It's obviously a Rethuglican trick: getting Bill to sing a song celebrating atheism so they can claim that he and the rest of us Dems are all atheists.
Doesn't seeing someone embarrass himself like that make you cring until your eyeballs pop out? I couldn't make it through.
Totally. I think of these things as "Bobby Brady Moments," in honor of those times on the Brady Bunch when I knew Bobby was going to be badly embarrassed, and I'd run out of the room to avoid having to see it.
I actually associate that phenomenon with Ramona Quimby, like the scene in which she throws a tantrum because she feels someone has copied her paper bag owl. I could barely stand to reread that part when I was a kid. And I also had trouble watching The Office for that reason.
I end up closing my eyes and cringing for this reason during a lot of TV shows. I think it's why I don't watch reality shows at all -- I fear on-screen humiliation.
I cringe at so many things on tv that I can't watch with my wife, who would like me to. Reality, drama, you name it, I start but then get up and leave. I can handle real things, but being embarassed by the contrived, either scripted or set-up, as on reality tv, is something I don't feel I should subject myself to. And sports pressure that is all about the pressure, such as skating or gymnastics, where the performances are well-known, and the drama consists of whether or not she'll "stick it" are just as bad.
But I can watch the danger and cruelty of bicycle and auto racing, where every situation is different, interactive and improvisatorial, without limit.
I really think there should be some sort of name for this phenomenon. Reverse schadenfraude (hey I remembered how to spell that)?
I think the absolute epitome of this genre of protagonist torture is Meet the Parents. Just Friends is also an egregious example. My two most hated movies.
I Love Lucy did that sometimes, but it also had a fair amount of wordplay and simple slapstick, which for me makes it somewhat watchable. Meet the Parents has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Heh. I'm dying to see the office, and I totally loved this clip. It made me cringe, but at the same time, his ability to just grin at his own mortification was kinda cool.
Plus you know he was totally digging being able to put his arm around that singer.
I loved I Love Lucy as a kid, but this is largely because the situations are so absurd that they can't be taken seriously and it's all so self-consciously slapsticky that it's impossible to watch it and think anyone was unaware of the humor of the situation (same for Rat Race, which is a movie I could watch a thousand times over and half the charm of which is how all the actors so utterly let go and invite the laugh). Also, there are times when Lucy's over-the-top plots work out, and she's seen as clever and charismatic, and that helps balance it. The Office is (a) too much like a place I once worked and (b) almost threatening in the completeness of Gervais' performance. It is almost possible to sit there and watch it and convince yourself that he has no idea how painful it is, and that's what's terrifying about it: it suggests (in my egocentric self-doubt) that I could be that big of an idiot and have no idea, and that thought makes me want to run screaming from the room.
pdf is totally right about Meet the Parents. It's not actually a comedy so much as a theater of cruelty thing, up to the sappy ending. One of my friends described it as "Get the Jew."
Kevin: [On who inspired him to be a wood worker] I'd have to say Jesus. He was a carpenter and I figured if you're going to follow in somebody's footsteps, why not the steps of our lord and savior?
Jack Byrnes: [Before Greg has a chance to respond] Greg's Jewish.
It's not actually a comedy so much as a theater of cruelty thing
It has not been all that long since one could not imagine … [a] noble household without beings on whom one could vent one's malice and cruel teasing without a second thought (—think for example of Don Quixote at the court of the Duchess: today we read the entire Don Quixote with a bitter taste on our tongue, almost with anguish, and would as a result appear very strange, very puzzling to its author and his contemporaries—they read it with the very clearest conscience as the most lighthearted of books, they practically laughed themselves to death over it).
SCMT, maybe my agreement was too hasty; it's not one of my most hated movies (GRAARH Forrest Gump KILL KILL KILL), and in fact it's absolutely perfect at creating that awkward pause feeling. And that bit was good. But mostly they seemed to be heading for the squirm rather than the laugh.
Hmm. I wonder how many people share a similar detestation (yes that's a word) of movies of the ilk of MTP. It surely can't be a majority, because otherwise such movies wouldn't be as popular. Is it a majority of the commenters here? (We need a poll!) Perhaps the demographics here are at play. A correlation between grade skipping and reverse schadenfreude?
But seriously, I can't begin to say how much I dislike that sort of thing. I was in my apartment snuggling with an attractive date while watching Just Friends (*shudder*) and still had to stop halfway through the movie because I just COULD NOT STAND IT.
The thing that makes me cringe to the point of not being able to watch it is seeing someone humiliate themselves (as opposed to simple embarrassment). Especially when I, the audience, am supposed to laugh at it or find it charming. E.g., "whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?" God, I shudder just typing it.
But Ben Stiller movies, while a little cringe-worthy, are hilarious.
35: Yeah, if it's embarrassment that I couldn't have avoided (or embarrassment that is handled gracefully enough) it doesn't bug me. But so many times, the people compound their initial fuck-ups with a total lack of situational awareness, tact, or some other social skill, and *that* is what really gets to me.
For the record, I found Zoolander a bit too dumb and crude, but otherwise kind of amusing. The characters were just too extreme to trigger the level of empathy necessary for me to feel all squirmy. I hated Waterboy, but I don't universally detest Adam Sandler. (Even sometimes when he's not playing in Spanglish, which is a great movie.)
39: It didn't seem so, so I imagine, in fact I know that there were 2 or 3 classes of Grade 3/4, so that those not skipped were consolidated into 4 and those who were skipped made a new 5.
I didn't like Meet the Parents, but mostly because it was just the same damn joke over and over again. I love cringe-inducing movies, though (I did skip a grade). Especially watching them with somebody who actually cringes. But then I still have that older brother mean streak, however much I repress it in polite company.
On the topic of cringing, I can't really decide whether what this guy is doing is virtuous or kinda mean.
I think it's interesting: I wonder what the psychomotor effects of singing are, and whether people who are deaf tend not to do it because they can't hear it themselves, and if therefore it might be like encouraging people to exercise or something. And also what the intellectual effects of learning the concept of reading music are, even if one can't hear it oneself.
Especially if you're deaf from birth. Do such people have any concept of pitch, even if, obviously, they can't reproduce it? Would they just ignore the vertical position of the notes?
Wiener, how can you not like Forrest Gump? I can understand criticisim of the movie, I have some myself, but for its faults anyone who actually hates it probably hates puppies and kittens, too.
Apo, we were in Nags Head. For the last three years some friends and I have rented a house down there, maybe 1-2 miles past the Food Lion. Every year we promise ourselves we're going to visit Mermaids, but instead we drink and grill and play in the ocean instead.
Wiener, how can you not like Forrest Gump? I can understand criticisim of the movie, I have some myself, but for its faults anyone who actually hates it probably hates puppies and kittens, too.
I didn't find Forrest Gump more objectionable than any other mass market American movie, but the fact that they changed the catchphrase (thereby changing the entire meaning of the story) did bother me.
Also, to people who have the embarrassment representation cringe reaction - do you think of yourselves as having social anxiety disorder? I would think that such fear of humiliation would lead to a bit of paralysis during social interaction. (I'm drawing partially from personal experience, here.)
It's not good, I don't agree that it's notably worse than the median Hollywood film. I can see its Oscar causing exaggerated distaste, that is one of the reasons I loath A Beautiful Mind.
Yeah, when I'm not patronizing retarded people (or, in a pinch, elderly African-Americans) while basking in the glow of saccharine platitudes, I'm usually raping babies.
I hate watching someone embarrass themselves so much that I will almost always jump in and correct them. I have found that most people are actually more embarrassed by being corrected than by being secretly laughed at.
I think Forrest Gump was way worse than A Beautiful Mind. FG had as an implicit message that engagement in the world was a form of illness wrought by sexual abuse that went hand and hand with sluttishness and drug addiction, and if you were one of those people you'd get AIDS and die, whereas if you were disengaged from the world and only capable of sympathy for your intimates, you were a paradoxically healthy savant.
I trust we all feel that you can interpret how you like. I think of Forrest as more engaged in the world than Jenny in this way - although he had trouble discerning the nature of what was going on around him, he was always interactive with it, and he made more efforts at trying to interact with the world around him. Of course, he had supernatural good luck, too.
