his fellow soldier Bubba and his Lieutenant Dan. His mother teaches him about love, respect, and finding your own path in life. She gives Forrest a quote on her death-bed that he takes to heart and has become one of the most famous movie quotes of all-time. “Life is like a box of chocolates, Forrest, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Forrest asks his mom what his destiny may be. She tells him that he can’t answer that for him and ask he needs to figure that out for himself. She does let him know that it was her destiny to be his momma and that she’s very proud of the man that he has become.

Forrest’s relationship throughout the film with Jenny is complicated and unfortunate as the ways their lives converge and diverge leads to pain and heartbreak but also compassion and understanding. Jenny is Forrest’s first and only love. They grow up together and spend time getting to know each other. Forrest is a breath of fresh air for Jenny who has to deal with an abusive father at home. Even through college, they remain close but still friends.

Jenny’s path through life takes her to some lonely places and she deals with abusive boyfriends, drug abuse, and hostile friends like the Black Panther party. Even with her flaws, Forrest still loves her as always and asks her to marry him. She eventually agrees to be his bride making him the happiest man in the world. Tragically, their marriage is cut short by the fact that Jenny has HIV/AIDS and has become really sick. However, the love that Jenny shares for Forrest allows them to have a son together before she passes away. While a devastating loss for Forrest like it was to lose his mother and Bubba, his best friend, Forrest’s destiny is renewed in the love he has for his son, Forrest Jr. as he takes care of him after Jenny’s death.

Forrest Gump is a special movie that has resonated with millions of people around the world. Many folks have been inspired by the message of this movie and have gone to improve their lives in enumerable ways. The story of Forrest Gump is a story of hope, love, perseverance, respect, and tolerance. Anybody who watches Forrest Gump will get something out of the movie because of its’ overall message. Like the feather that floats by Forrest at the beginning and ending of the film, you make the most of what we’re dealt with in life and it’s you alone who can shape your destiny through the choices you make, the people you befriend, and the impact you create. We may all be floating on the breeze like a feather unsure of where we’re going but we can steer the direction of that feather to new places and new conclusions.

Forrest Gump is a special character in a special movie that rekindles for viewers what they love about the big screen by showing our capacity as human beings to love, cry, laugh, and share good times and bad with those friends and family as Forrest does. Anybody who watches Forrest Gump can relate to Forrest and what he goes through. That is what makes this movie such an endearing, popular film and why it will last for many more years as one of the most iconic pieces of work in American cinema.

Author: Ben W.

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Research Week 2015

"What's Normal Anyways?": Intersectionality in Forrest Gump

Presenter Information

Jillian Bennion Follow

Faculty Mentor

Joyce Kinkaid

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Lindon Barrett criticizes contemporary literary critics for excluding gender and class from a race-based approach to literature, offering instead 'intersectionality.' Literary criticism has typically taken one approach - simplifying analysis by focusing on race, or class, or gender only. An intersectional view of literature offers critics and readers a more encompassing view of culture in order to ascertain a more accurate perspective of contemporary society; I analyze this further to show that, although Barrett brought the term to the surface, society has been engaged in an intersectional approach in regards to film for decades. I expand current intersectional approaches to illuminate society's desire to better understand our own humanity and existence through multiple lenses. In regards to film, the popularity of Forrest Gump reveals society's affinity for such an intersectional approach to culture. Forrest Gump is not the only example of this affinity - the success of films like Django Unchained, The '60s, and The '70s, and TV shows like Mad Men and The West Wing attest to the subconscious desire for this all-inclusive view. Conventional perceptions of American society remark negatively on the passive, anti-intellectual nature of mass media. Instead, I argue that films like Forrest Gump illustrate society's need to understand the complexities of the world and the people who inhabit it through an intersectional lens.

4-9-2015 10:00 AM

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International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science Vol. 8 No. 7 July 2020

A Study of Subtitle Translation in Forrest Gump from the Perspective of Relevance Theory

Tang Minmin

China West Normal University, Foreign Languages Academy, Nanchong, China Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Recent years, the Chinese film market has welcomed lots of excellent western films, which greatly promotes exchanges among different countries and regions, and makes the study and discussion of subtitle translation very important. Through studying the subtitle translation of Forrest Gump, this paper explores the guiding significance of relevance theory in subtitle translation from the perspective of context, ostensive-inferential communication and optimal relevance in relevance theory, so as to illustrate the feasibility of relevance theory in subtitle translation. The Chinese subtitle translation of Forrest Gump comes from the National Radio and Television Administration, and 15 examples are selected. Through the analysis of translation examples, it is found that the Chinese-translated subtitles in the film have the optimal relevance with the source language subtitles. In this way, with the least effort, the Chinese audience can understand and appreciate the film, and the best contextual effect is achieved accordingly.

Key words: Relevance Theory; subtitle translation; Forrest Gump

Cite this article: Minmin, T. (2020). A Study of Subtitle Translation in Forrest Gump from the Perspective of Relevance Theory. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 8(7), 71-85. 71 International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science ISSN: 2307-924X www.ijlass.org

Introduction Entering into the 21st century, people are eager to enrich spiritual world with the development of living standards, which results in more outstanding English movies pouring into China. This promotes the transmission of excellent films, and what’s more important is that, people enable to communicate with others who come from different countries and regions. This paper is going to study the subtitle of the famous English movie Forrest Gump based on the relevance theory, and at the same time, this study aims to discuss the guiding significance of the relevance theory to the subtitle translation of Forrest Gump. Relevance theory is the basis of cognitive pragmatics, aiming at identifying the intrinsic mechanism existing in human psychology, thus explaining the way of human communication, that is, communicators show their information intentions to the communicative partners through communicative intentions. According to the relevance theory, communication is an ostensive-inferential communication. From the perspective of context, ostensive-inferential communication and optimal relevance in the relevance theory, this paper explores the guiding significance of the relevance theory in the subtitle translation so as to illustrate the feasibility of relevance theory in subtitle translation. In this paper, the Chinese subtitle translation of Forrest Gump comes from National Radio and Television Administration, and 15 examples are selected, to find out whether the subtitle translation of Forrest Gump is under the guidance of relevance theory. Through the analysis of these examples, it is found that the Chinese-translated subtitles in the film have the optimal relevance with the source language subtitles. The audience can understand and appreciate the film with the least effort, and achieve the best contextual effect.

Chapter I: Task Description 1.1 A brief introduction to the source text Forrest Gump, as a classic inspirational film, tells the story of a retarded child. Although the IQ of the hero of the film, Forrest Gump, is only 75, he has led an extraordinary life. In his life, Forrest has achieved many accomplishments that ordinary people cannot imagine. For example, after the Vietnam War , Forrest Gump was received as a hero by President Johnson; he reported the eavesdropper of the Watergate incident; he came to China as a member of the all-American ping-pong team and made a contribution to the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States and so on. Forrest has experienced various historical periods in which the world has changed, but whenever and wherever he is, he is still simple and kind. As a biographical film, the subtitles of this film are mostly based on dialogues and the narration of the protagonist Forrest Gump. The original English subtitles in the film are rich in language and diverse in sentence patterns, for example, the slang, the English of African American and the special English from Forrest. Consequently, all of this contributes to many famous words in this film, just like “Life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.”

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1.2 The features of the source text In this paper, the original English and Chinese translation subtitles in the American film Forrest Gump are selected as the research objects, and the application of the relevance theory in the subtitle translation of this film is discussed. Subtitle and other literary works have something in common, that is, to express the superb artistic conception in image in a visualized language. Because the film and television works are the comprehensive art of sound and picture mainly based on images. And the translation of subtitle translators is inevitably subject to time and space constraints. Time refers to the synchronization of language and picture, that is to say, the subtitle needs to complete the information transmission in the same time as the source language utterance. Therefore, the subtitle language has the characteristics of instantness, in other words, the subtitle text flashes on the screen, and the audience cannot read it like a book. Space refers to the number of linguistic symbols that can be accommodated on the screen. The subtitles generally do not exceed two lines, so the number of words displayed is very limited, which determines the simplicity and unintentional features of the subtitle language.

1.3 The significance of this thesis Western film and television works continue to flood into the Chinese market as an important medium for Chinese and foreign exchanges. Due to differences in language and culture, in order to meet the cultural needs of more Chinese people, subtitle translation has gradually become a field of literary translation, playing an important role in bridges between Chinese and foreign cultural exchanges. As a successful film, Forrest Gump tells the story of the inferior protagonist Forrest Gump, who started the “running” of life with the “sun-streaker” given by God, becoming an olive superstar, a hero of the Vietnam War, Ping Pong Ball diplomat, rich man, etc. The film won six prizes in the 67th Oscar for Best Picture in 1994, the Oscar for Best Actor, and the Oscar for Best Director. This excellent American film is loved by the Chinese audience and its excellent subtitle translation is closely related. Through the translator’s excellent translation, the Chinese audience can understand the intent of the source language subtitles more deeply, and thus achieve the best context effect, so that this film has won a large number of loyal fans in China, greatly promoting intercultural exchanges between different countries. With the purpose of enriching the previous studies, this paper is meant to give a detailed description about the optimal context effect, which is achieved in accordance with the relevance theory. On the one hand, in this thesis, the significance of relevance theory is explored in depth, which reveals the important role the relevance theory has played in subtitle translation practice. Thus more attention will be paid on this translation theory and subtitle translation practice in future. And on the other hand, as the films becoming increasingly indispensable in the age of globalization, this paper contributes to enhancing the successful cross-cultural communication with the representative of the information exchanges in Forrest Gump.

