I was gonna do a writeup but this author sums up my thoughts pretty well. I always hated how the movie portrayed Jenny. It's like the movie tries to punish her for daring to move against the broader (white, patriarchal, militaristic, conservative) culture. Notice how she only receives redemption when she functionally gives up her counter-cultural ways and accepts her role as a mom. And even then she still gets "punished" for her "sins" by dying of AIDS like it's some Grimm fairy tale. Feels a bit like incel fan-fiction, in hindsight.
And of course the movie panders to white reactionary notions of the Black Panthers. They were just angry black men who were reverse racists. Gross.
Forrest Gump is incredibly reactionary and it's terrible. It's the conservative boomers' attempt to tell a morality tale in which they are the ultimate victors over their contemporaries who dared for something different.
I counted this as my second favorite movie as a teen (after The Matrix) but I've never watched it as a leftist adult to reasses. Maybe I should avoid doing so to preserve my childlike innocence about it :agony-shivering:
It's still great entertainment, I watched it yearly and had 11th grade us history students write up essays elaborating on the OP. @zifnab25's post sums it up well
It’s a “comfy” movie, which is not surprising as it’s made primarily for nostalgic boomers
You'll probably find it a bit boring now I think, it's certainly no Roger Rabbit (the better Zemekis film)
I still like that movie. Yeah, it has bad politics, but so does everything else.
I've also been reassured every time I post a screed on here about media that "consuming media isn't politics" so... :shrug-outta-hecks:
it's a warm blanket with a warm beverage on cold day