Also, what I took away from the movie was that the difference in how Forrest and Jenny turned out had more to do with whether your parent was wise and well-off, or sexually abusive and poor. That seemed pretty harped on, to me. Forrest always had his retreat to his own little nirvana, while Jenny was doomed to always run away.
Forrest Gump was merely terrible. ABM is also dangerous, in that it's one of about three dozen films in which a genuinely psychologically ill guy refuses medication and learns to manage his crazy through the love of a good woman. See also Punch-Drunk Love. All I can think when I see these movies (as someone who spent a year trying to single-handedly "fix" a schizophrenic with the power of my love) is that they cut out all the scenes where he gets confused and beats her up or tries to ram the car into an oncoming truck.
I don't know why we need deep justifications for disliking FG. It was just a terrible, boring movie. If you've done your job right, I shouldn't consider it a tragedy that neither the bullies nor Vietnam killed FG. Sentimental pap all the way through. ABM wasn't good, but it wasn't nearly so terrible.
77, I think there's a difference when a particular myth is so often represented in fully realistic movies that mentally ill people refuse treatment, thinking all they "really" need is love. I'm sure the screenwriters are just representing their own feelings of being outsiders or quirky metaphorically through mental illness, but it seems really pervasive among young troubled guys I've met.
Plus, Being There actually had, you know, an edge to it. Some kind of actual brains to the thing.
FG, in fact, is precisely the kind of thing that makes me cringe in mortification. It's the same as Diff'rent Strokes: "aww, isn't it just so cute watching people shuffle for our amusement?" It makes me want to crawl out of my skin and go be an otter or something.
You think FG was necessarily commenting about ALL hippies because of its representation of ONE hippie with severe emotional damage? That's seems a bit simple-minded.
One thing about FG is what makes him successful despite his intellectual lack is that he has super judgement, well beyond what he should, or maybe could, have. yeah, that's unrealistic. But unrealism in itself isn't a reason, for me, to dislike a movie. Plus, most movies have unrealistic characters, and often similarly unrealistic characters - i.e. normal people with supernatural judgement.
83: The Painted Bird is so good, people have accused Jerzy Kozinski of having plagiarized it from somewhere else. I liked Being There (both the book and film), but it shows mild evidence of the flaws that mar JK's non-PB fiction. TPB is really deeply upsetting and disgusting.
But it's unrealism in the service of a really, really creepy ideal -- don't think so hard, just take what comes along, and you'll be a better and more successful person than someone who tries. As a movie it's just unrealistic -- as something that strikes a chord with the public at large, it gives me the heebiejeebies.
Oh god, I should so leave alone any argument that runs along the lines of "it's just a story," but I can't help myself. FG is clearly making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story. I don't see how anyone can possibly fail to realize that.
That said, I really truly really truly am just not going to say anything more about it. Really. Truly. If I do, I vow to buy FG and watch it every night for a week.
(Apo, my answer to the question in 85 is in 80. I'm vehement because it's just so icky.)
The mentality authorized by Forrest Gump---I don't know much, but I know what's right 'cause my Momma taught me---is the mentality that supports the 43d President.
I've been out for awhile, and have read this entire thread on FG. What amazes me is not the vehemence, nor the opinions, with which I'm sure I'd have no disagreement, but that you've all seen the movie. I knew I didn't want to see it, but I was in my forties.
My notion is, we see just about everything big when we're young. Afterwards, we can tell when we won't like it. If Gary or Emerson, or mcmc or anybody over forty are still around, I'd like to know how many of them saw it.
making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story
I was at an Oscar party with a bunch of British people the year Forrest Gump came out, and one of them said to me, "At first I honestly thought it was a scathing satire, a savage indictment of American aspirations and mores. America represented by an idiot, what else is one to think? Then I read some reviews and discovered this was not, in fact, the case."
Well, reason to not watch it, anyway. Curse it if you like... But if other people like it, what's wrong with letting them like what they like, as long as it's not doing you any harm?
don't think so hard, just take what comes along, and you'll be a better and more successful person than someone who tries.
Didn't the Malcolm Gladwell article on Harvard admissions point to some reasearch that showed that there was some truth to this? :) (i.e. smart's good, but not sufficient, and too smart's bad...)
Anyway, I think the first flaw here is that the movie was filled with fortuitious turns for Forrest, so it wasn't just by his own virtues that he succeeded. Secondly, he did try. He went to college because he ran - a lot. He went to China because he played ping-pong - a lot. He didn't agonize over these things like other people might, but, you can't say he wasn't exerting effort. Third, within the movie at least, Forrest wasn't exactly contrasted against anyone who tried. Take Lt. Dan. We assume he was "trying" before the movie got to him, and he made it to Lt. - above Forrest. Then he stopped trying, post-war. When he began trying again, he became a millionaire. Ok. What was the lesson there? What about Jenny? Was she really trying? I don't think she was, but I suppose there's room for disagreement, there.
I'll agree that the movie was cast the anti-war movement in a negative light. That's a legitimate criticisim.
The mentality authorized by Forrest Gump---I don't know much, but I know what's right 'cause my Momma taught me---is the mentality that supports the 43d President.
Oh god, I should so leave alone any argument that runs along the lines of "it's just a story," but I can't help myself. FG is clearly making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story. I don't see how anyone can possibly fail to realize that.
This is so annoying and patronizing that I hope you don't expect me to merit it a response.
Yeah, it's not the idea of getting one's values from one's parents that's a problem -- I certainly did. It's the idea that one can apply those values and get a morally right answer in the absence of any understanding of what's going on.
My momma is a heartland momma! Who often votes Republican! But she doesn't believe in sending our nation's sons to war unless we have to - a positioin that's traditionally, if i know what i'm talking about, been pretty popular among heartland mommas.
Forrest's momma was a pretty good momma, but I think the movie also showed that parents aren't necessarily wise and virtuous. You know, like Jenny's pappy. So, I didn't take away the necessary universalization that you guys apparantly did.
I have been trying to convince people not to go see The Da Vinci Code and when asked why I care, give the reason in 111: It sends a signal to the film companies that they should make more movies like that one, i.e., bad movies.
In reflecting on Vietnam vets, John noted that he "always heard" them referred to as "baby killers." But when we questioned John, he responded by quoting from a video his family owned and had together watched repeatedly: "I think Forrest Gump had a lot to say, you could learn a lot from it, attitudes. But you watch the Vietnam parts, and the guy says to Forrest, one of the hippies looks at Forrest Gump in his military uniform, and he goes, `Who's the baby killer?'" This sequence of images and dialogue, invented by the director Robert Zemeckis, was the sharpest and clearest recollection John had of the entire Vietnam era.
John was not alone. Without prompting, Forrest Gump spontaneously made its way into nine of our fifteen parent/child interviews on Vietnam. In terms of a shared text between parent and child, its influence was peerless. There was no other cultural product--book, TV program, documentary--that compared in effect. The collective experience of video was the meeting place of parent, child, and teacher.
Okay, I think you misunderstood me, Michael. I meant that the kind of "I may be an idiot, but I come from plain folks and am secretly wise" mentality is what supports 43.
(Is it just me, or is it true that the prototype Unfogged comment swarm starts something like,
X: I inordinately like / dislike anodyne phenomenon / product / occurrence / person.
Y: But you are an otherwise reasonable person! We agree on so much! Both of us disapprove of the current administration! How can you so inordinately like / dislike anodyne phenomenon / product / occurrence / person?
Throw in a few <lewd joke>s, some tags for <badinage>, and you're there.)
Perhaps FG has replaced it as they #1 source of info about American reaction to vietnam vets, but surely Rambo was the reining king for a long, crucial period of history, and set the stage for following movies. Anyway, it came on about 1am a month or so ago, and a friend and I just got engrossed watching it. What shocked me was that the villians, the vet-haters, were red-state, small-town redneck, good old boys. "You one of them vets huh? One o' them war heros? We don' take kindly to yer kind around here. Best move along before you git hurt, son..."
Yeah, I've been getting 500s today, too. I'm wondering if we're getting some kind of unsuccessful spam attack or something. We've got crazy, unaccounted for traffic on the server according to the host's stats.
I haven't seen those, so I could be wrong, but I have confirmation bias suggesting it was Rambo. What I mean is that I've read a few articles arguing that myths of the hostile reaction to soldiers who returned home began with Rambo.