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Chapter II: Literature Review

2.1 Research at home In China, the practice of subtitle translation has not been touching in the nearly half century from the late 1940s and 1980s . Affected by this, China’s subtitle translation research has basically no progress, and the related research results are few traces. Fortunately, with the rise of “dribbling translation” and “network translation” at the end of the 20th century, subtitle translation has returned to the brink, so does the subtitle translation research. “It is worth mentioning that many scholars believe that the earliest scholars in China to study subtitle translation are Professor Qi Bingkun (1994), Professor Ma Zhengqi (1997) or Professor Zhang Chunbai (1998). In fact, this kind of view is not totally correct. Strictly speaking, the research objects of the above scholars still belong to the category of „dubbing translation‟ rather than „subtitle translation‟.” (Deng, 2018) “According to our investigation, the earliest subtitle translation research in China appeared in A brief discussion on the translation of film and television scripts.” (Gao,1998). Although this article is not specifically for subtitle translation, it explicitly requires the translation of “Chinese subtitle translation” for the first time: a) Subtitle translation should be synchronized with lines. b) The number of subtitle translation words should be limited. c) The minimum time is a must for subtitle translation and subtitle translation.d) Subtitle translation should convey the full meaning and so on. (Gao,1998) In addition, China’s first paper specifically for subtitle translation isStrategy for Subtitle Translation (Li, 2001). This paper analyzes the characteristics of subtitle translation from three aspects: time and space constraints, information functions and cultural factors, and proposes corresponding subtitle translation strategy. Starting with the above research, China’s subtitle translation research has begun. Liu Dayan (2011) found through investigation that the research on the subtitle translation has sharply increased since 2005, and by 2008 it has far exceeded the discussion of traditional translations. In recent years, Chinese subtitle translation research has achieved a series of achievements in the principles and techniques of subtitle translation, research through linguistics and cultural perspectives. However, it is undeniable that compared with western countries, there is still a huge gap in the study of subtitle translation in China. For example, there is still a lack of systematic research on subtitle translation. There are few studies on the subtitle translation of the hearing impaired, and there is no specific research on subtitle translation and so on. As a result, with the representation of American film Forrest Gump, this paper will analyze the subtitle translation from the relevance theory to enrich the subtitle translation research.

2.2 Research abroad In the field of translation studies, especially in the West, subtitle translation is attracting more attention of scholars, which contributes to the related research is increasing. The practice of subtitle translation was first developed along with movies, especially the invention of sound films and the

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development of cross-cultural communication. The original form of subtitles is the “intertitle” popular in the “silent era”, first appeared in the film Uncle Tom‟s Cabin shown in 1903.

The first study of subtitle translation in the west is Dollerup’s article titled On Subtitles in Television Programs published on Bable in 1974. In the essay Features of Oral and Written Communication in Subtitling, Alexandra Assis Rosa holds that the subtitling transfers to written verbal language a source text which in most instances equivalent to face-to-face communication, consequently, the process of subtitling consists of not only of verbal signs but also of non-verbal signs. Gottlieb is also a leading expert in the field of subtitle translation. He has contributed a lot to the strategies and techniques of subtitle translation and the detailed study of the language of subtitle translation and subtitle translation in his works, such as Transfer Linguistiques et Audiovisual (1993), Language and Media(1996) and so on.

In addition, there are many western scholars who have made great contributions to the study of subtitle translation. It is precisely because of their outstanding achievements that they have laid the foundation for today’s subtitle research. However, some researchers have only emphasized the importance of the original text in source language or the reaction of the movie viewer in the study of subtitle translation. For example, Ali Hajimohammadi (2004)put forward a viewer-oriented, image-bound approach to subtitling in his book The Viewer as the Focus of Subtitling: Towards a viewer-oriented Approach. Therefore, through the guidance of relevance theory, this paper will systematically link the roles of source language, translation language and audience, because all three are the center of subtitle translation.

Chapter Ⅲ: Relevance Theory

3.1 A brief introduction to relevance theory Relevance theory is the basis of cognitive pragmatics. Its purpose is to identify the internal mechanisms that exist in human psychology, and thus to explain the way of human communication. “Communication is the generation of a stimulus, which can be either a verbal form or a non-verbal form.” (Sperber ＆ Wilson: 1986/1995: 29 ) Relevance theory proposes an ostensive-inferential communication model that replaces the traditional code communication model. Ostensive-inferential communication actually refers to two aspects of communication. Ostension refers to the communicative behavior of the speaker, and inference refers to the communicative behavior of the listener in order to identify the intention of the speaker. The ostensive-inferential behavior means that the communicator expresses his or her information to the two parties through communication intentions. The successful communication lies in the audience’s identification of the information intention.

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3.2 The development of relevance theory In 1986, the French linguist Sperber and the British linguist Wilson proposed the theory of relevance between cognition and communication. Relevance theory believes that relevance drives language communication. When receiving comprehension utterances, because new information has associated properties, people will process the new information in a changing context. The mutual understanding and relevance of the two sides of communication are the key to successful communication. Finding the best connection between discourse and contextual hypothesis, inferring the context concealment, and obtaining sufficient contextual effect, can achieve the success of the transaction. Contextual effect refers to the change of cognitive environment caused by the new information of receptor processing and the old information (context hypothesis or cognitive hypothesis) in the original brain. Under the same conditions, the greater the contextual effect, the less effort people have to process to handle new information, and the stronger the relevance. Because of the communicative and pragmatic nature of translation, relevance theory can explain and guide translation practice well. In 1988, Wilson’s student Gutt first published a related translation theory paper, and later proposed relevance theory to explain all translation phenomena. Chinese scholar Zhao Yanchun believes that relevance theory is the most covert theory to explain translation activities so far, with the strongest explanatory power. Relevance theory believes that the principle of association restricts the whole process of translation. Both the translator and the target reader need to find the best association in the process of processing new information, and obtain the context effect, so as to obtain the original intention. Since the original author and the target reader have great differences in cognitive assumptions, the translator must coordinate to make the original author’s intention and the target reader’s knowledge basically the same.

3.3 Context in relevance theory “Relevance theory believes that context is a series of assumptions used by listeners to understand discourse.”(Gutt:1988) And according to Wang Jianguo(2009), the context is a kind of psychological structure and a part of the audience’s vision of the world; dynamic rather than static; selected rather than given. It is the idea, not the true state of the world that affects the understanding of discourse. And he thinks that the context is not limited to the current physical environment or the understanding of the immediately adjacent words. It also contains logical, linguistic, and encyclopedic knowledge in the context of discourse audience perception. The context of relevance theory is dynamic, which is reflected in the process of understanding the discourse. In the process of discourse comprehension, the listener’s vision of time exists in the form of conceptual representation in the brain, which constitutes the cognitive environment for processing new information; when new experiences are added to the underlying context, they are established by discourse signals. The new vision and the old ideas that have been dealt with before will be combined and operated to form a new context. The context used to deal with the new vision is essentially a mixture of old ideas and new ideas that produce diverse contextual effects.

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3.4 Optimal Relevance in relevance theory Relevant concept is crucial to the description of the dialogue understanding process. In language communication, the hearer establishes and processes certain assumptions related to the discourse, forming a cognitive background that changes over time, and obtaining new information from it. Discourse comprehension involves the combination and operation of two types of information, namely new hypotheses established by speech signals and hypotheses that have been processed before. The necessary condition for the combination of old and new information is that they should be related to each other: the new discourse must be related in some way to the background of the knowledge already possessed by the listener. When speaking, the speaker must abide by the principle of association and try to make the discourse relevant to the context. The listener can use the principle of association to guide the reasoning and draw conclusions about the intention of the discourse from the premise of the new and old information. Whether the discourse is related can be judged by the contextual effect it obtains by reasoning. Relevance is a relative concept, and its degree depends on the relationship between two factors, namely the contextual effect obtained and the processing effort. The information provided by the discourse is considered to be relevant only if a reasonable balance is reached between the two. Sperber and Wilson (1986) considers that the definition of relevance of relevance theory is that under the same conditions, the greater the context effect, the closer the relation; under the same conditions, the smaller the processing effort, the stronger the correlation.

3.5 Ostensive-inferential Communication in relevance theory Relevance theory proposes an ostensive-inferential communication model that replaces the traditional code communication model. Ostensive-inferential communication actually refers to two aspects of communication: the communicative behavior of the speaker, the communicative behavior of the listener in order to identify the intention of the speaker. Relevance theory holds that ostension and inference are two aspects of a communicative process. From the perspective of the speaker, communication is an ostensive process, and from the perspective of the hearer, communication is a process of inferencing. Translation is also an ostensive-inferential communication. However, unlike other communication, translation communication includes two ostensive-inferential communication activities. In the two ostensive-inferential communication of translation, both the original author and the translator use the communicative intention to inform their respective readers through the intention of communication. (Wang: 2000) Therefore, for the translator, it is necessary to adopt the same information intention and communication as the original author. Intention, that is, the same ostensive way of presenting ideas and mutually envisioning ideas. In the final analysis, it is necessary to ensure that the original author’s assumptions about the original reader remain unchanged; at the same time, both the original reader and the translated reader rely on inferencing to obtain the original author’s information intention. The translator must make the target audience’s reasoning method the same as the source language reader’s, so that the translated language and the

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source language can be optimally correlated, and the target audience can get the optimal context effect.

Chapter Ⅳ: A Case Study of Subtitle Translation in Forrest Gump from Relevance theory

In spite of many Chinese translation version facing us today, the one from Film Bureau, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television are chosen in this paper. On the one hand, as an authoritative organization, its translating works are accepted by the audience easily. On the other hand, there are more translation experts in it so that the quality is guaranteed. This chapter will conduct a case study on the Chinese subtitle translation of Forrest Gump from the perspective of the context, optimal relevance and ostensive-inferential communication based on relevance theory. In this part, 15 examples are selected and analyzed in detail. And the case study aims to analyze the application of relevance theory in the subtitle translation of Forrest Gump and whether the application is reasonable or not.

4.1 A case study of context in the subtitle translation Context plays a vital role in communication. In the optimal relevance, the stronger the contextual effect the utterance manifests, the stronger the relevance is. Consequently, the context will drive to a successful communication. According to the relevance theory, the context has two sub-categories. The first one is linguistic context while the other one is non-linguistic context, which will be discussed below.

