Forrest Gump is a story set in the United States in the 1900s?

The film "Forrest Gump" was produced by Paramount Pictures in 1994. Based on the novel by Winston Groom, directed by Bobert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, the film was a huge success, winning the 1995 Oscar for The 67th Academy Awards won 6 awards including Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, and Best Editing. It was rated by Time Magazine as the best actor in the United States in the past twenty years. The greatest movie ever. The film integrates nearly 30 years of American history and culture after World War II into the ordinary experience of a simple and lovely little man - Forrest Gump. Therefore, this film, as a vivid textbook of American post-World War II history, is becoming more and more popular. It is used in many English teachings. However, it is difficult to realize all the aspects of American history and culture reflected in the film in the thirty years after World War II by just watching the film or simply translating and explaining the lines. Therefore, in order to meet the purpose of college English teaching and conduct a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation of this film, it is necessary to supplement the cultural background knowledge beyond the film screen. The author of this article will analyze this film from multiple levels, hoping to serve as a teaching reference for the use of this film in English teaching. At the same time, this article can also play a certain guiding role for students and viewers who are interested in the history of the United States after World War II and who love this film.

1. The political history reflected in the film

The film tells the life experience of the protagonist Forrest Gump from the 1950s to the early 1980s, which was the magnificent thirty years after World War II in the United States. The film reflects this period of history in two ways, that is, by using special effects to combine the historical events and characters in the documentary with the fictional plot and characters in the play in the same picture for direct explanation, and by using only pictures or logos or a few lines of dialogue. Indirect confession. The historical and cultural events directly explained include

(1) Tusca Riots in Alabama

On June 11, 1963, Allah, known as the Mussolini of the United States, Bama Governor George Wallace blocked the entrance to the registration building at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and read a symbolically threatening statement in an attempt to prevent two black students from enrolling. , stating that Alabama would never give in on the issue of racial segregation in education, and openly resisted the federal troops sent by President John F. Kennedy, openly resisting the federal government's removal from office. 1963 was a year of vigorous development for the American civil rights movement. The young President Kennedy decided to go with the flow of social development, expressed his personal support for the revolution, and did a lot of work in the fields of black suffrage, education, and employment. Kennedy considered giving a televised address to the nation if a riot occurred in Tuscaloosa. After the turmoil subsided, while the public's attention was still focused on this issue, he delivered a speech to the people: "This is not a regional issue, nor a partisan issue, or even just a legal and legislative issue. We are mainly facing a moral issue. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution." A U.S. president who so candidly acknowledged the injustice of racial discrimination and bravely assumed the moral responsibility to eliminate racial discrimination. On August 28 of the same year, a massive public march—the March on Washington for Employment and Freedom—was held in Washington. That day more than 200,000 people of all races and states calmly maintained a warm sense of dignity as they listened to Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his stirring "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

President Kennedy welcomed the leaders of the march at the White House and expressed great admiration for their organizational ability, because a march of that size did not break out without any riots.

(2) President Kennedy met with college students from across the United States to recruit their teams.

President Kennedy met with the National College Football Team at the White House. Forrest Gump saw a photo of Marilyn Monroe and a photo of Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy in the president's private bathroom. Monroe died in 1962, which was publicly reported as suicide. President Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The subsequent Warren Commission investigation identified the murderer as Lee Harvey Oswald. Two days later, Oswald was assassinated by Jack Ruby. From then on, Kennedy's assassination became an eternal mystery. A few months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968, then-Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Chicago, and the fervor of the civil rights movement subsided. In just a few minutes, the film tells us the life and death of these influential figures and hints at the mystery behind them.