137: That's what's so troubling about Rambo (and why it's seen as a typically Reagan-era film): the way it portrays power as victimized, and those who are genuinely victimized as somehow threatening.
B, are you referring to Rambo, or the redneck sheriffs as "power."? It seems that, in the film, the sheriffs has the power, yet Rambo was victimized. But if the other way around, the sheriffs clearly weren't actually victimized.
Are you talking Rambo 1 or 2? I thought 1 was the one about Rambo at home and 2 was him kicking ass in Vietnam, but I could be wrong since I've never seen any of them. (I saw FG because that was what a friend on leave from the Army wanted to see. Never say I haven't sacrificed to support the troops!) And I think 1 was called First Blood, not Rambo, so I'm probably wrong. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rambo 2, the megahit, shaped our Vietnam myths for several years (perhaps displacing Coming Home and the Deer Hunter).
If time ran backward, Forrest Gump would have the most inflated sense of self-importance since Josh Trevino.
Rambo. He's portrayed as the victim, but between his muscle-bound physique and his heroism and his representation of All That's Best About America, not to mention the whole saving-veterans thing, he really stands for American military power. Portraying the rednecks as anti-veteran uses the audience's facile stereotype of rednecks as ignorant hicks to prejudice us against the anti-war, anti-militarism argument. It's using really offensive class stereotypes in ways that are completely illogical and historically inaccurate, but that work for the audience on an *emotional* level. Which therefore overrides the rational reaction one would have to the film otherwise.
See, this is why I get upset when interpretations of things are put aside as overreading, or as merely personal, or as depending on how one views things. Where SCMT sees the problem as one of encouraging more bad movies, I see it as a much worsre problem of encouraging--in unconscious ways that are really, really hard to recognize and fight--more bad ideas. And that's way more damaging than just not being able to find anything good to see on a Friday night.
Dunno, but I recall Rambo: First Blood Part II as the much bigger hit; which is I think why they went back and retroactively renamed First Blood "Rambo: First Blood."
I'm referring more to the idea of the Rambo films, collective, as cultural phenomenon. As the article EB links to points out, it's the way these things are recieved that matters.
Where SCMT sees the problem as one of encouraging more bad movies, I see it as a much worsre problem of encouraging--in unconscious ways that are really, really hard to recognize and fight--more bad ideas.
I think I understand what you're saying, and I think I agree, but I don't see that it's applicable to FG.
First, my wants and needs are paramount. That, I think, is self-evident. But second, FG isn't an idea movie, it's a treacley afterschool special. The only ideas I see (that it's important and worthwhile to be good, even though it will be hard, and that America's a pretty good place) I agree with broadly. Everything else--and this is a sign it's a bad movie--fades. I don't remember thinking that his girlfriend got her just deserts, for example. And if I did, it didn't stick with me. I suppose I can see indicting the culture for producing such a movie and not looking closely at all the parts of American history that he walks through, but that seems too much to ask of an afternoon special.
I object. In watching a film and thinking about it's good and bad qualities, I'm not going to take into account how foolish people are going to reacto to small parts of the film. I have no problems beating up on rambo because, well it was a terrible movie anyway, but because the objectionable part was central to the movie. With FG it was incidental. So while I agree that the portrayal of the hippies was pretty annoying, it's a small part of the movie, and it would be weird for me to tell myself to dislike the whole movie just because of that part.
I object. In watching a film and thinking about it's good and bad qualities, I'm not going to take into account how foolish people are going to reacto to small parts of the film. I have no problems beating up on rambo because, well it was a terrible movie anyway, but because the objectionable part was central to the movie.
People: here's the problem with FG. It's not the treacle. It's not the glorification of the simpleminded. It's the reenforcement that the fucking baby boomers are so god-damned special, and that the historical events of their lives are so interesting, powerful and unique, that we should all spend the rest of our lives just patting them on the back for their special wonderful uniqueness and it's place at the pinnacle of history.
Oh yeah, Chopper baby. Here's what summed up the movie's complacent solipsism for me: There are a whole bunch of scenes in Vietnam, and I'm not sure that any Vietnamese people were actually depicted.
(Followed closely by the bit where we were supposed to be happy that FG's shrimping business would prosper -- because of a natural disaster wiping out all the poor black people competing with him. AND THE PEOPLE WHO'D JUST BEEN WIPED OUT WERE ALSO DEPICTED AS HAPPY. Yassuh.)
158: Yes, exactly, and how easily BubbaGump Shrimp became a mega-international corporation with an adorable logo, and doesn't everyone love mega-corporations? Doesn't it feel good to imagine they're all headed by 80-IQ Southern honkies who were ridiculed as children? Doesn't it feel good to buy movie tie-in merch glorifying a non-existent megacorp (that, if I'm not mistaken, actually became, for a while, the name of a real seafood conglomerate)?
This is why movies like this are bad: in glorifying the whoopsie-I-made-a-billion-bucks story, they teach Americans to believe that's how megacorps come about--luck and a little old-fashioned American elbow grease. The disappearing Negro is also the disappearing, glorified-in-the-abstract worker who makes it possible.
And everything else everyone here is saying about white male boomer solipsism.
I saw Crash recently, and couldn't believe it won Best Picture. What an unbelievable piece of crap. No wonder the Brokeback Mountain people were so upset about losing to it. Then I found out that it was directed by Paul Haggis, who also wrote the screenplay for the previous year's crappy winner, "Million Dollar Baby." Movies that he has anything to do with should have a warning sticker on them.
161: a non-existent megacorp (that, if I'm not mistaken, actually became, for a while, the name of a real seafood conglomerate)
Last time I visited Paramount's King's Dominion, there was a Bubba Gump restaurant, styled as if it were an eatery independent of the park itself, when it fact it served to perpetuate the film's popularity (and by extension, Paramount's movie-making, park-owning empire).
You know, as long as we're defending not particularly artful movies from charges of promulgating pernicious ideas, I don't actually think it's fair to say that the point of ABM was that the love of a good woman is all you need to get through mental disease. The movie very well may have exaggerated the extent of his recovery and whitewashed his symptoms, and that's bad, but there was at least one scene in which he did something that seriously endangered the life of their child, IIRC. I don't think the movie sufficiently grappled with the selfishness of his being off his meds in those circumstances, but there was *some* portrayal of the danger. Further, I don't think the love of a good woman was meant to be what allowed him to manage his symptoms without medication. I don't remember the movie well enough now to be sure, but I seem to recall that his struggle with his symptoms was mostly internal. She took care of him and managed him in a way that allowed the struggle to take place, but I don't remember her love being presented as instrumental in the diminishment of his hallucinations. Finally, I'm pretty sure there are schizophrenics who live okay without meds, and there are non pharmacological treatments being developed that are showing promise, too, so it's not just a ridiculous notion that someone with those symptoms could learn to live without them, and that this would constitute something of a personal triumph, even if not for everyone to emulate, and further that if that someone's wife was devoted to him for many years despite the degree to which he taxed her, this might be somewhat inspiring too. It bothers me more in the context of the larger cultural narrative in which the tortured man is always cared for by the patient woman. But considered in isolation, it's also inspiring to see someone whose a damn good spouse. It just might be nicer if there were more patient husband stories.
It just might be nicer if there were more patient husband stories.
There are millions of these. They just don't make it to the big screen, they're all narrated at the bar, and they usually start with the phrase "you wouldn't believe the shit I have to put up with..."
It would especially help if the woman in the movie was a tortured genius whose work just had to continue. That strikes The Caitlin Flanagan Story from contention.
But his work doesn't continue through the worst of it. I thought ABM was about how the hard work of recovery isn't movie material, but the descent into madness while still a genius is.
Followed closely by the bit where we were supposed to be happy that FG's shrimping business would prosper -- because of a natural disaster wiping out all the poor black people competing with him. AND THE PEOPLE WHO'D JUST BEEN WIPED OUT WERE ALSO DEPICTED AS HAPPY. Yassuh.
Well, do we know they were actually wiped out? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't great, having to fix their boats and all, but...hell, I don't know much about shrimping. Do big storms regularly destroy shrimping livliehoods? And, if I remember correctly, the only black people shown were Bubba's family, who were profiting from the storm as much as anyone.