4.1.1 Linguistic context The meaning of the same discourse in different language environments is not exactly the same, so that the same word or sentence has very distinguished meanings in daily communication. In the subtitle translation work, translators are required to have a thorough understanding of the target language’s features apart from fully comprehending the original language, and understanding the expectations of the target audience. Consequently, in subtitle translation, the subtitles finally presented to the audiences should bring the audiences with the best contextual effect on condition that the translators think about the linguistic features. Example 1 Forrest: This one day, we was out walking, like always. 有一天，我们跟平常一样巡逻着。 Example 2 Forrest: We will take this real long walks. 我们走了很长的路。 Example 3 Forrest: We walked around all night. 我们走了一整夜。

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In these three examples, “walk” has different meanings, namely “巡逻”, “路”, “走” , although the words presented to the audience are “walk”, but obviously, they are not the same. It means that there is a polysemy in Chinese. This is more common in English expressions, and the language context has a great influence on the meaning of these words. If the translator translates these words rigidly, this will lead to deviations in the understanding of the target audience, and the audience cannot understand the original intention after the reasoning. In the first example, with the background that Forrest is a soldier, he and his comrades are searching with gun. It’s apparent that they are on guard. Thus “walk” here is translated into “巡逻” instead of “路” or “走”. In the third example, Jenny and Forrest meet again after long separation, but they do nothing but just walk side by side for a long distance. The context of the second sentence is that as a soldier in the army, Forrest always take a long walk to search for enemies. And in this sentence, the translation “走了很长的路” is closer to the plot. From these three examples, the translator accurately conveys the meaning of the original subtitles, so that the presented Chinese subtitles more satisfy the expectations of the audience, and bring the best context effect to the audience.

4.1.2 Non-Linguistic context In addition to the influence of language context on communication, the role of non-linguistic context in communication cannot be ignored. The same words will bring different communication effects at different times, places. In intercultural communication, cultural factors are also a very important non-linguistic context. As an American film, Forrest Gump, which is studied in this article, is a carrier of western culture, which result in that the translator should also properly handle this feature. Example 1 Man: Coons are trying to get into school. “浣熊”也想要进学校了。 Forrest: Coons? When raccoons tried getting on our back porch. Mama just chased them off with a broom. 浣熊?如果浣熊想进我家的后院，妈妈会用扫帚赶他们走。 Example 2 Forrest: And we were always looking for this guy names“Charlie”. 我们总是在寻找一个叫“越共”的家伙。 The above two sentences strongly represent cultural characteristics of western countries. “Coons” refers to the black people, and “Charlie” is the special name for the Vietnamese Communist Party in the Vietnam War. In the first example, the raccoon in the mouth of Forrest’s college classmates added with quotation marks, which is a good indication to the audience that the raccoon here is really not a raccoon. However, for Forrest, the raccoon is the animal, so the raccoon in the mouth of Forrest has no quotes. In the second example, “Charlie” is translated as “越共” , and the Chinese audience is also very familiar with the term Communist Party. Therefore,

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translating into “越共” is more in line with the cognitive background of the Chinese audience than “查理” . Example 3 Forrest: President Kennedy met with collegiate all- American football team at the Oval office today. 肯尼迪总统在白宫接见了全美大学足球队。 In this sentence, “Oval Office” does not refer to any oval office, but the office of the US President who meets foreign leaders at the White House . This term also has a strong cultural meaning and is limited by the characteristics of the subtitles. Turning it into the White House makes the Chinese audience understand it more easily, eliminating the viewer’s visual barriers and achieving the best contextual effects. Example 4 Forrest: When I got home, I was a national celebrity, famouser even than Captain Kangaroo. 回国之后，我成了全国名人，比儿童节目主持人还有名。 After the Vietnam War, Forrest comes into contact with table tennis, and he seems to have a lot of talent for playing table tennis. Therefore, he is elected to the national table tennis team, and becomes the first American to visit mainland China. He also plays an important role in improving Sino-US relations. After visiting China, Forrest is very famous in the United States. This sentence is the narration of Forrest when he participated in a talk show. “Captain Kangaroo” is an animated character in the early days of the United States, and this may be unfamiliar to the Chinese audience. Here the translator turns it into a “儿童节目主持人”, which is simple and clear, and the children’s show host is usually very popular, so the audience can naturally associate Forrest’s popularity with the children's show host to understand the intent of the original sentence. In addition, the comparative degree of “famous” is not “more famous” but “famouser”, which against the rules of grammar. Under the normal IQ level, Forrest often has broken English in the film, the translation of this word here is not very proper for the reason that it doesn’t manifest the specificity of Forrest. Example 5 Forrest: Every day we’d take a walk, and I’d jabber on like a monkey in the tree. 我们天天一起散步，我喋喋不休。 This sentence comes from the last part of the film, after the reunion of Forrest and Jenny. “jabber” itself is used to describe the noisy monkeys, but in order to let the Chinese audiences understand this sentence well, the translator simply turns the latter half into “喋喋不休”that the Chinese audiences are very familiar with. The results and contents of the sentence are clearer, and the meaning of the source language is summarized to the maximum extent, without affecting the audience’s understanding of the information content.

4.2 A case study of optimal relevance in the subtitle translation The concept of relevance is relative. As mentioned in the previous chapters, the strength of relevance is related to two factors, one is the contextual effect of acquisition, and the other is the

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effort to deal with discourse. Not all words are related, and only when these two factors reach equilibrium, the information provided in the discourse is considered to be relevant. According to Sperber and Wilson, under the same conditions, the greater the contextual effect, the stronger the correlation, and the smaller the processing effort, the correlation is stronger. Distinguishing between maximal relevance and optimal relevance is the focus of relevance theory research, and it should be noted that discourse causes the listener to focus on and deal with not the maximal relevance, but the optimal relevance. If the utterance produces enough contextual effects, and the listener only needs to have minimal processing effort for it, then it has the optimal relevance. Example 1 Forrest: From that day on, we was always together. Jenny and me was like peas and carrots. 从那天起我们总是在一起，就像秤不离砣。 This sentence is the narration of Forrest Gump after his first encounter with Jenny. In this sentence, “peas and carrots” is the cultural intention of the United States, because Americans often use peas and carrots for daily cooking, and there are similarities between the two. But the translator is not here to translate the “peas and carrots” into “胡萝卜和豆子” rigidly, but to find relevant phrase in Chinese culture instead. In fact, there is almost no habit of mixing peas and carrots together in China, thus the audience of this imagery in China will be incomprehensible and the translator finds the “秤” and “砣”that the Chinese audience are very familiar with. Such a domestication strategy not only guarantees the cultural sense of belonging of the Chinese audiences, but also accurately expresses the central ideas of the source language. The relevance theory emphasizes the optimal relevance, that is, the audience can make the least effort to get the best context effect. In the translation of this sentence,“秤”and“砣”not only retain the cultural characteristics of the language, but also reflect the characteristics of Chinese culture allow viewers to understand the meaning of source language subtitles to the greatest extent and obtain the best contextual effects. Example 2 Forrest: Now, it would be I ran to get where I was going, I never thought it would take me anywhere. 我到哪里都是跑着去，从未想到竟然会跑出名堂来。 Forrest is often bullied because of his low IQ. The bullying of other children and the encouragement of Jenny have inspired the potential of Forrest to run. He even runs faster than the car. In this sentence, “it would take me anywhere” is not literally means that running can take Forrest all over the world. From the following part of this movie, it can be known that Forrest has quickly entered the university football team by running. Using “竟然会跑出名堂来”to translate this sentence, the translator succeeds in expressing the implied meaning of this sentence, without losing the original intention of the original text, and ensuring the Chinese audience’s understanding of this sentence.

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Example 3 Jenny: He doesn’t know any better. 他不懂事。 Although Forrest is not as smart as ordinary people, he is purely kind, and his love for Jenny is also the most touching part of the film. In the film, Forrest thinks that Jenny is being “bullied” and then fights Jenny’s boyfriend. “He doesn’t know any better.” means “He is not clever, and he knows nothing about us” in the others’ mind, however, the translator has a deep understanding of the fact that Jenny loves Forrest very much. Therefore, for the translation of this sentence, the translator does not use other words to describe the stupidity of Forrest, but summarizes it with “不懂事”, which means someone is childish in English. In China, the phrase “不懂事” is also a normal phrase to describe children, so it is appropriately adopted here. The translator takes into account the discourse habits of the Chinese audiences and expresses the intention of the source language very well. Moreover, this also conforms to the principle of optimal relevance in relevance theory, that is, the utterance produces enough contextual effects, and the listener only needs to make minimal processing effort for it. Chinese audiences can easily understand the intentions and emotions of the expression of characters in movies. Example 4 Forrest: Anyway, I guess you could say me and mama was on our own. 总之，我想你可以说，我和妈妈相依为命。 From the film we can know that Forrest’s father has left him forever, and he lives with his mother. From this context, it is not difficult to see the meaning of this sentence. In this translated sentence, the translator turns “me and mama was on our own”into “相依为命”, and the phrase“相依为命” is commonly used to describe people who stick together and help each other in difficulties in China, there is no denying that any Chinese who understands this phrase will be aware of the implications of the source language. The phrase “was on our own” is a good expression of the deep feelings between Forrest and his mother. Therefore, this translation can create a context for the target audience, so that the target audience can fully understand the implicit communication information. Example 5 Forrest: Lieutenant Dan was always getting these funny feelings about a rock or a trail or a road. 对于路上的风吹草动，邓中尉总是草木皆兵。 Lieutenant Dan is also a very important role in the film. It can be concluded from the previous narrative in the movie that Lieutenant Dan is a very cautious man because his ancestors have sacrificed on the battlefield. This is reflected in the sentences that Forrest says, and the translator’s translation of this sentence uses the phrases“草木皆兵” and “风吹草动” to reflect this. These two words not only conform to the Chinese people’s understanding of these two words in their daily life, but also reflect the meaning of the original text.