(3) Vietnam War (President Johnson awarded the Congressional Medal to the heroes of the Vietnam War)

The protagonist Forrest Gump was invited to the White House for the second time because he was injured while rescuing his comrades during the Vietnam War. , President Johnson personally awarded him the Congressional Medal. The scene before this in the film is President Johnson's speech on the escalation of the US war in Vietnam being played on television. In May 1961, the United States sent soldiers to Vietnam to intervene in the Vietnamese Civil War. On August 4, 1964, President Johnson claimed that the USS Maddox DD-731 was attacked by a Vietnamese torpedo boat in Tokyo Bay, and urged Congress to authorize the use of force in Southeast Asia. On the 7th, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously and the Senate voted 81 to 2 to pass the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" authorizing Johnson to "take all necessary means and measures to assist any country in the Southeast Asian Collective Defense Treaty." Tokyo The Gulf incident was a sign of the expansion of the Vietnam issue. From then on, the US government officially intervened in the Vietnam War. In 1969, due to the heavy casualties in the war and the rising anti-war voices in the country, President Nixon announced the withdrawal of troops. In 1973, all US troops were withdrawn from the country, and the Vietnam War ended. p>

(4) Ping Pong Diplomacy

Because of his superb table tennis skills, the protagonist Forrest Gump visited China as a member of the American National Table Tennis Team and had an epoch-making discussion with the Chinese National Table Tennis Team. This is the famous ping-pong diplomacy of small ball pushing big ball. In January 1969, Richard Nixon became the 37th President of the United States. In order to increase the capital against the Soviet Union, the Nixon administration began to seek ways to improve its Asia policy. In July 1971, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger secretly visited China as a special envoy. The two parties exchanged views on the international situation and Sino-US relations, and reached an agreement on President Nixon's visit to China. Agreement. On February 21, 1972, Nixon and his delegation launched a historic one-week visit to China and issued the "Sino-US Jiont Communique" with the Chinese government, marking a good start for the normalization of relations between the two countries. The reconciliation between the United States and China has a significant impact on easing tensions in Asia and the world. Due to the situation, Japan urgently requested the normalization of diplomatic relations with China, and the Soviet Union also began to ease its relations with the United States and Western Europe.

(5) Watergate Incident.

The protagonist Forrest Gump visited China on behalf of the United States. After returning home, he was received by the president again and was arranged by President Nixon to stay in a more modern and upscale hotel - the Watergate Complex. He complained to the building staff that some people in the building opposite were using flashlights, as if they were looking for fuses, and the light from the flashlights was disturbing his sleep.

In 1973, due to the discovery and reporting by two young Washington Post reporters, the Nixon administration encountered an unprecedented crisis of confidence.

According to investigations, in June 1972, Nixon used his campaign team to spy on the Democratic Party's campaign strategy and installed bugs in the Watergate Building, the Democratic headquarters. Tapes discovered at the White House in 1974 exposed Nixon's attempts to cover up the truth. The exposure of the "Watergate Affair" caused an uproar in the United States and triggered the impeachment of the president by Congress. On August 9, Nixon resigned, becoming the first and only president in U.S. history to resign due to a successful impeachment.

In addition to the political events directly explained in the film, the changes in the political arena in the post-war 1930s are mainly explained in short scenes or logos or a few lines, such as the presidents after Nixon, including President Ford, President Carter and President Reagan.

In the film, after Forrest Gump and Jenny meet in Washington, Jenny takes Forrest Gump to meet her boyfriend Wesley, who is an SDS (Students for Demonstration Society) student at the University of California, Berkeley. of chapter president. Also present at the time was the Black Panther Party, a black civil rights movement organization. Members of the Black Panthers claimed that their mission was to provide help to black people in need, and opposed sending black people to the Vietnam battlefield to die for a country that hated them. A sign on the wall read "Columbia is the enemy of all black compatriots." Jenny and Wesley then left on a bus marked "Berkeley - District of Columbia." Jenny's outfit at this time is a typical hippie style.

The political and cultural information to be conveyed here is very rich. The famous Black Panther Party was a violent black organization. Later, a branch of the organization split into the Weather Underground organization and was engaged in the black civil rights movement. On September 24, 1964, Mario Savio and Art Goldengery, 22-year-old philosophy students at the University of California, Berkeley, launched the campus "Free Speech Movement" to To protest against the school authorities' ban on talking about the civil rights movement and anti-war speeches on campus, the California government mobilized the National Guard to stop them from October 1 and 2. Students and police faced off for 32 hours, and student movement leaders were arrested. This was the beginning of the Counterculture Movement, which gradually spread to other colleges and universities in the United States and beyond.

"Mom always said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what's in it..."