I'm also curious as to what you think was the proper reaction to the disaster? Perhaps a solemn manner as they caught the shrimp? Or should they have weighed anchor until their competitors were able to shrimp again? Is there another option? Because neither of those others that I can think of seems appropriate, either. And what about the "poor blacks"? Would it in any case be appropriate for them to begrude the newcomers their good fortune? It was luck, but is that reason for resentment? That doesn't seem right, to me.
There are a whole bunch of scenes in Vietnam, and I'm not sure that any Vietnamese people were actually depicted.
True, and they missed a chance there to make the movie more realistic. But how bad is this? While the depiction of the war-supporters wasn't flattering, there was nothing pro-war depicted. (And, indeed, the officer pulling the plug on Forrest speaking was a negative portrayal of military power.) So, I think I understand your complaint, but I disagree as to its importance.
and how easily BubbaGump Shrimp became a mega-international corporation with an adorable logo, and doesn't everyone love mega-corporations? Doesn't it feel good to imagine they're all headed by 80-IQ Southern honkies who were ridiculed as children?
Really. I don't think people, especially pro-corp people, believe they're headed by people with 70 IQs. (Quite the opposite, it seems to me that a lot of those big of corps think the guys who run them are 10x smarter than you or I. Maybe I'm wrong, but your anger that people don't feel strongly enough that we should live in a meritocracy seems misplaced.)
Doesn't it feel good to buy movie tie-in merch glorifying a non-existent megacorp
I don't actually get the point being made by the question, or what purpose is served by having it in rhetorical form. People buy stupid movie shit all the time. I'm not sure what this has to do with the quality of the actual movie.
This is why movies like this are bad: in glorifying the whoopsie-I-made-a-billion-bucks story, they teach Americans to believe that's how megacorps come about--luck and a little old-fashioned American elbow grease. The disappearing Negro is also the disappearing, glorified-in-the-abstract worker who makes it possible.
What I'm starting to realize is that apprantly what I take to be singular instances of something in a movie, other people take to be examples of a universal. Bubbagump in this case. I saw a typical movie device; guy tries something improbable, gets lucky and pulls it off - others apparantly saw a paradigm lesson on the nature of international megacorporations. (It was actually in the movie that BubbaGump was an international? And a megacorp? That is, owning bunches of smaller corps? Could be, but I don't remember it.)
What you people don't seem to get is that Forrest Gump is like a kitten. Kittens are really stinky. Their butts are always matted with poo. And at some point, they will pee on you. They'll poop on you too, if they can get away with it. And they're usually a nightmare to feed. Nonetheless, it's weird when people don't like kittens.
Even if there was something, you'd still be complaining!
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:13 AM
"were something," I meant. I think.
Posted by arthegall | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:14 AM
It's obviously a Rethuglican trick: getting Bill to sing a song celebrating atheism so they can claim that he and the rest of us Dems are all atheists.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:46 AM
Doesn't seeing someone embarrass himself like that make you cring until your eyeballs pop out? I couldn't make it through.
(But I have a video from Memorial Day of my dog fighting a ghost crab at the OBX—that ought to be on YouTube.)
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:59 AM
Doesn't seeing someone embarrass himself like that make you cring until your eyeballs pop out? I couldn't make it through.
Totally. I think of these things as "Bobby Brady Moments," in honor of those times on the Brady Bunch when I knew Bobby was going to be badly embarrassed, and I'd run out of the room to avoid having to see it.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 7:16 AM
4, 5: I'm glad I'm not the only one. That phenomenon is why I couldn't enjoy "The Office."
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:06 AM
I actually associate that phenomenon with Ramona Quimby, like the scene in which she throws a tantrum because she feels someone has copied her paper bag owl. I could barely stand to reread that part when I was a kid. And I also had trouble watching The Office for that reason.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:23 AM
I end up closing my eyes and cringing for this reason during a lot of TV shows. I think it's why I don't watch reality shows at all -- I fear on-screen humiliation.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:26 AM
Hmmm. I love The Office.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:38 AM
4 - Where on the Outer Banks were you?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:39 AM
I cringe at so many things on tv that I can't watch with my wife, who would like me to. Reality, drama, you name it, I start but then get up and leave. I can handle real things, but being embarassed by the contrived, either scripted or set-up, as on reality tv, is something I don't feel I should subject myself to. And sports pressure that is all about the pressure, such as skating or gymnastics, where the performances are well-known, and the drama consists of whether or not she'll "stick it" are just as bad.
But I can watch the danger and cruelty of bicycle and auto racing, where every situation is different, interactive and improvisatorial, without limit.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:09 AM
I really think there should be some sort of name for this phenomenon. Reverse schadenfraude (hey I remembered how to spell that)?
I think the absolute epitome of this genre of protagonist torture is Meet the Parents. Just Friends is also an egregious example. My two most hated movies.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:27 AM
I would have that feeling about "I Love Lucy".
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:41 AM
I Love Lucy did that sometimes, but it also had a fair amount of wordplay and simple slapstick, which for me makes it somewhat watchable. Meet the Parents has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:53 AM
hey I remembered how to spell that
Almost.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:54 AM
12: I've seen fardo used for that meaning.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:00 AM
Heh. I'm dying to see the office, and I totally loved this clip. It made me cringe, but at the same time, his ability to just grin at his own mortification was kinda cool.
Plus you know he was totally digging being able to put his arm around that singer.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:01 AM
I was going to say something about his touchy-feely performance, but it seemed like it would be piling on.
Also, I totally love Bill Clinton.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:03 AM
18: I'll go you one better--I'd love Clinton, IYKWIM.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:07 AM
18: I love him too, which is why his touchy-feeliness just amuses me.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:09 AM
19: Tim, if he doesn't know "Imagine," it's a near-certainty he also doesn't know "Ask."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:12 AM
So Clinton will have to be his second gay encounter. Or third, or fourth …
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:17 AM
My little sister coined the term "squiggly-squoggly" to describe that emotion, but she was 14 at the time.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:25 AM
I loved I Love Lucy as a kid, but this is largely because the situations are so absurd that they can't be taken seriously and it's all so self-consciously slapsticky that it's impossible to watch it and think anyone was unaware of the humor of the situation (same for Rat Race, which is a movie I could watch a thousand times over and half the charm of which is how all the actors so utterly let go and invite the laugh). Also, there are times when Lucy's over-the-top plots work out, and she's seen as clever and charismatic, and that helps balance it. The Office is (a) too much like a place I once worked and (b) almost threatening in the completeness of Gervais' performance. It is almost possible to sit there and watch it and convince yourself that he has no idea how painful it is, and that's what's terrifying about it: it suggests (in my egocentric self-doubt) that I could be that big of an idiot and have no idea, and that thought makes me want to run screaming from the room.
Also, I would totally do Clinton.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:26 AM
23 to 16. My sister did not coin a term to describe a gay encounter with Bill Clinton.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:27 AM
25: Heh. "I got the squiggly-squoggly from the Big Dog last night and let me tell you, triangulation hurts like hell."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:29 AM
pdf is totally right about Meet the Parents. It's not actually a comedy so much as a theater of cruelty thing, up to the sappy ending. One of my friends described it as "Get the Jew."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:41 AM
Weiner, admit that this part was hillarious:
Kevin: [On who inspired him to be a wood worker] I'd have to say Jesus. He was a carpenter and I figured if you're going to follow in somebody's footsteps, why not the steps of our lord and savior?
Jack Byrnes: [Before Greg has a chance to respond] Greg's Jewish.
Kevin: Really? Well so was J.C...
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:48 AM
15: Heh. I typed it into google and it didn't correct me, so I didn't bother actually looking at the spelling of the top hit. I blame google.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:51 AM
It's not actually a comedy so much as a theater of cruelty thing
It has not been all that long since one could not imagine … [a] noble household without beings on whom one could vent one's malice and cruel teasing without a second thought (—think for example of Don Quixote at the court of the Duchess: today we read the entire Don Quixote with a bitter taste on our tongue, almost with anguish, and would as a result appear very strange, very puzzling to its author and his contemporaries—they read it with the very clearest conscience as the most lighthearted of books, they practically laughed themselves to death over it).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:59 AM
SCMT, maybe my agreement was too hasty; it's not one of my most hated movies (GRAARH Forrest Gump KILL KILL KILL), and in fact it's absolutely perfect at creating that awkward pause feeling. And that bit was good. But mostly they seemed to be heading for the squirm rather than the laugh.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:00 PM
What I think of as the canonical cringing-at-embarrassment thread.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:06 PM
Hmm. I wonder how many people share a similar detestation (yes that's a word) of movies of the ilk of MTP. It surely can't be a majority, because otherwise such movies wouldn't be as popular. Is it a majority of the commenters here? (We need a poll!) Perhaps the demographics here are at play. A correlation between grade skipping and reverse schadenfreude?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:11 PM
But seriously, I can't begin to say how much I dislike that sort of thing. I was in my apartment snuggling with an attractive date while watching Just Friends (*shudder*) and still had to stop halfway through the movie because I just COULD NOT STAND IT.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:14 PM
The thing that makes me cringe to the point of not being able to watch it is seeing someone humiliate themselves (as opposed to simple embarrassment). Especially when I, the audience, am supposed to laugh at it or find it charming. E.g., "whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?" God, I shudder just typing it.