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4.3 A case study of ostensive-inferential communication in the subtitle translation Sperber and Wilson put forward the “ostensive-inferential” mode of verbal communication in relevance theory. They believe that ostensive-inferential communication is two aspects of the communicative process. From the perspective of the speaker, communication is an unambiguous process of signaling that the speaker expresses his intention clearly when communicating; but from the perspective of the hearer, communication is a process of inferencing, in which the speaker’s communicative intention is inferred from the information provided by the speaker through inferencing. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, relevance theory proposes that language communication is a cognitive activity based on certain rules of reasoning. According to the principle of association, any communicative behavior conveys the assumption or expectation of the optimal relevance. The listener always obtains the maximum context effect with minimal cognitive effort, and derives the communicative intention of the speaker. Example 1 Man: Are you telling me you are the owner of Bubba-Gump Shrimp Corporation? 你就是布巴阿甘虾的老板？ Forrest: Yes, sir. We got more money than Davy Crockett. 是，我们比北边城英雄更有钱。 “Davy Crockett” is a cultural word in the United States. It refers to a politician in the United States. The translator regards it as “北边城英雄”here. For this information, the Chinese audiences enable to make reasonable reasoning and judgement that this is a very rich man, and allowing them to understand the original intentions to the greatest extent possible. When talking about the application of relevance theory in subtitle translation, the researchers usually emphasize the connection between subtitles and the cognitive context of the audiences. The subtitles will give them visual information when they watch the movie. By reading subtitles, they can stimulate the existing information in their minds, which is related to t he subtitles presented, and then fully understand the meaning of the original text through reasoning. Example 2 Forrest: And then, just like that, somebody turned off the rain, and the sun came out. 忽然间雨停了，好像有人关掉水龙头，太阳钻了出来。 During Forrest’s participation in the Vietnam War, it rained for a long time. But one day the rain suddenly stopped. Forrest uses this sentence “somebody turned off the rain, and the sun came out” to describe the sun shines again after rain, and it is also a very vivid expression. The translator doesn’t add other modifications, but directly translates the meaning of the original text. This phrase “关掉水龙头” not only largely reveals that Forrest is a naive guy, but through this subtitle, the target audience can understand the meaning of the source language through reasoning that “It stops raining.” The ostensive-inferential principle emphasized by relevance theory is that the translated text can achieve the same level of understanding as the source audience after the simple reasoning of the audience. And in this translation, it is perfectly exemplified.

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Conclusion As we know, foreign films have become an indispensable part of intercultural communication. Therefore, subtitle translation plays a vital role in it. This paper aims to study the application of relevance theory in the subtitle translation of the film Forrest Gump. This thesis has studied the subtitle translation of Forrest Gump from the perspective of relevance theory based on the previous study. In this case study, 15 examples of subtitle translations in the film Forrest Gump are exemplified and analyzed in detail on the level of context, ostensive-inferential communication and optimal relevance, to illustrate the guiding significance of relevance theory to subtitle translation. According to the study, the two findings are as follows. In the first place, these three factors in relevance theory are interrelated: a successful communication is the pursuit of the optimal relevance by the two communicators, the ostensive-inferential communication and the realization of optimal relevance should rely on the contextual effect. Therefore, based on relevance theory, the ultimate goal of the example analysis is to determine whether the optimal relevance is achieved. In the second place, it’s obvious that the Chinese translated subtitles of Forrest Gump is successful, the translated words and phrases are appropriate for the Chinese viewers to comprehend However, due to the limitation of the resources, it’s difficult to collect sufficient useful information. And in addition, the analysis and explanations in this thesis are not accurate, and the concrete supporting ideas are not enough. Therefore, as a significant work, Forrest Gump needs to be studied further; as an important translation theory, the relevance theory need to be explored deeply; and as a communicative method, subtitle need to be researched repeatedly from many other creative perspectives. Under the current conditions of rapid development of globalization, there should be more people in the translation field to study the translation of subtitles, so that the culture of each country can be transmitted to the world through subtitles, making the world a melting pot of culture.

Bibliography

[1] Deng Weibo. (2016). From Film Translation to Audiovisual Translation -- An Exploration of the History and Current Situation of Audiovisual Translation Practice in China, Chinese Translators Journal(1):80-84．

[2] Gutt Ernst-August.(2004). Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

[3] Gutt Ernst-August. (1991). Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Oxford: Blackwell.

[4] Gottlieb, Henrik. (1994). Subtitling: Diagonal Translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology.

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[5] Gao Lanyun. (1998). On the Translation of Film and Television Plays. China Radio & TV Academic Journal (S2): 66-67.

[6] He Ziran, Ran Yongping. (2001). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Beijing: Foreign Language Education Press.

[7] Sperber, Dan ＆Wilson, Deirdre. (1987). Precis of Relevance. Behavioral and Brain Science.

[8] Sperber, Dan ＆Wilson, Deirdre. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell and Oxford.

[9] Wang Jianguo. (2009). Translation Studies: A Relevance-theoretic Perspective. China International Translation Company.

[10] Yang Jing. (2006). A Study of Movie Subtitle Translation in Forrest Gump: A Relevance Theory Approach. Wuhan: Central China Normal University.

[11] Zheng Luying. (2010).Translation of Forrest Gump with Chinese Subtitles From the Perspective of Relevance Theory. Movie Literature.

[12] Zhang Xin. (2010). On Movie Subtitle Translation from the Perspective of Relevance Theory--A case study of Forrest Gump. Inner Mongolia: Inner Mongolia University.

The Best Historical References In Forrest Gump

Ever since it was released in 1994, " Forrest Gump " has been a popular and enduring movie. Boasting strong reviews and a plethora of awards , this sympathetic portrayal of the titular Alabama man, who's brought to life by Tom Hanks , has charmed countless moviegoers. One of the most memorable aspects of Forrest's story is his uncanny ability to find himself in the right place at the right time. This allows him to walk through some of the biggest events of the 20th century. While outlets like IndieWire have criticized this as presenting a whitewashed version of history, there's no doubt that Forrest's story has struck a chord with many fans as the years have flown by. As a straightforward person, he has a way of looking at American history that is as simple as it is profound.

Behind all the one-liners and feel-good moments, "Forrest Gump" is about what makes modern America the place it is today. From his introduction to a young Elvis Presley to his experiences in the Vietnam War, we're taking a look at the very best historical references in "Forrest Gump."

Elvis Presley's humble beginnings

One of the most memorable historical references in "Forrest Gump" is a seemingly minor interaction between Forrest and a young man staying at his mother's boarding house. Little Forrest is seen dancing while the man plays an acoustic guitar. The musician is fascinated by the way Forrest, who wears leg braces, moves his hips and legs. Later, when Forrest and his mother walk down the street, they see the man dancing in a similar fashion on a TV in a store window.

While younger viewers might not recognize him, the man is none other than the legendary Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll. The song that Forrest is seen dancing to is an early version of "Hound Dog," one of the King's biggest hits. The hilarity of the scene is in its suggestion that Forrest's unorthodox dance movies were the inspiration for Elvis' infamous hip gyrations, which shocked audiences and led him to massive fame and fortune.

Nathaniel Bedford Forrest

Early in the movie, just after Forrest gets his leg braces, he shares the story of how he got his name. According to Forrest, he was named after Civil War general Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. Forrest describes this distant relation as a war hero ... and a founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

To say this moment hasn't aged well is an understatement. This is one of the most problematic historical references in the movie. While Forrest acknowledges Nathaniel's place in the KKK, this mention completely sanitizes the group's despicable history. No mention is made of their murderous terrorism — Forrest instead focuses on their wearing of white bedsheets, and simply says they rode around the countryside. Admittedly, the reference seeks to explore Forrest's complete ignorance of history and his deeply Southern upbringing, rather than give an accurate description of the group. Still, it stands out as a questionable — if memorable — reference.

Forrest stands in the schoolhouse doorway

Forrest's running skills get him a football scholarship to the University of Alabama in the early 1960s. While he's there, he ends up enmeshed in one of the most important moments in civil rights history: Alabama governor George Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door. While outside school one day, Forrest notices a large commotion and asks what's going on. His fellow student responds with an ugly racist slur. Confused, Forrest watches as two Black students make their way into the school. When one of them drops her book, he retrieves it for her.

Forrest has no idea this is a landmark moment in desegregation. According to History.com , Wallace's infamous stand occurred when he refused to allow Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood into the university. He only relented when the National Guard forced the issue. Though this moment is incredibly complex, to Forrest, it's simple — his fellow student drops her book, and he helps her out.

Forrest and the presidents

Throughout "Forrest Gump," the titular character finds himself interacting with some of the most famous and important people of the 20th century. This includes several American presidents. After winning a spot on the All-American team during his time at the University of Alabama, Forrest meets President John F. Kennedy. Having drunk a staggering 15 Dr. Peppers, he meets the president and informs him, "I have to pee."

Later, after being awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam, Forrest meets President Lyndon B. Johnson. Much to the shock of his mother, he moons the president, to show him the bullet wound he got in his buttocks. After his war service concludes, Forrest meets President Richard Nixon. They have a brief conversation about the hotel — The Watergate, naturally — that Forrest is staying in. In addition to meeting several presidents, Forrest also mentions witnessing the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the attempted assassinations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

Forrest and the Vietnam War

The most extensive historical reference in "Forrest Gump" is the movie's portrayal of the Vietnam War. Forrest joins the army in the 1960s, just as the war is starting to heat up. There, he befriends Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue (Mykelti Williamson) and meets Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). Forrest turns out to be a standout soldier who excels in taking direction and following orders to a T.

When he actually gets to Vietnam, Forrest experiences the harsh reality of the war. Bubba dies in his arms, he gets wounded, the foreign climate presents many trials, and surprise attacks are frequent. Through it all is the constant hunt for the Viet Cong. Forrest also works as a "tunnel rat," which, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Army , was one of the more dangerous jobs one could have in Vietnam.

Forrest fights for the 9th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which was active in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969. This means it's possible that Forrest could have potentially fought during the Tet Offensive , which was one of the bloodiest, deadliest, and most significant operations in the entire war.

