Forrest Gump and Assassinations

I would just like to start this post by saying I absolutely love Forrest Gump. It is probably one of my top five movies of all-time. I have always appreciated how well the film was put together and also enjoyed the many historical allusions. Sadly, reading the article by Thomas Byers almost ruined it for me.


The part I found most disturbing was Byers' discussion of assassinations. Throughout the movie, I have obviously always noticed Forrest bringing up assassinations, but I NEVER noticed that the movie included all of the major assassinations that occurred in his life other than the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Like Byers discusses I can understand Malcolm X's exclusion because he was a bit on the radical side, but I can't believe (now that I think about it) that they didn't even mention the assassination of MLK.

It is truly unbelievable that they left this out because it would obviously been an event that Forrest cared about.  He discussed multiple assassinations and he was supposedly the moral compass of the movie.  He seemingly cared about the moral  implications of racism in the rest of the movie, but in this one case he didn't.  I think not including the assassination of MLK was a huge statement of this movie.  I think excluding this assassination made a huge statement in which the director of the film believed that he could simply pick and choose what he would like to discuss.  He made everyone remember what he wanted them to remember and how he wanted them to remember history.

Though reading Byers article was somewhat disturbing for me, I still love Forrest Gump and I will undoubtedly watch it the next time it comes on whatever movie channel has its rights for that particular week.