But Ben Stiller movies, while a little cringe-worthy, are hilarious.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:15 PM
I've got it, although I didn't skip any grades. More than half my class was promoted to Grade 5 from 3, but not me.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:16 PM
Can I make a case for my aversion to food fights/eating contests to be included in this "reverse schadenfreude" problem?
Both of those things make me really upset.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:21 PM
35: Yeah, if it's embarrassment that I couldn't have avoided (or embarrassment that is handled gracefully enough) it doesn't bug me. But so many times, the people compound their initial fuck-ups with a total lack of situational awareness, tact, or some other social skill, and *that* is what really gets to me.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:24 PM
36 -- was the fourth grade like a ghost town? Was this a regular occurence at your school? I never heard of such a thing.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:25 PM
For the record, I found Zoolander a bit too dumb and crude, but otherwise kind of amusing. The characters were just too extreme to trigger the level of empathy necessary for me to feel all squirmy. I hated Waterboy, but I don't universally detest Adam Sandler. (Even sometimes when he's not playing in Spanglish, which is a great movie.)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:30 PM
39: It didn't seem so, so I imagine, in fact I know that there were 2 or 3 classes of Grade 3/4, so that those not skipped were consolidated into 4 and those who were skipped made a new 5.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:34 PM
32: That thread was good, but too short.
I just got a 500 error posting (on comment 40), about 30 seconds after I pressed the post button. My comment went through anyway.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:35 PM
I didn't like Meet the Parents, but mostly because it was just the same damn joke over and over again. I love cringe-inducing movies, though (I did skip a grade). Especially watching them with somebody who actually cringes. But then I still have that older brother mean streak, however much I repress it in polite company.
On the topic of cringing, I can't really decide whether what this guy is doing is virtuous or kinda mean.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:37 PM
I think it's interesting: I wonder what the psychomotor effects of singing are, and whether people who are deaf tend not to do it because they can't hear it themselves, and if therefore it might be like encouraging people to exercise or something. And also what the intellectual effects of learning the concept of reading music are, even if one can't hear it oneself.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:41 PM
43: I don't see how the deaf kids could get much out of that.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:43 PM
Especially if you're deaf from birth. Do such people have any concept of pitch, even if, obviously, they can't reproduce it? Would they just ignore the vertical position of the notes?
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:45 PM
I suppose it depends on the degree of deafness. I presume that a lot of them will still be able to distinguish pitch a little -- via bone conduction.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 12:53 PM
Belle gets major points for invoking the cold robbies in that phobias thread.
Posted by ben w | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 1:34 PM
Wiener, how can you not like Forrest Gump? I can understand criticisim of the movie, I have some myself, but for its faults anyone who actually hates it probably hates puppies and kittens, too.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 1:51 PM
How can you not like Forrest Gump? Michael, are you serious? Now instead of working out why FG is eminently hatable, I will run away.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 1:58 PM
Could you repost 49 in the phobias thread? Forrest Gump gives me the screaming willies.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 1:59 PM
GRAARH KILL KILL KILL WEINER SMASH
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 1:59 PM
50 and 51 get it exactly right.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:00 PM
Apo, we were in Nags Head. For the last three years some friends and I have rented a house down there, maybe 1-2 miles past the Food Lion. Every year we promise ourselves we're going to visit Mermaids, but instead we drink and grill and play in the ocean instead.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:00 PM
Cool. We were down in Rodanthe, in a house a bunch of us rent every year.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:02 PM
Oh, and 52 as well.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:05 PM
Wiener, how can you not like Forrest Gump? I can understand criticisim of the movie, I have some myself, but for its faults anyone who actually hates it probably hates puppies and kittens, too.
You've got to be kidding.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:05 PM
Forrest Gump is a terrible movie.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:06 PM
I didn't find Forrest Gump more objectionable than any other mass market American movie, but the fact that they changed the catchphrase (thereby changing the entire meaning of the story) did bother me.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:07 PM
What do you people do when you're not commenting? Rape, kill, and eat cuddly babies?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:08 PM
Apo, to what are you referring?
Also, to people who have the embarrassment representation cringe reaction - do you think of yourselves as having social anxiety disorder? I would think that such fear of humiliation would lead to a bit of paralysis during social interaction. (I'm drawing partially from personal experience, here.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:11 PM
It's not good, I don't agree that it's notably worse than the median Hollywood film. I can see its Oscar causing exaggerated distaste, that is one of the reasons I loath A Beautiful Mind.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:12 PM
Yeah, when I'm not patronizing retarded people (or, in a pinch, elderly African-Americans) while basking in the glow of saccharine platitudes, I'm usually raping babies.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:14 PM
51 is intriguing, but I can't perceive what it is about FG that scares you.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:14 PM
bphd is smokin' today.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:15 PM
I hate watching someone embarrass themselves so much that I will almost always jump in and correct them. I have found that most people are actually more embarrassed by being corrected than by being secretly laughed at.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:15 PM
I did think ABM was almost entirely bad.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:15 PM
61: In the book, the quote was "My mama always said being an idiot is no box of chocolates."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:19 PM
I think Forrest Gump was way worse than A Beautiful Mind. FG had as an implicit message that engagement in the world was a form of illness wrought by sexual abuse that went hand and hand with sluttishness and drug addiction, and if you were one of those people you'd get AIDS and die, whereas if you were disengaged from the world and only capable of sympathy for your intimates, you were a paradoxically healthy savant.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:21 PM
My main problem with Forrest Gump (aside from the quote change) was that it was so much better the first time around, when it was called Being There.
But hating the movie seems a bit like hating vanilla ice cream.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:24 PM
anyone who actually hates it probably hates puppies and kittens, too
I was going to come up with a snarky response to this, but man, I simply cannot compete with bphd's.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:26 PM
I trust we all feel that you can interpret how you like. I think of Forrest as more engaged in the world than Jenny in this way - although he had trouble discerning the nature of what was going on around him, he was always interactive with it, and he made more efforts at trying to interact with the world around him. Of course, he had supernatural good luck, too.
Also, what I took away from the movie was that the difference in how Forrest and Jenny turned out had more to do with whether your parent was wise and well-off, or sexually abusive and poor. That seemed pretty harped on, to me. Forrest always had his retreat to his own little nirvana, while Jenny was doomed to always run away.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:26 PM
Except Being There drew totally different conclusions and made a far more sophisticated comment on society.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:26 PM
That's why it was better, naturally.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:28 PM
Forrest Gump was merely terrible. ABM is also dangerous, in that it's one of about three dozen films in which a genuinely psychologically ill guy refuses medication and learns to manage his crazy through the love of a good woman. See also Punch-Drunk Love. All I can think when I see these movies (as someone who spent a year trying to single-handedly "fix" a schizophrenic with the power of my love) is that they cut out all the scenes where he gets confused and beats her up or tries to ram the car into an oncoming truck.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:30 PM
Being There is, of course, excellent. But the book I once read by the author of being there was teh suck.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:32 PM
75: Sure, but it's a movie. I mean, they cut out the part of Superman where Clark Kent jumps out a window and plummets to his death as well.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:34 PM
I don't know why we need deep justifications for disliking FG. It was just a terrible, boring movie. If you've done your job right, I shouldn't consider it a tragedy that neither the bullies nor Vietnam killed FG. Sentimental pap all the way through. ABM wasn't good, but it wasn't nearly so terrible.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:35 PM
77, I think there's a difference when a particular myth is so often represented in fully realistic movies that mentally ill people refuse treatment, thinking all they "really" need is love. I'm sure the screenwriters are just representing their own feelings of being outsiders or quirky metaphorically through mental illness, but it seems really pervasive among young troubled guys I've met.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:37 PM
Plus, Being There actually had, you know, an edge to it. Some kind of actual brains to the thing.
