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Using the movie “Forrest Gump” as a learning tool for diversity, the viewer is taken on a historical ride covering some of the most important and hotly contested debated issues of American history and politics. This diverse look at the past of our nation allows us a peek into how our country has changed through the innocent, small town eyes of Forrest Gump as portrayed by Tom Hanks. His adventures from childhood, the educational system, the Vietnam war, and eventual life successes all show us that an ordinary man will have a diverse exposure throughout his life that helps him to shape his view of his life and the world.
The movie starts off by establishing that Forrest is a character with some mental incapabilities. He is not accepted in regular school due to his shortcomings but, through manipulation and “sexual favors” his mother gets him a slot as a student in a regular school. We see him ridiculed and bullied while in grade school but Forrest does not allow these events to deter him. He is a person whom, when faced with adversity chooses to rise above the challenge and prove that there is no such thing as a stumbling block.
His educational accomplishments may have been questionable (his college degree was the product of an athletic scholarship because he could run fast with a football) but, in the end, he proved that being an under achiever in school does not doom or mean that one shall be a failure in his life. The movie proves that education is but a facet of life that cannot accurately portray what kind of person one will be later on in life.
It seems to me that everything Forrest accomplished in life, he did by accident. Such is the case when he became a war hero, which led to his becoming an Olympic caliber ping pong player. When Forrest joins the military, the film begins to treat the issue of racial and physical discrimination as Forrest and Bubba become friends had learn to lean on each other for support. The movie sends a clear message regarding racial discrimination. There is no such thing as skin color or race.
Everybody is a person and has the right to be treated as such. Which is exactly how Forrest treated Bubba. He did not see a black man with a handicap that was perhaps the same as his. In his mind, he and Bubba were just 2 ordinary men fighting for their country.
During most of his life, Forrest is viewed as a dunce by most people around him. When he joined the military, he was possibly one of the best soldiers in his regimen but he still had to undergo ridicule and discrimination due to his perceived slowness and stupidity from his fellow soldiers. But all of that changed once he saved almost all his platoon members lives when they were under siege in Vietnam at a certain point.
The Vietnam war also changed Forrest, he was just too much of a s simpleton to notice it. Instead of allowing the war to ruin him emotionally, he used what he learned in order to develop the shrimp business he had hoped to start up with his friend Bubba. It is during this point in the movie that we realize that the physically disabled rights that are in place today and enjoyed by many of the disabled is actually the result of decades long struggles on the part of the disabled.
This is something that becomes glaringly clear as we watch how the now disabled platoon leader of Forrest during the war, Lt. Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise in the movie) struggles after he is discharged as a soldier because the war left him as a lower legs amputee. The movie shows us the downward spiral that most formerly able bodied people undergo once they undergo such horrific experiences such as war and amputation. During these dark hours, it pays to have a friend who sees nothing but the positive side to any situation like Forrest does.
The movie dives deeply into the culture of the times as well. If viewed in a historical perspective, the movie actually shows the rebirth of the nation, from the innocence and simple life after World War II into the turbulent and at often times violent times of the 60’s and onward. We see a society slowly pulling away from the ways of the old in order to develop its own personality and way of life that best reflects the situations that people of that era had to deal with such as the Vietnam War, the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, Watergate, and some other scenes.
In the end, Forrest Gump is a movie all about learning to understand what makes everybody different from each other and how to handle the situation in such a way that nobody is offended and everybody just gets along eventually. Forrest if the kind of person who never sees a bad apple in the bunch even if he has already had a bite of the rotten apple. All he does is look for the good side of the situation.
It is this way of handling things that proves the diversity of Forrest Gump as a person and as a movie. Just because somebody is different from you does not make them a bad person. Differences should never equate to distrust. Instead, differences should drive us to trust one another because diversified view points often produces the best results in any situation. Putting myself in Forrest’s situation, I think I would also end up being as trusting as he was because, I simply have no other choice. It is easier to trust a person than it is to find fault and reasons to distrust. As human beings our first instinct is to trust people, until we get to know who they really are and if they will end up hurting you.
Work Cited
Finerman, Wendy, Newirth, Charles, & Tisch, Steve (Producer). Robert Zemeckis (Director). 1994. Forrest Gump (Motion Picture). USA: Paramount Pictures.
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