Stress Eating a {Box of Chocolates}: The Sad Lesson of Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is the worst. Disturbing, even.

I’ll be honest. It didn’t disturb me the first time I watched it. Or even the second. It took about a decade and a half for the movie to catch up to me, late night on TBS, snacking dutifully through the commercial breaks.

You might think that I’m bothered by it for all the VERY normal reasons (AKA my fear of feathers, wind, the South, going to war, and most of all, running). Nope. Not even close.

We all know the plot.

Forrest and Jenny grow up together. Forrest is “slow.” Forrest loves Jenny. Jenny is too “troubled” to love him back. Decades pass and they flit in and out of each others’ lives, with Forrest doing the heavy emotional lifting. Eventually, despite the ravages of time and situation, they reconnect and their love is realized. At least, for a brief time, before she passes away.

Sounds tragic and meaningful and great, right? What a love story! It’s not perfect, but the depth of true love makes all the trouble worth it! Cue that fucking piano. Or.

Forrest Gump is a movie about the cycle of abuse.

Re-meet Jenny, a woman who was (likely physically and sexually) abused as a child, and grows up to do the following…

1) Emotionally abuse an autistic man over the course of decades.
2) Reject his offers of love and marriage.
3) Have sex with him anyway.
4) Disappear the next day, sending him into depression and 3.5 years of homelessness.
5) Have their child without his knowledge.
6) Contract an “unknown” disease.
*6a) Most likely HIV/AIDS from IV drug use. No shame here, but it’s informative.
7) Reach out to man she’s previously ignored out of fear for her child’s future.
8) Convince him to marry her and raise the child he previously didn’t know about.
*8a) But likely only because she’s dying.
*8b) And it doesn’t hurt that he’s rich.

I’m not saying that Jenny, a survivor of abuse, isn’t an ultimately sympathetic character. But it’s perhaps a little too easy to get wrapped up in all the magical, historical realism of Forrest’s life and lose sight of the fact that Jenny is, objectively, the human antagonist of the movie.

Look, fictional Jenny. I get it. I’ve done some messed up shit to men, too. Not on your level, but I don’t have a fucked up past that’s on your level. Understanding your past, the expectation for you to know how to love someone in a straightforward and healthy way is unreasonable, at best.

So, yeah. Jenny is… flawed. Even still, she’s not the real villain in Forrest Gump.

The real villain is love.

At its black heart, Forrest Gump is (unintentionally) a movie about how a life based on love is a life wasted. Even if it doesn’t mean to be.

Forrest spends his whole life chasing a person who uses him for validation and support but gives him very little in return. He loves, with all his being, a person who in no way considers or treats him as a viable option for love or even companionship. That is, until her own sudden mortality changes her mind (and arguably, she finally has something to gain from his steadfast devotion).

Over the course of those years, Forrest does amazing things. Lives an incredible and robust existence. Goes to college. Travels. Makes friends. Starts a business. Meets presidents and dignitaries. Invents the ultra-ultra-ultra-marathon. Experiences growth and loss. Changes the lives of most everyone he meets. Mostly for the better.

But no. He needs Jenny, or none of it matters. He’s ultimately a failure without love. And so are we, apparently. Because, assuredly, none of us are Forrests.

We’re office workers and cashiers and bus drivers and insurance salesmen and whatever else. We drink and we fart and we think about visiting Niagara Falls but we mostly watch TV. OK, so we might be pretty good at ping pong, but that’s not enough. We’re middling people living middling lives, occasionally running into the Forrests of the world on random park benches.

This is why the movie disturbs me. The one thing we have in common with the Forrests is our ability to love. And more importantly, be loved back. Which apparently, is the ultimate validation.

So fuck you, Forrest Gump. Robert Zemeckis. TBS. Feathers and wind. That’s a horrible message.

Forrest Gump was an incredible person. He shouldn’t need Jenny to be happy. No one should need a Jenny.

But if Forrest Gump, a movie about Forrest Gump, won’t let Forrest Gump be happy with just Forrest Gump, what hope is there for the rest of us?