FG, in fact, is precisely the kind of thing that makes me cringe in mortification. It's the same as Diff'rent Strokes: "aww, isn't it just so cute watching people shuffle for our amusement?" It makes me want to crawl out of my skin and go be an otter or something.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:37 PM
Yeah, what gives me the willies is that it was popular: stupid is good! Hippies are irresponsible and get AIDS and die!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:37 PM
61: To some degree, yes. That's a good possible explanation.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:38 PM
w/d -- was it The Painted Bird, which is supposed to be pretty good?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:38 PM
You think FG was necessarily commenting about ALL hippies because of its representation of ONE hippie with severe emotional damage? That's seems a bit simple-minded.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:41 PM
I don't know why we need deep justifications for disliking FG.
Oh, you don't. I was just surprised by the vehemence, given the endless stream of similarly treacly crap that rolls through the multiplexes.
thinking all they "really" need is love.
Yeah, that I can see. Speaking from experience, that cuts across gender lines. Dating crazy people = serious unpleasantness.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:41 PM
79 -- I blame the Beatles.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:42 PM
Dating crazy people = serious unpleasantness.
But great sex, you said.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:42 PM
go be an otter or something
You know what's really cute? Retarded otters.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:43 PM
One thing about FG is what makes him successful despite his intellectual lack is that he has super judgement, well beyond what he should, or maybe could, have. yeah, that's unrealistic. But unrealism in itself isn't a reason, for me, to dislike a movie. Plus, most movies have unrealistic characters, and often similarly unrealistic characters - i.e. normal people with supernatural judgement.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:43 PM
87: There is that. New goal: one-night stands with crazy people, under an assumed name.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:45 PM
89: It's pap. Like Titanic and ABM. When pap movies are successful, you get more pap movies. That is bad, and reason enough to curse FG.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:46 PM
83: The Painted Bird is so good, people have accused Jerzy Kozinski of having plagiarized it from somewhere else. I liked Being There (both the book and film), but it shows mild evidence of the flaws that mar JK's non-PB fiction. TPB is really deeply upsetting and disgusting.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:46 PM
But it's unrealism in the service of a really, really creepy ideal -- don't think so hard, just take what comes along, and you'll be a better and more successful person than someone who tries. As a movie it's just unrealistic -- as something that strikes a chord with the public at large, it gives me the heebiejeebies.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:47 PM
Oh god, I should so leave alone any argument that runs along the lines of "it's just a story," but I can't help myself. FG is clearly making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story. I don't see how anyone can possibly fail to realize that.
That said, I really truly really truly am just not going to say anything more about it. Really. Truly. If I do, I vow to buy FG and watch it every night for a week.
(Apo, my answer to the question in 85 is in 80. I'm vehement because it's just so icky.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:48 PM
was it The Painted Bird, which is supposed to be pretty good?
Nope. It was Pinball.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:49 PM
The mentality authorized by Forrest Gump---I don't know much, but I know what's right 'cause my Momma taught me---is the mentality that supports the 43d President.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:50 PM
88: Ottards?
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:50 PM
I didn't pose a question in 85, B. </wolfson>
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:51 PM
Apo, did you go in and edit in that "" tag? I think you did.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:53 PM
Oops, the tag disappeared. You know what I mean though.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:54 PM
I've been out for awhile, and have read this entire thread on FG. What amazes me is not the vehemence, nor the opinions, with which I'm sure I'd have no disagreement, but that you've all seen the movie. I knew I didn't want to see it, but I was in my forties.
My notion is, we see just about everything big when we're young. Afterwards, we can tell when we won't like it. If Gary or Emerson, or mcmc or anybody over forty are still around, I'd like to know how many of them saw it.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:54 PM
It disappeared on me as well, so I went in and unhid it, sort of. Typing faster than I was thinking.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:55 PM
I go see movies I think are likely culturally seminal whether or not I think I'll like them in order to understand my culture.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:56 PM
Well smell you, Nancy Drew.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:58 PM
making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story
I was at an Oscar party with a bunch of British people the year Forrest Gump came out, and one of them said to me, "At first I honestly thought it was a scathing satire, a savage indictment of American aspirations and mores. America represented by an idiot, what else is one to think? Then I read some reviews and discovered this was not, in fact, the case."
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 2:59 PM
104: I'm not even sure what that means, but I like it!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:02 PM
America represented by an idiot
Why do British people hate Americans, and idiots?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:02 PM
That is bad, and reason enough to curse FG.
Well, reason to not watch it, anyway. Curse it if you like... But if other people like it, what's wrong with letting them like what they like, as long as it's not doing you any harm?
don't think so hard, just take what comes along, and you'll be a better and more successful person than someone who tries.
Didn't the Malcolm Gladwell article on Harvard admissions point to some reasearch that showed that there was some truth to this? :) (i.e. smart's good, but not sufficient, and too smart's bad...)
Anyway, I think the first flaw here is that the movie was filled with fortuitious turns for Forrest, so it wasn't just by his own virtues that he succeeded. Secondly, he did try. He went to college because he ran - a lot. He went to China because he played ping-pong - a lot. He didn't agonize over these things like other people might, but, you can't say he wasn't exerting effort. Third, within the movie at least, Forrest wasn't exactly contrasted against anyone who tried. Take Lt. Dan. We assume he was "trying" before the movie got to him, and he made it to Lt. - above Forrest. Then he stopped trying, post-war. When he began trying again, he became a millionaire. Ok. What was the lesson there? What about Jenny? Was she really trying? I don't think she was, but I suppose there's room for disagreement, there.
I'll agree that the movie was cast the anti-war movement in a negative light. That's a legitimate criticisim.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:02 PM
The mentality authorized by Forrest Gump---I don't know much, but I know what's right 'cause my Momma taught me---is the mentality that supports the 43d President.
Please. My mom is anti-bush.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:04 PM
104: I'm not even sure what that means, but I like it!
It's a line from Angels In America. Another way of saying, look at you, Miss Fancypants.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:04 PM
But if other people like it, what's wrong with letting them like what they like, as long as it's not doing you any harm?
That's the point: it is doing me harm. It's sucking up money and other capital that might better be used making a movie worth seeing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:04 PM
Please. My mom is anti-bush.
I didn't mean your Mom, Michael, I meant one's idealized heartland Momma. Why do you keep bringing up your mother?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:07 PM
Oh god, I should so leave alone any argument that runs along the lines of "it's just a story," but I can't help myself. FG is clearly making claims to be representative not of just one hippie and one cute retarded person (shudder), but of an entire generation, indeed, The American Story. I don't see how anyone can possibly fail to realize that.
This is so annoying and patronizing that I hope you don't expect me to merit it a response.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:08 PM
Yeah, it's not the idea of getting one's values from one's parents that's a problem -- I certainly did. It's the idea that one can apply those values and get a morally right answer in the absence of any understanding of what's going on.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:09 PM
98: Acting like Wolfson isn't gonna get you those pictures, apo.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:10 PM
My momma is a heartland momma! Who often votes Republican! But she doesn't believe in sending our nation's sons to war unless we have to - a positioin that's traditionally, if i know what i'm talking about, been pretty popular among heartland mommas.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:11 PM
Any movie that endorses pernicious mores in a way sympathetic to much of the audience is going to help promulgate them, and that's harmful to society.
Is there a word for "endorse in a way sypathetic to the audience"? I think so, and it's on the tip of my tongue. Not quite "exonerate"...