The legacy of Lt. Dan

In addition to Forrest's experiences of fighting in Vietnam, "Forrest Gump" also shows another side of the war: the fate of Vietnam veterans. Immediately after returning stateside, Forrest heads out to see the sights. He finds himself in the midst of a Vietnam Veterans Against the War rally happening in Washington D.C. Forrest gives a brief speech, which is incomprehensible due to his microphone being unplugged. It's implied to be about the struggles veterans face.

Then there's Forrest's commander in Vietnam, Lieutenant Dan Taylor. Dan's story is a vivid commentary on the tribulations many veterans faced when they returned home from the war. Throughout the second half of the film, Lieutenant Dan finds himself struggling with alcoholism, as well as his battlefield injuries, which cost him both legs. He's very disillusioned about the government and American society at large, to the point of outright hopelessness. This is an all-too-real reflection of many Vietnam veterans' experiences. Happily, by the end of "Forrest Gump," Dan is able to overcome his struggles and find inner peace.

The Black Panther Party

After Forrest reunites with childhood friend and love interest Jenny Curran (Robin Wright) following his speech at the Vietnam veterans' rally, she brings him to a gathering that includes multiple members of the Black Panther Party. Forrest is wearing his full U.S. Army dress uniform when he enters the place, which immediately draws ire. While one of the Panthers lectures Forrest about his anti-war views, Forrest sees Jenny's boyfriend hit her. He attacks the man, which leads to him getting kicked out of the place.

According to History.com , the Black Panther Party was founded in the mid-1960s by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. As PBS details, the group was indeed against the war: Black soldiers, in their view, were fighting and dying for a country that denied them basic protections and civil rights. All of this goes over Forrest's head, of course.

Abbie Hoffman and 1960s counterculture

Following Forrest's Vietnam service, he travels to Washington D.C. to receive the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B. Johnson. When he gets there, he's swiftly corralled by leaders of the Vietnam Veterans' Against the War organization. Their protest is led by a man wearing an American flag shirt with wild and untamed hair. While many people might think he's just another hippie, he's actually Abbie Hoffman, a famous political activist and founder of the Youth International Party. As Encyclopedia Britannica explains, Hoffman was a prominent antiwar protestor with a particular penchant for theatrical stunts.

Jenny Curran is also present in this scene. Having dropped out of college, she's turned into a full-fledged hippie, spending her time traveling across California and experimenting with substances like LSD. She only briefly reunites with Forrest, quickly moving out of his life again to further protest the ongoing war. Jenny is the most vivid emblem of 1960s counterculture in the film, from her political beliefs to her nomadic ways.

Ping-pong diplomacy

While some historical references in "Forrest Gump" are pretty obvious, like the Vietnam War and Elvis Presley, some are more subtle. A reference to the "ping-pong diplomacy" of the Richard Nixon era is a great example. Forrest starts playing ping-pong while recovering in a Veterans Affairs hospital. He immediately excels at the sport, and is sent to the People's Republic of China to compete against Chinese players. Forrest vaguely hints that someone in a position of authority tells him this match is of geopolitical importance, but unless you lived through the 1970s, you probably have very little idea what he's talking about.

As strange as it may sound, Forrest's ping-pong playing is actually a significant historical event. In the spring of 1971, several American ping-pong players traveled to China at the invitation of Chairman Mao Zedong (per History.com ). They played games against Chinese players, and were taken to Chinese cultural sites like the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. It was a significant thawing of U.S.-China relations, and led to Nixon visiting mainland China the next year.

Forrest meets John Lennon and Dick Cavett

Among the many important celebrities Forrest meets are legendary musician John Lennon and celebrated TV and radio personality Dick Cavett. Forrest meets them when he's invited to appear on "The Dick Cavett Show." He talks about his experiences playing ping-pong in China, emphasizing the poverty he saw and the lack of church attendance. Lennon mulls these facts over, clearly in the throes of creating his iconic song, "Imagine." Lennon's eventual assassination by Mark David Chapman is also briefly referenced.

Lennon actually released "Imagine" in 1971 , the same year he's supposedly interviewed alongside Forrest. At this point in his life, Lennon had left The Beatles and was performing as a solo artist. His assassination occurred in 1980 , when he was just 40 years old. This unique scene is rooted in the actual interview that took place between Cavett and Lennon in late 1971. Though the movie came out in the 1990s, the visual effects used to superimpose Forrest upon the footage remain impressive.

Forrest discovers the Watergate break-in

When Forrest visits Washington D.C. at President Richard Nixon's invitation, he stays at the Watergate Hotel. There, he gets distracted by a bunch of men rummaging through another hotel room by flashlight. He surmises that they're innocently looking for a fuse box and calls the front desk in the hopes of alerting them to this issue.

This is a blatant reference to the infamous Watergate Scandal. As History.com explains, this infamous affair revealed that members of Nixon's reelection committee illegally broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. There, they attempted to swipe critical documents and wiretap phones. Nixon attempted to cover this crime up, but soon enough, the entire world knew what had happened at the Watergate Hotel. This scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, and irrevocably soiled the legacy of his presidency.

The AIDS epidemic

Following years of separation, Forrest and Jenny finally reunite in Savannah, where Forrest meets her son. He soon learns that little Forrest Jr. is also his son. Jenny confides in Forrest that she's contracted a virus that has her doctors mystified. Forrest invites Jenny to stay with him so he can take care of her, and they soon get married. Unfortunately, the disease takes a major toll on Jenny, and she ends up passing away in her mid 30s.

Though it's never explicitly mentioned, Jenny's unknown illness is typically interpreted as AIDS. As History.com explains, HIV and AIDS came to widespread attention in the early 1980s. The virus was especially devastating to gay men, who were subjected to all kinds of harassment and discrimination, as well as the illness itself. Like Jenny, many people died from the disease before adequate treatments were invented. AIDS remains dangerous and widespread; as of 2019, it was responsible for nearly 1 million deaths each year.

Hurricane Carmen and Bubba Gump Shrimp

When Forrest Gump and his first mate Dan Taylor begin shrimping together, they struggle to turn a profit. Instead of finding delicious shrimp in their nets, they wind up with toilet seats, old army helmets, and license plates -– basically, anything except fish. It's not until a devastating storm hits and wipes out all of their competition that Forrest and Lieutenant Dan are able to become successful.

While you could be forgiven for thinking that the storm is just an invention, it's actually based on a real storm: Hurricane Carmen. According to the National Weather Service , Hurricane Carmen hit during the summer of 1974, affecting the Gulf of Mexico and the coast of Louisiana. Winds reached 110 miles per hour near the coast of Louisiana, and storm surges were over 11 feet high. The storm was devastating ... and provided a perfect fictional reason for Forrest and Lieutenant Dan to make it big.

Forrest the investor

Over the course of "Forrest Gump," Forrest finds himself involved with companies that go on to become some of the biggest in the world. The most obvious is Apple Computers, which Forrest describes as "some kind of fruit company." Lieutenant Dan Taylor invests in the company for Forrest, who becomes massively wealthy as Apple takes off.

Another hilarious reference is made to the iconic smiley face, made famous by Harvey Ball (per The Los Angeles Times ). When Forrest runs across America, he becomes an inspiration to millions. One of them is a man who wants to put Forrest's face on a t-shirt. After getting covered with mud, Forrest dries his face on a blank yellow t-shirt, which leaves a perfect imprint of the now-famous smiley face.

Also referenced is the famous "S*** Happens" bumper sticker. As Forrest runs along, he accidentally steps in feces. Rather than be enraged, he simply says, "s*** happens." This inspires a man to turn the phrase into a bumper sticker, which appears on a truck — just as it gets t-boned in a car accident. Forrest probably doesn't see any money from this turn of phrase or the smiley face, but hey, he's got stock in Apple.

Playing football under Bear Bryant

While playing football at the University of Alabama, Forrest Gump becomes one of the best kick returners in the nation, winning All-American honors. He first comes to the attention of the Alabama staff after he outruns the entire team, inadvertently interrupting their practice. Seeing such great physical talent on display, the coach immediately recruits Forrest to the team.

This is a somewhat subtle reference many viewers might miss. The coach in question is the legendary Bear Bryant. He's instantly recognizable (to those in the know) thanks to his trademark houndstooth fedora. As Encyclopedia Britannica details, Bryant was a longtime coach for the University of Alabama: He won six national championships and ended his career with a whopping 323 victories. He's also known for producing several NFL-caliber quarterbacks, including Hall of Famers Joe Namath and Ken Stabler.

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Forrest Gump

The history of the United States from the 1950s to the '70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart. The history of the United States from the 1950s to the '70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart. The history of the United States from the 1950s to the '70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.

Robert Zemeckis
Winston Groom
Robin Wright
Gary Sinise
3.1K User reviews
110 Critic reviews
82 Metascore
51 wins & 74 nominations total

Jenny Curran

Lieutenant Dan Taylor

Nurse at Park Bench

Young Forrest
(as Harold Herthum)

Elderly Woman
Elderly Woman's Daughter
Southern Gentleman …

Young Elvis Presley

School Bus Driver
(as Siobhan J. Fallon)
School Bus Boy
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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Can You Imagine 'Forrest Gump' Without Tom Hanks?

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Trivia When Forrest gets up to talk at the Vietnam rally in Washington, the microphone plug is pulled and you cannot hear him. According to Tom Hanks he said, "Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing. That's all I have to say about that."
Goofs When Forrest is given his discharge papers, he sets down his ping-pong paddle and (computerized) ball to salute the officer. When he picks the paddle back up, he also pretends to pick up the ball, which didn't end up getting animated.

Forrest Gump : [running] I had run for 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours.

[he stops and turns around]

Young Man Running : Quiet, quiet! He's gonna say something!

Forrest Gump : [pause] I'm pretty tired... I think I'll go home now.

Alternate versions In the TBS and the ABC version, the line at the end of the dorm scene is cut, "I think I ruined your roommate's bath robe".
Connections Edited from The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Soundtracks Lovesick Blues Written by Cliff Friend & Irving Mills Performed by Hank Williams Courtesy of PolyGram Special Markets

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July 6, 1994 (United States)
United States
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Forrest Gamp
Chippewa Square, Savannah, Georgia, USA (bus stop bench)
Paramount Pictures
The Steve Tisch Company
Wendy Finerman Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$55,000,000 (estimated)
$330,455,270
$24,450,602
Jul 10, 1994
$678,226,465

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Runtime 2 hours 22 minutes
Black and White
Dolby Atmos

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Show Business: The World According to Gump

You are getting a free preview of a TIME Magazine article from our archive . Many of our articles are reserved for subscribers only. Want access to more subscriber-only content, click here to subscribe.

You see them — folks of all ages and both sexes — floating out of the movie theater on waves of honorable sentiment. The kids look thoughtful, the grownups wistful. Couples are holding hands. This is not a Speed crowd; these people haven’t just exited a roller-coaster movie — they’ve completed an upbeat encounter session with America’s recent past. No question: one more audience has been Gumped.

Forrest Gump , a romantic epic starring Tom Hanks as a slow but sweet-souled Alabama boy who lucks into nearly every headline event of the past 40 years, is the summer sensation: a popular hit and an instant cultural touchstone. As the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), says, Gump has “no typical storytelling devices: no villain, no ticking clock, no burning fuse.” Yet it has exploded at the North American box office. In its second week of release, when ticket sales for even the most robust hits drop perhaps 20%, Gump held even. This past weekend it reached the $100 million mark; an industry savant predicts, quite conservatively, that it will finally earn $165 million.

Gump has warmed the collective heart of moviegoers; they spread the word, command their friends to go. They storm music stores for the two-CD album, featuring 32 songs from the rock era. They snap up copies of Winston Groom’s 1986 novel, on which the film was based, and copies of Gumpisms: The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump , a pocket-size book of aphorisms from the novel. Then they run back to the theater to relive the experience. “It makes you look at things in a better way than you used to,” says W. Bart Edwards, a Gainsville, Florida, psychiatrist who worked in a veterans’ hospital and sees the film as a salve for Vietnam survivors. “It’s like a happy tear-jerking.”

Vietnam is just one nightmare in Forrest’s odd odyssey. Born with a 75 IQ and deemed an embarrassment by everyone except his loving mother (Sally Field), the boy discovers two things: he can run like a gale-force wind, and he will always love his neighbor Jenny (Robin Wright). He goes to war with one friend, a young black man (Mykelti Williamson) dreaming of shrimp boats, and comes home with another, career soldier Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). And wherever he is, he bumps into famous people: George Wallace and Richard Nixon, J.F.K. and L.B.J., Elvis and John Lennon (all integrated onscreen with Hanks through ingenious special effects). Almost everyone Forrest knows dies. He survives, through his goodness and the miracle of idiot grace.

“I don’t want to sound like a bad version of ‘the child within,”‘ says co- producer Wendy Finerman, who discovered the novel in galleys nine years ago and nurtured the film to fruition. “But the childlike innocence of Forrest Gump is what we all once had. It’s an emotional journey. You laugh and cry. It does what movies are suppose to do: make you feel alive.”

The movie does that. It is a smart, affecting, easygoing fable with plenty of talent on both sides of the camera. The key ingredient is Hanks, the one actor whom the mass audience trusts as an exemplar of quality. He can sell a tough subject to tough customers because they know the film will not be so much about issues as about the decency with which his character faces up to them. That goes for Gump. “The film is nonpolitical,” Hanks says, “and thus nonjudgmental. It doesn’t just celebrate survival, it celebrates the struggle.”

Classically trained and sitcom-bred, Hanks knows that the starkest drama can always use a leavening of wit. For most of the film, he underplays Forrest’s reactions at a level somewhere between a fretful deadpan and the rural slyness of the early Andy Griffith. So when he releases his feelings at the end (when questions of fatherhood and family traits are involved), the scene gushes like a geyser.

So does the audience. “I want to stand up and yell, ‘Go, Gump, go!”‘ says Chris Jackson, a Chicago bartender. “I sat there with tears dripping down my face.” This is the common testimony: cheering and tearing. “People cheered at our audience-research sessions,” says Finerman, “so we knew we had something. What amazed us was that all four quadrants — older men and women, younger men and women — wanted to see it.” That’s another clue to Gumpmania: it’s a movie that makes grown men cry. From I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to Field of Dreams, the male weepie has been a dependable genre. And Gump, to its credit, is not one of those cry-by-night (but you hate yourself in the morning) exercises in emotional blackmail. It’s fairly honorable about picking your heart’s pocket.

That must be what attracted Finerman, whose eight-year crusade to make this movie is already a Hollywood legend. In retrospect, though, Forrest Gump seems a can’t-miss proposition. Consider that the only three movies of the past two decades to win both the year’s box-office crown and the Oscar for Best Picture — Rocky, Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man — were canny, poignant fables of men in domestic crisis. Throw in two other high-grossing Oscar winners, Platoon and Terms of Endearment, and you have the recipe for a “mature,” feel-good smash. Let’s see: retarded man, family man, Vietnam hero and lots of decent folks on their deathbeds. The movie is not only a greatest-hits rendering of 25 years of Americana, it’s a distillation of humanist culture in commercial movies.

It is also a sleek Hollywoodizing, a ruthlessly canny face-lift of Groom’s novel. In the book, Forrest was just as naive but not quite so innocent or lucky: he had some sex, did some drugs and missed out on the nuclear family that in the movie Forrest finally gets to tend. In pumping up Jenny’s role, screenwriter Eric Roth transferred all of Forrest’s flaws — and most of the excesses Americans committed in the ’60s and ’70s to her. Wright’s Jenny is a frail soul in tailspin, a battered child in a beautiful woman’s body. And Forrest is her redeemer. The suspense of the movie is whether she will allow him to save her.

Zemeckis says, without apparent irony: “I imagined Norman Rockwell painting the baby boomers.” And that is Gump : a social tragedy sanitized for a Saturday Evening Post cover. It celebrates innocence, acceptance and, not least, good manners in a tale set in the very era when Americans were supposed to have misplaced these virtues. The movie offers a cheerful alternative history — a Golden Book version — of the Vietnam War: it’s all about the emotional triumphs of these nice American soldiers, and hardly a Vietnamese even appears. There are precious few villains: only the boys who throw rocks at young Gump, Jenny’s sexually abusive father and the SDS leader who slaps her around. Everyone else is either a celebrity or a victim.

For younger viewers, then, Forrest Gump serves as a gentle introduction to the ’60s: baptism not by fire but by sound track. And to those who raged, suffered or sinned through that insane decade, the movie offers absolution with a love pat. Whaddaya know? We waged a stupid war that destroyed both another country and the best part of ourselves; we tore up our streets and our psyches in a kind of Cultural Revolution; we practically killed ourselves with drugs — and it turns out we’re not guilty. By allowing us to relive all the evils of recent history through invulnerably innocent, uncontaminated Forrest, the movie lets us achieve a vicarious virtue.Thank you, Forrest Gump . We feel so much better.

“Filmmakers often say the American public doesn’t want complicated films full of thought,” says Field, who is outstanding as the heroic mom in this edgy valentine. “They are wrong. They underestimate the intelligence of the American audience.” But does Forrest Gump make you think? No, it makes you feel — or, at best, makes you think about what you feel, and about how long it has been since a movie found those remote corners of sympathy and sentiment.

From a film industry that softens virtually any contentious social issue — aids, the Holocaust, Vietnam — into a fable with a happy ending, Forrest is the ultimate sentimental figure. He embodies that noble Hollywood precept, the spiritual superiority of the handicapped. Forrest is not the ranter on the subway or the sullen, overgrown lad at the back of the class. He is — well, just who is he?

The neat trick about Forrest is he can symbolize so many people. New York Times columnist Frank Rich has compared him to Bill Clinton. But Forrest’s simple optimism and his success as an entrepreneur and a reviver of American confidence could make him an emblem of ’80s conservatism: not only Reaganomics but what Republicans might call Reaganethics. He’s E.T. with a little Gandhi thrown in. He’s Candide making the best of the worst of all possible worlds. And in his influence on events, from the capture of the Watergate burglars to John Lennon’s composition of the song Imagine, he seems almost omnipotent. All-innocent and all-powerful, the ideal guru for the nervous ’90s: Forrest God.

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Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump Essay (Movie Review)

“Forrest Gump” is a movie that narrates the story of a man from the time he is a child up to the time he is a grown up working in a shrimp boat. The movie presents the audience with a chronological sequence of events that begin from 1960s to date. Therefore, the movie has several sociological ties with this period and the main character’s life.

The main character in the movie is Forrest Gump. The movie focuses on Gump’s experiences with government, racism, poverty, mass media, and politics among other things. The film’s unfolding events are revealed through Gump’s first person narration. The film’s main themes include child abuse, racism, poverty, gender roles, culture, and family violence. This essay explores some of the themes and characters in “Forrest Gump” and how they relate to social psychology.

One of the most prominent social theories that can be related to this film is symbolic interactionism. The main argument behind this theoretical concept is that the actions of people can only be well understood through meaningful communication.

The main character in this movie goes through a hard time in his formative years. He faces discrimination from both teachers and students in his first school. This discrimination is centered on the fact that Gump has low IQ and suffers from a disability, conditions that make him misunderstood by the rest of the community.

The fact that he cannot express himself to his detractors makes the situation worse for Gump. The only time there is an attempt to initiate direct communication on Gump’s behalf is when his mother confronts the school principal and insists that there is nothing that makes Gump unfit to attend Greenbow County Central School. According to symbolic interactionism theory, only direct communication makes people’s actions understandable.

When Gump grows up the discrimination against him subsides because he can now be able to communicate with those who misunderstood him earlier. In the movie, it is clear that the torment and isolation that Forrest Gump had experienced as a child reduces as he grows older. Moreover, the only way Gump is able to make a solid and sincere friend in Jenny is by being able to communicate with her directly.