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:11 PM
License?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:12 PM
'nother 500 error, this one quick. My comment went through.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:12 PM
Forrest's momma was a pretty good momma, but I think the movie also showed that parents aren't necessarily wise and virtuous. You know, like Jenny's pappy. So, I didn't take away the necessary universalization that you guys apparantly did.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:13 PM
Modulo spelling.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:13 PM
"perpetuate."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:13 PM
113: I'll cop to annoying, but not patronizing. Really, I was just being exasperated.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:14 PM
Michael likes Forrest Gump because it was his first make-out movie.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:15 PM
I have been trying to convince people not to go see The Da Vinci Code and when asked why I care, give the reason in 111: It sends a signal to the film companies that they should make more movies like that one, i.e., bad movies.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:15 PM
118: Yeah, maybe. Strangely, neither M-W or Am. Her. lists that sense of the word, so I can't be sure.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:16 PM
From What Can Forrest Gump Tell Us about Students' Historical Understanding? (for some reason the article activates the print dialogue window; you should be able to ignore that):
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:16 PM
122: That's a secondary effect of the sort of endorsement I'm talking about, but I'm looking for a word for the primary effect.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:17 PM
I've gotten two 500 errors in the last half hour.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:18 PM
Okay, I think you misunderstood me, Michael. I meant that the kind of "I may be an idiot, but I come from plain folks and am secretly wise" mentality is what supports 43.
(Is it just me, or is it true that the prototype Unfogged comment swarm starts something like,
X: I inordinately like / dislike anodyne phenomenon / product / occurrence / person.
Y: But you are an otherwise reasonable person! We agree on so much! Both of us disapprove of the current administration! How can you so inordinately like / dislike anodyne phenomenon / product / occurrence / person?
Throw in a few <lewd joke>s, some tags for <badinage>, and you're there.)
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:19 PM
"persuasively defends", maybe.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:20 PM
This is why we all miss Ogged so much. Such a clearly decent, reasonable person who is reliably wrong about everything.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:20 PM
111. Ok, if that's the way you feel, i'm certainly not going to critisize you for critisizing it! I'm dubious of the claim, but you could be right.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:20 PM
I've gotten two 500 errors in the last half hour.
Performance anxiety, probably.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:21 PM
Thanks for the link, eb.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:25 PM
reminds me, anyone watch Rambo lately?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:29 PM
Perhaps FG has replaced it as they #1 source of info about American reaction to vietnam vets, but surely Rambo was the reining king for a long, crucial period of history, and set the stage for following movies. Anyway, it came on about 1am a month or so ago, and a friend and I just got engrossed watching it. What shocked me was that the villians, the vet-haters, were red-state, small-town redneck, good old boys. "You one of them vets huh? One o' them war heros? We don' take kindly to yer kind around here. Best move along before you git hurt, son..."
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:32 PM
Yeah, I've been getting 500s today, too. I'm wondering if we're getting some kind of unsuccessful spam attack or something. We've got crazy, unaccounted for traffic on the server according to the host's stats.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:36 PM
#1 source of info about American reaction to vietnam vets
Coming home? Deer Hunter/?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:36 PM
I haven't seen those, so I could be wrong, but I have confirmation bias suggesting it was Rambo. What I mean is that I've read a few articles arguing that myths of the hostile reaction to soldiers who returned home began with Rambo.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:39 PM
137: That's what's so troubling about Rambo (and why it's seen as a typically Reagan-era film): the way it portrays power as victimized, and those who are genuinely victimized as somehow threatening.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:40 PM
Michael likes Forrest Gump because it was his first make-out movie
I'm too young for that to have been the case.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:41 PM
At Gettysburg a few summers ago, we overheard a little 4 year-old or so kid ask: "Daddy, is this the war that Rambo fought?"
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:47 PM
B, are you referring to Rambo, or the redneck sheriffs as "power."? It seems that, in the film, the sheriffs has the power, yet Rambo was victimized. But if the other way around, the sheriffs clearly weren't actually victimized.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:49 PM
Are you talking Rambo 1 or 2? I thought 1 was the one about Rambo at home and 2 was him kicking ass in Vietnam, but I could be wrong since I've never seen any of them. (I saw FG because that was what a friend on leave from the Army wanted to see. Never say I haven't sacrificed to support the troops!) And I think 1 was called First Blood, not Rambo, so I'm probably wrong. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rambo 2, the megahit, shaped our Vietnam myths for several years (perhaps displacing Coming Home and the Deer Hunter).
If time ran backward, Forrest Gump would have the most inflated sense of self-importance since Josh Trevino.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:52 PM
a friend and I just got engrossed watching it
IYKWIM.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:52 PM
Rambo. He's portrayed as the victim, but between his muscle-bound physique and his heroism and his representation of All That's Best About America, not to mention the whole saving-veterans thing, he really stands for American military power. Portraying the rednecks as anti-veteran uses the audience's facile stereotype of rednecks as ignorant hicks to prejudice us against the anti-war, anti-militarism argument. It's using really offensive class stereotypes in ways that are completely illogical and historically inaccurate, but that work for the audience on an *emotional* level. Which therefore overrides the rational reaction one would have to the film otherwise.
See, this is why I get upset when interpretations of things are put aside as overreading, or as merely personal, or as depending on how one views things. Where SCMT sees the problem as one of encouraging more bad movies, I see it as a much worsre problem of encouraging--in unconscious ways that are really, really hard to recognize and fight--more bad ideas. And that's way more damaging than just not being able to find anything good to see on a Friday night.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:57 PM
I'm referring to Rambo 1, and it was indeed called First Blood, but i figured calling it "rambo" would work better. Was B talking about R2?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:58 PM
Dunno, but I recall Rambo: First Blood Part II as the much bigger hit; which is I think why they went back and retroactively renamed First Blood "Rambo: First Blood."
I find the first two points interesting.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:06 PM
But what about the modernist version?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:08 PM
I'm referring more to the idea of the Rambo films, collective, as cultural phenomenon. As the article EB links to points out, it's the way these things are recieved that matters.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:10 PM
Where SCMT sees the problem as one of encouraging more bad movies, I see it as a much worsre problem of encouraging--in unconscious ways that are really, really hard to recognize and fight--more bad ideas.
I think I understand what you're saying, and I think I agree, but I don't see that it's applicable to FG.
First, my wants and needs are paramount. That, I think, is self-evident. But second, FG isn't an idea movie, it's a treacley afterschool special. The only ideas I see (that it's important and worthwhile to be good, even though it will be hard, and that America's a pretty good place) I agree with broadly. Everything else--and this is a sign it's a bad movie--fades. I don't remember thinking that his girlfriend got her just deserts, for example. And if I did, it didn't stick with me. I suppose I can see indicting the culture for producing such a movie and not looking closely at all the parts of American history that he walks through, but that seems too much to ask of an afternoon special.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:28 PM
I object. In watching a film and thinking about it's good and bad qualities, I'm not going to take into account how foolish people are going to reacto to small parts of the film. I have no problems beating up on rambo because, well it was a terrible movie anyway, but because the objectionable part was central to the movie. With FG it was incidental. So while I agree that the portrayal of the hippies was pretty annoying, it's a small part of the movie, and it would be weird for me to tell myself to dislike the whole movie just because of that part.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:31 PM
I don't remember thinking that his girlfriend got her just deserts, for example.
But i don't think you were supposed to. I mean, you could, but the movie is certainly open to a sympathetic view of Jenny.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:33 PM
I don't remember thinking that his girlfriend got her just deserts, for example.
But i don't think you were supposed to. I mean, you could, but the movie is certainly open to a sympathetic view of Jenny as a tragic character.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:33 PM
I object. In watching a film and thinking about it's good and bad qualities, I'm not going to take into account how foolish people are going to reacto to small parts of the film. I have no problems beating up on rambo because, well it was a terrible movie anyway, but because the objectionable part was central to the movie.
Oh Michael. You were doing so well.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 4:43 PM
People: here's the problem with FG. It's not the treacle. It's not the glorification of the simpleminded. It's the reenforcement that the fucking baby boomers are so god-damned special, and that the historical events of their lives are so interesting, powerful and unique, that we should all spend the rest of our lives just patting them on the back for their special wonderful uniqueness and it's place at the pinnacle of history.
But I'm not bitter. Or rocking it Becks style.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:17 PM
Oh yeah, Chopper baby. Here's what summed up the movie's complacent solipsism for me: There are a whole bunch of scenes in Vietnam, and I'm not sure that any Vietnamese people were actually depicted.
(Followed closely by the bit where we were supposed to be happy that FG's shrimping business would prosper -- because of a natural disaster wiping out all the poor black people competing with him. AND THE PEOPLE WHO'D JUST BEEN WIPED OUT WERE ALSO DEPICTED AS HAPPY. Yassuh.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:27 PM
101: not me.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:33 PM
150: that reminds me of my favorite art-biopic--Godzilla vs. Rodin. Though as usual, they totally go for drama and the art gets short shrift.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 6:50 PM
158: Yes, exactly, and how easily BubbaGump Shrimp became a mega-international corporation with an adorable logo, and doesn't everyone love mega-corporations? Doesn't it feel good to imagine they're all headed by 80-IQ Southern honkies who were ridiculed as children? Doesn't it feel good to buy movie tie-in merch glorifying a non-existent megacorp (that, if I'm not mistaken, actually became, for a while, the name of a real seafood conglomerate)?
This is why movies like this are bad: in glorifying the whoopsie-I-made-a-billion-bucks story, they teach Americans to believe that's how megacorps come about--luck and a little old-fashioned American elbow grease. The disappearing Negro is also the disappearing, glorified-in-the-abstract worker who makes it possible.
And everything else everyone here is saying about white male boomer solipsism.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 7:15 PM
I saw Crash recently, and couldn't believe it won Best Picture. What an unbelievable piece of crap. No wonder the Brokeback Mountain people were so upset about losing to it. Then I found out that it was directed by Paul Haggis, who also wrote the screenplay for the previous year's crappy winner, "Million Dollar Baby." Movies that he has anything to do with should have a warning sticker on them.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 7:51 PM
161: a non-existent megacorp (that, if I'm not mistaken, actually became, for a while, the name of a real seafood conglomerate)
Last time I visited Paramount's King's Dominion, there was a Bubba Gump restaurant, styled as if it were an eatery independent of the park itself, when it fact it served to perpetuate the film's popularity (and by extension, Paramount's movie-making, park-owning empire).
Mmm...meta-megacorp...
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 7:54 PM
163: Oh, and sorry if that sentence is a run-on. I think it is, and it might offend Wolfson or someone aspiring to be Wolfson II.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 7:58 PM
Well smell you, Nancy Drew.
Would it give you joy, Hardy Boy?
(Of course, I know it would. It's a rhetorical question.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:04 PM
Yes. Yes it would.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:09 PM
You know, as long as we're defending not particularly artful movies from charges of promulgating pernicious ideas, I don't actually think it's fair to say that the point of ABM was that the love of a good woman is all you need to get through mental disease. The movie very well may have exaggerated the extent of his recovery and whitewashed his symptoms, and that's bad, but there was at least one scene in which he did something that seriously endangered the life of their child, IIRC. I don't think the movie sufficiently grappled with the selfishness of his being off his meds in those circumstances, but there was *some* portrayal of the danger. Further, I don't think the love of a good woman was meant to be what allowed him to manage his symptoms without medication. I don't remember the movie well enough now to be sure, but I seem to recall that his struggle with his symptoms was mostly internal. She took care of him and managed him in a way that allowed the struggle to take place, but I don't remember her love being presented as instrumental in the diminishment of his hallucinations. Finally, I'm pretty sure there are schizophrenics who live okay without meds, and there are non pharmacological treatments being developed that are showing promise, too, so it's not just a ridiculous notion that someone with those symptoms could learn to live without them, and that this would constitute something of a personal triumph, even if not for everyone to emulate, and further that if that someone's wife was devoted to him for many years despite the degree to which he taxed her, this might be somewhat inspiring too. It bothers me more in the context of the larger cultural narrative in which the tortured man is always cared for by the patient woman. But considered in isolation, it's also inspiring to see someone whose a damn good spouse. It just might be nicer if there were more patient husband stories.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:27 PM
who's
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:28 PM
Well, Caitlin Flanagan's husband carried her into the house when she had breast cancer.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:33 PM
It just might be nicer if there were more patient husband stories.
There are millions of these. They just don't make it to the big screen, they're all narrated at the bar, and they usually start with the phrase "you wouldn't believe the shit I have to put up with..."
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:36 PM
168: OK, that's funny.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:50 PM
It would especially help if the woman in the movie was a tortured genius whose work just had to continue. That strikes The Caitlin Flanagan Story from contention.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:52 PM
But his work doesn't continue through the worst of it. I thought ABM was about how the hard work of recovery isn't movie material, but the descent into madness while still a genius is.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:54 PM
Unless I'm wrong about the biographical details.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:55 PM
Ted Hughes?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:56 PM
173: I was talking more about the paradigmatic crazy man/good woman movie there than about ABM specifically.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:01 PM
175: I thought Ted Hughes was supposed to be a bad guy.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:05 PM
It's a topic of much debate.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:07 PM
Leonard Woolf.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:16 PM
William Godwin. George Henry Lewes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:20 PM
Mr. B.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:24 PM
Well played, Apo.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:26 PM
I actually thought of that one myself.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:33 PM
I would actually endorse 103 if I were willing to admit to it. But I usually see movies for that reason only after they've left the theater.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:37 PM
Followed closely by the bit where we were supposed to be happy that FG's shrimping business would prosper -- because of a natural disaster wiping out all the poor black people competing with him. AND THE PEOPLE WHO'D JUST BEEN WIPED OUT WERE ALSO DEPICTED AS HAPPY. Yassuh.
Well, do we know they were actually wiped out? I mean, I'm sure it wasn't great, having to fix their boats and all, but...hell, I don't know much about shrimping. Do big storms regularly destroy shrimping livliehoods? And, if I remember correctly, the only black people shown were Bubba's family, who were profiting from the storm as much as anyone.
I'm also curious as to what you think was the proper reaction to the disaster? Perhaps a solemn manner as they caught the shrimp? Or should they have weighed anchor until their competitors were able to shrimp again? Is there another option? Because neither of those others that I can think of seems appropriate, either. And what about the "poor blacks"? Would it in any case be appropriate for them to begrude the newcomers their good fortune? It was luck, but is that reason for resentment? That doesn't seem right, to me.
There are a whole bunch of scenes in Vietnam, and I'm not sure that any Vietnamese people were actually depicted.
True, and they missed a chance there to make the movie more realistic. But how bad is this? While the depiction of the war-supporters wasn't flattering, there was nothing pro-war depicted. (And, indeed, the officer pulling the plug on Forrest speaking was a negative portrayal of military power.) So, I think I understand your complaint, but I disagree as to its importance.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:47 AM
and how easily BubbaGump Shrimp became a mega-international corporation with an adorable logo, and doesn't everyone love mega-corporations? Doesn't it feel good to imagine they're all headed by 80-IQ Southern honkies who were ridiculed as children?
Really. I don't think people, especially pro-corp people, believe they're headed by people with 70 IQs. (Quite the opposite, it seems to me that a lot of those big of corps think the guys who run them are 10x smarter than you or I. Maybe I'm wrong, but your anger that people don't feel strongly enough that we should live in a meritocracy seems misplaced.)
Doesn't it feel good to buy movie tie-in merch glorifying a non-existent megacorp
I don't actually get the point being made by the question, or what purpose is served by having it in rhetorical form. People buy stupid movie shit all the time. I'm not sure what this has to do with the quality of the actual movie.
This is why movies like this are bad: in glorifying the whoopsie-I-made-a-billion-bucks story, they teach Americans to believe that's how megacorps come about--luck and a little old-fashioned American elbow grease. The disappearing Negro is also the disappearing, glorified-in-the-abstract worker who makes it possible.
What I'm starting to realize is that apprantly what I take to be singular instances of something in a movie, other people take to be examples of a universal. Bubbagump in this case. I saw a typical movie device; guy tries something improbable, gets lucky and pulls it off - others apparantly saw a paradigm lesson on the nature of international megacorporations. (It was actually in the movie that BubbaGump was an international? And a megacorp? That is, owning bunches of smaller corps? Could be, but I don't remember it.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:04 AM
What you people don't seem to get is that Forrest Gump is like a kitten. Kittens are really stinky. Their butts are always matted with poo. And at some point, they will pee on you. They'll poop on you too, if they can get away with it. And they're usually a nightmare to feed. Nonetheless, it's weird when people don't like kittens.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:10 AM
Surely not "kittens". Surely "the late Strom Thurmond (R-SC)".
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:45 AM
Speaking of analogies and the late S. Thurmond, here is one attributed to him. You have to imagine the accent. Or maybe apostropher can do it:
"Capitalism is like a rare beefsteak. When it's good, it's REEEL good. And when it's bad, it's still purty good."
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 6:01 AM