According to role theory, our behavior as human beings is determined by our own expectations and those of other people in the society. This theory is both exemplified and contradicted in “Forrest Gump”. As a child, other people do not expect Forrest Gump to achieve much.

However, Gump is able to focus on his own expectations and those of the American society. In the end, Gump is an accomplished athlete, military man, spiritual leader, and entrepreneur. However, Gump contradicts several expectations from his own society by decrying racism and rising above discrimination and isolation. The role theory also asserts that people spend a considerable amount of their lifetime being part of groups.

Jenny spends most of her time as part of the ‘hippie’ movement. According to the movie, Jenny is also a member of an illegal organization known as the Black Panther Party. Moreover, role theory specifies that people always assume different roles and occupy various positions in these groups. Gump is involved in the activities of various groups and organizations where he assumes different roles. For instance, he assumes the leadership of his military group and he is eventually granted a medal of honor.

The social constructionism concept holds that individuals and groups form their own reality. This concept explores the dynamics of institutions and actions without necessarily analyzing their cause and effect. The reality that is formed by the film’s main character falls under this concept. In one scene, Gump and his friend Jenny are being chased by bullies. Suddenly, the braces in Gump’s legs fall off and this is when he realizes he is better off without the braces.

Before this occurrence, Gump’s reality was that he could not perform well without the braces. However, this reality is challenged by the actual reality. The same concept applies to Gump’s relationship with Jenny. Gump believes that their love is eternal but this reality keeps being challenged by several other realities including Jenny’s drug abuse and emotional imbalance. According to social constructionism theorists, socially constructed notions are not always true.

For instance, the union between Jenny and Gump is a reality that only exists during certain periods. The same case applies to Gump’s friend Dan who is convinced that Gump erred by saving his life. In the beginning, Dan is convinced that it would have been better if he had died in the war front. However, later on in the movie, another reality occurs to him and he thanks Gump for saving his life.

Another social psychological notion that is paraded in “Forrest Gump” is deviance. According to social psychology, deviance is a behavior that contradicts the accepted social norms. In this movie, deviance can be exemplified through the actions of various characters. For instance, Jenny’s involvement in the hippie movement and her subsequent drug abuse can be interpreted as deviant behaviors. Social psychology scholars explain the source of deviance using several theories.

In Jenny’s case, her deviant behavior would best be explained using strain theory. This means that Jenny picked up her deviance because of her social environment. Unlike Gump, Jenny came from a poor and abusive background. However, she was still expected to achieve the same goals as other kids from wealthy backgrounds. The strain involved in achieving her goals might have caused her to rebel.

The self-concept is also well explored in this film. Self-concept is the result of self process. It is through self-process that individuals are able to identify themselves. The narrator in this movie uses first person narration and is able to reveal several self-concepts. For instance, in the beginning of the movie he is shown narrating his life to strangers who are seated in a park bench.

In this narration, he arrives at various conclusions about his identity. In essence, this narration offers a ‘snap-shot’ of Forrest Gump. The effectiveness of Gump’s narration is aided by the fact that human beings can be able to talk about themselves as they would about an inanimate object such as a chair. This is according to self-concept. In addition, it is through this concept that Gump is able to delve into his self-identity and conduct self-evaluations.

Although “Forrest Gump” was supposed to be a film about the life of one man, the movie managed to delve into various social theories and concepts. By exploring the film’s plot and characters, one is able to unearth several social theories and concepts. Some of the theories contained in this film aid in character and theme development. The film’s maker is also able to present wholesome characters by borrowing on several social concepts.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-theories-and-concepts-in-forrest-gump/

"Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/social-theories-and-concepts-in-forrest-gump/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump'. 28 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-theories-and-concepts-in-forrest-gump/.

1. IvyPanda . "Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-theories-and-concepts-in-forrest-gump/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-theories-and-concepts-in-forrest-gump/.

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Visit These Iconic Forrest Gump Filming Locations

Unlike a box of chocolates, you can know what you’re going to get with these places from Gump’s epic life

Natasha Geiling

Twenty years have passed since Forrest Gump first regaled strangers on a Savannah park bench with tales of American history and boxes of chocolate, but the film remains an iconic part of our nation's film canon. Perhaps equally iconic are the film's locations—sweeping in breadth, the movie transports viewers from the American South to Vietnam.

For a taste of Forrest Gump's version of American history, skip the line at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and take a trip to one of these locations instead:

Chippewa Square, Savannah, GA

It's hard to imagine Forrest Gump without the scenes in Chippewa Square , where Gump dispenses wisdom about life to perfect strangers on a park bench (everything from "stupid is as stupid does" to "life is like a box of chocolates"). You can visit the square today—but don't expect to sit on the bench. The film's famed bench was placed in the square only for filming, and then moved to the nearby Savannah History Museum .

Yemassee, South Carolina

Many of the scenes from Forrest's youth in the fictional town of Greenbow, Alabama, were actually filmed in South Carolina, among the small towns of Yemassee and Beaufort. Many of the structures for the film—like Jenny's farmhouse and Forrest's family boarding house—were built specifically for the film and torn down when production wrapped, but a few remnants of the film remain visible around the towns. The road where Forrest was chased in a pickup truck by high school bullies is located at 3547 Combahee Road , Yemassee, South Carolina—though it leads to a private property, so it's probably best not to recreate the famous chase-scene on your own.

Hunting Island State Park, South Carolina

Forrest's time fighting in the Vietnam War lends the movie some of its most heartrending moments—but they weren't filmed on the beaches of Vietnam. Instead, movie officials chose Hunting Island State Park , in South Carolina, as the setting for many of the film's war scenes. Today, Hunting Island is one of the most popular state parks in South Carolina, welcoming more than a million visitors each year.

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Washington, DC

In another iconic scene, Forrest attends a rally in Washington, D.C., only to catch a glimpse of his childhood best friend Jenny across the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. All three are, of course, free and open to the public, and attract a huge number of visitors each year. The National Park Service reports that some 24 million people come to the National Mall annually.

Watergate Hotel, Washington, DC

Forrest Gump manages to witness a lot of monumental moments in American history simply by being in the right place at the right time—and his night spent in the Watergate Hotel is no exception. When he calls the front desk about a few men across the courtyard rummaging through a room with flashlights, he has no idea that he has spotted the scandal that will lead to President Nixon's resignation. Today, the Watergate complex still stands near Washington, D.C.'s waterfront, and serves as a mixed-use complex with office buildings, residential spaces and various cafes.

Marshall Point Lighthouse, Maine

Forrest spends a lot of his time running—throughout the course of the film, he manages to cross the country completely on foot, amassing a following along the way. To reach the Atlantic Ocean, Forrest runs to Marshall Point Lighthouse , one of over 60 lighthouses that dot Maine's rocky coastline. The lighthouse is open to visitors daily from sunrise to sunset.

Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina

While on a three-year, coast-to-coast run, Forrest claims that he only stopped to eat and sleep. In real life, actor Tom Hanks didn't have to suffer the same fate: in the scenes that show Forrest running, it's actually Hanks' brother acting as a stunt double. Some beautiful shots show Forrest running along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, especially around Grandfather Mountain .

Twin Arrows Trading Post, Arizona

On his run across America, Forrest helps create an American pop-culture icon when a truck driving by splashes mud on his face and a running mate gives him a t-shirt to clean the mud off—an imprint of Gump's face remains on the shirt, and the famous "Smiley" is born. During the scene, viewers can catch two arrows behind Gump's running route—this is the Twin Arrows Trading Post , about 20 miles east of Flagstaff. Once a famous stop along Route 66, the arrows have fallen into disrepair since I-40 became the main route of transportation; so make sure you get down to see them before they're gone for good.

Monument Valley, Utah and Arizona

One day, three years into his journey, Forrest suddenly decides to stop running. It's unclear exactly where in Monument Valley Forrest felt the urge to return home, but don't let that stop you from visiting the beautiful region, which extends into Utah and Arizona. The valley, peppered with dramatic sandstone buttes, is one of the most photographed spots on Earth .

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Natasha Geiling | | READ MORE

Natasha Geiling is an online reporter for Smithsonian magazine.

Portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump"

Affiliations.

1 Psychoinformatics lab, Department of Psychology II, University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, 39106, Germany.
2 Centre for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany.
PMID: 25977755
PMCID: PMC4416536
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.6230.1

Here we present a dataset with a description of portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump". A total of 12 observers independently annotated emotional episodes regarding their temporal location and duration. The nature of an emotion was characterized with basic attributes, such as arousal and valence, as well as explicit emotion category labels. In addition, annotations include a record of the perceptual evidence for the presence of an emotion. Two variants of the movie were annotated separately: 1) an audio-movie version of Forrest Gump that has been used as a stimulus for the acquisition of a large public functional brain imaging dataset, and 2) the original audio-visual movie. We present reliability and consistency estimates that suggest that both stimuli can be used to study visual and auditory emotion cue processing in real-life like situations. Raw annotations from all observers are publicly released in full in order to maximize their utility for a wide range of applications and possible future extensions. In addition, aggregate time series of inter-observer agreement with respect to particular attributes of portrayed emotions are provided to facilitate adoption of these data.

Keywords: Audio-visual stimulus; Emotional episodes; Emotional processing cues; Forrest Gump; fMRI.

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American History Through The Lens of ‘Forrest Gump’

Anna Ferranti '24 , Writer May 16, 2023

Forrest Gump is a moving tale of the eponymous character Forrest who goes through his life with an ever-cheerful disposition despite facing obstacles such as a mental disability and a crooked spine. Throughout the course of the film, Forrest touches many other lives around him, simply by being himself. While it is a poignant story about optimism and resilience, the movie also paints a compelling picture of post-WWII American history. Forrest’s life is interwoven with key historical events that unfold through the experiences of the characters.

The first part of American history that we see developed in the film has to do with the origins of our country. When the audience meets Forrest, we learn that he was named after Ku Klux Klan member Nathan Bedford Forrest. His family also resides on a former plantation, as the movie takes place in Alabama, a state notorious for its propensity towards slavery. Finally, as Forrest is chased through the streets by his bullies, we see a confederate flag prominently featured on the car of the offenders. These elements all set the scene of a country, and specifically the state of Alabama, living in the legacy of slavery.

The next element of history we see in the movie is the Vietnam War. After graduating college, Forrest is persuaded to enlist in the military and serve in Vietnam. While he is overseas, he meets a fellow soldier named Bubba and a lieutenant named Dan. These two characters both illustrate greater consequences of the Vietnam War in unique ways. Bubba, Forrest’s best friend, tragically dies in battle after a surprise ambush on the American forces. Bubba’s death played into a broader historical movement at the time, one that is referenced in the movie; deaths like Bubba, a black man, added fuel to the fire of black nationalists such as the Black Panthers. The Black Panther Party opposed the draft of black men to the war because they were angry at having to fight for a country that didn’t fight for them. They felt more solidarity with the Vietnamese people being targeted by the American government than with America itself. Therefore, the Vietnam War strengthened black power movements due to deaths like Bubba’s in Forrest Gump.

Another character Forrest meets while fighting the war is Lieutenant Dan. We quickly learn that every member of Dan’s family had died in past US wars. Consequently, Dan felt it would be the highest honor to die fighting for his country. However, Dan doesn’t die. He is rescued by Forrest and tragically loses both of his legs in the process. This quickly takes a turn on him for the worse: the next time he meets Forrest, he is unemployed, resentful, and devoid of hope. Dan was one of many veterans from the Vietnam War who became disenfranchised upon returning home. They felt neglected by the government and simultaneously hated by the public for fighting an unjust war, although they often didn’t have any choice in their service. Lieutenant Dan, like many veterans, lost his sense of identity and his will to live after being injured in Vietnam and discharged from the army. Thus, Bubba and Lieutenant Dan both reflect respective effects of the Vietnam War on America.

While fighting in the Vietnam War, Forrest discovers a talent for ping pong. Ever the obedient optimist, he devotes himself into the craft and rapidly becomes better and better. He is consequently recruited by the United States government to play ping pong in China. This was part of a larger historical process at the time known as ping pong diplomacy. President Nixon led this outreach initiative to facilitate friendly relations between the United States and China in the midst of the Cold War. China, which was becoming increasingly less economically communist, was an important ally for the United States in the struggle against the Soviet Union. It was due to the efforts of ping pong games like the ones played by Forrest that the United States and China were able to find common ground.

Finally, Forrest Gump portrays the hallmarks of pop culture throughout the decades it takes place in. Forrest, as he navigates life, crosses paths with the likes of Elvis and John Lennon, two of the most popular singers during the 60s and 70s. He is even shown inspiring Elvis’s famous hip shake. Forrest also becomes intertwined with the hippie movement, a symbol of the 70s. He accidentally participates in a pacifist hippie parade at Washington DC after being sucked in by the crowd. Additionally, his longtime best friend and eventual wife Jenny dresses in the hippie style. Finally, the most iconic part of Forrest Gump is his aptness for running (“run Forrest run!”). Forrest embarks on a three year long run and gets joined by increasing numbers of people as he runs. This plays into the historical running boom that occurred in the 70s. An estimated 25 million Americans adopted running habits during the decade. Thus, Forrest Gump paints a picture of 60s and 70s pop culture through the progression of Forrest’s life.

Forrest Gump is a classic for many reasons, one of which being its portrayal of American history. The movie seamlessly weaves together the personal growth of Forrest with the development of United States history. It retells each facet of American life in the 60s and 70s through the eyes of one man, reminding audiences how much is possible and how resilient they can be if they have the right mindset. Forrest Gump functions as an engrossing mythology of the post-WWII period.

Anna is the Editor in Chief of the newspaper and enjoys writing articles about pop culture. She is a senior and has attended Austin Prep since 6th grade....

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Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump was based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. Director Robert Zemeckis used computer-generated effects to insert Forrest into historical scenes, including meetings with presidents and celebrities, and used a "greatest hits" sound track to evoke a sense of time and place. The movie's warm, comic spirit made it a favourite of many viewers, though others ...
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The story of Forrest Gump takes place over the tumultuous and transformative decades of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when America went through a number of political, social, and economic changes. One of the true delights of this film is seeing how many of these changes Forrest witnesses and is actually apart of.
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Introduction. Forrest Gump is a motivating movie about the struggles that we go through in life and it gives hope that there is always a way out of every quagmire. Directed by Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks playing the role of Forrest; this is a classical must-watch movie of all the times. The main theme here is that, no matter what happens in ...
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth.It is inspired by the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field.. The film follows the life of an Alabama man named Forrest Gump (Hanks) and his experiences in the 20th-century United States.
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The Gump phenomenon, then, is not simply a fad; it is a "discourse event," a con-tinual cultural struggle over the meanings ascribed to Forrest Gump and his story.9 The conceptualization of Forrest Gump as a "discursive relay station" informs both the theoretical framework and the chronology of this essay. To explore the
PDF In Pursuit of Identity and Survival: Deciphering the Existential
It was written by Eric Roth, and is based on the novel "Forrest Gump" by Winston Groom written in 1986. Winston Groom is an American non-fiction writer and novelist. His works are dedicated to the cultural and historical essence of America. Many of his works, including 'Forrest Gump' deals with the background of American Civil War, World War I ...
A Rhetorical Analysis of Forrest Gump from the ...
In 1994, Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis), the immensely popular film about a simpleton hero triumphing over (by ignoring) the vicissitudes of three decades of recent American history, was second ...
Forrest Gump's Contribution to Research ...
Abstract When the fictional character Forrest Gump said: "Life is like a box of chocolates," he offered an intriguing insight into at least one aspect of human existence. However, in creating his analogy he likely fell into a trap that sometimes ensnares social science researchers. For example, since the 1950s authors in disparate academic and professional genres have used metaphors ...
(PDF) Forrest Gump's Contribution to Research Methodology: An Analogy
Forrest Gump's Contribution to R esearch Methodology: An Analogy … 40 Michel Racine, Anthony M. Gould element should be the source and which should be the target.
Forrest Gump and the Future of Teaching the Past
Forrest Gump and the Future of T eaching the Past, V ol. 89, No ... Research data are rich and meaningful‚ connecting closely teachers' epistemological beliefs with instructional practices of ...
"What's Normal Anyways?": Intersectionality in Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is not the only example of this affinity - the success of films like Django Unchained, The '60s, and The '70s, and TV shows like Mad Men and The West Wing attest to the subconscious desire for this all-inclusive view. Conventional perceptions of American society remark negatively on the passive, anti-intellectual nature of mass media.
A Study of Subtitle Translation in Forrest Gump from the Perspective of
As a result, with the representation of American film Forrest Gump, this paper will analyze the subtitle translation from the relevance theory to enrich the subtitle translation research. 2.2 Research abroad In the field of translation studies, especially in the West, subtitle translation is attracting more attention of scholars, which ...
The Best Historical References In Forrest Gump
The most extensive historical reference in "Forrest Gump" is the movie's portrayal of the Vietnam War. Forrest joins the army in the 1960s, just as the war is starting to heat up. There, he ...
Forrest Gump (1994)
Forrest Gump: Directed by Robert Zemeckis. With Tom Hanks, Rebecca Williams, Sally Field, Michael Conner Humphreys. The history of the United States from the 1950s to the '70s unfolds from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, who yearns to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.
Screening Trauma: Forrest Gump, Film and Memory
Jun 2016. Tamar Katriel. View. ... 3. The important references to it encompass a few textual analyses. See Hartman (1995) on The War, Radstone (2000) on Forrest Gump, Caruth (1996a) on Hiroshima ...
Review: Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump, a romantic epic starring Tom Hanks as a slow but sweet-souled Alabama boy who lucks into nearly every headline event of the past 40 years, is the summer sensation: a popular hit and ...
Social Theories and Concepts in Forrest Gump
The main character in the movie is Forrest Gump. The movie focuses on Gump's experiences with government, racism, poverty, mass media, and politics among other things. The film's unfolding events are revealed through Gump's first person narration. The film's main themes include child abuse, racism, poverty, gender roles, culture, and ...
Visit These Iconic Forrest Gump Filming Locations
Yemassee, South Carolina. Many of the scenes from Forrest's youth in the fictional town of Greenbow, Alabama, were actually filmed in South Carolina, among the small towns of Yemassee and Beaufort ...
Portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump"
Here we present a dataset with a description of portrayed emotions in the movie "Forrest Gump". A total of 12 observers independently annotated emotional episodes regarding their temporal location and duration. The nature of an emotion was characterized with basic attributes, such as arousal and valence, as well as explicit emotion category ...
Forrest Gump: Themes of Tolerance & Equality
Download Citation | Forrest Gump: Themes of Tolerance & Equality | In a parallel universe, the protagonist of Forrest Gump (1994, Director: Robert Zemeckis) encounters Elvis Presley, John Lennon ...
American History Through The Lens of 'Forrest Gump'
Forrest Gump is a moving tale of the eponymous character Forrest who goes through his life with an ever-cheerful disposition despite facing obstacles such as a mental disability and a crooked spine. Throughout the course of the film, Forrest touches many other lives around him, simply by being himself. While it is a poignant story about optimism and resilience, the movie also paints a ...
(PDF) Forrest Gump movie review to publish
Abstract. "Forrest Gump" is a movie that narrates the story of a man from the time he is a child up to the time he is a grown-up working in a shrimp boat. The movie presents the audience with ...
Center for Economic Research and ForecastingLessons from Forrest Gump
You may recall the movie Forrest Gump in which the title character, played by Tom Hanks, was a simple person who happened to have a ringside seat on many of the major events in American history in the 1950s through the 1970s. ... Center for Economic Research and Forecasting is a part of Cal Lutheran's School of Management.