By Joshua Taylor | updated
In the minds of many people, the 1990s have replaced the 1950s as the golden age of mankind. The internet was still in its earliest form, the economy was booming, and so was American innovation and culture.
In 1994, in the very heart of the era, a blockbuster movie captured the imagination of the world. This is a story of optimism and high hope, told through the lens of a very foolish man, and the path America takes to achieve a bright and glorious future.
Or that’s what the movie is like. In fact, it may be the first step toward decline. Whether you know it or not, in the process of watching Forrest Gumpyou were screenwashed.
Forrest Gump’s Philosophy of Total Obedience
Forrest Gump Start with a feather floating in the breeze. It has no weight, no impact, and no agency. Wherever the wind blows, the feathers will float, no complaints, I believe everything will go well in the end.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. Life is like a feather floating in the air. There is no way of knowing which way the wind is blowing; all you can do is let it move you.
There’s no way of knowing what you’re putting in your mouth, so just keep eating and accept whatever comes in contact with your tongue next.
This is a philosophy of total submission, abdication of agency, and a denial of responsibility that no sane person would agree to. That’s why it’s so easy to dismiss Forrest Gump Just like a movie.
In order for this crazy message to stick, you need to go far beyond a lecture about a box of chocolates and into a world of secret, weapons-grade psychological persuasion. So this is exactly Forrest Gump Did.
Let’s start by saying Jenny is the center of everything, but it’s not because she’s a secret villain, that’s standard edg Forrest Gump take. She’s not a secret villain at all, she’s an overt villain, but a villain who exists to serve a secret purpose.
Before I explain, you need to understand the movie itself.
‘Forrest Gump’ elicits emotional responses and leaves audiences cued
Forrest Gump Beautifully crafted and sold as a feel-good fable about kindness and decency. It’s so good at conveying emotion that it feels almost impossible for the viewer to see what it’s doing through tears. That’s exactly why it works.
While training as a hypnotist, much of my earliest lessons centered around how to trigger someone into a suggestive state. One of the best and most effective ways is to create an emotional response. Psychologists sometimes call this emotional priming. Emotional priming exploits the fact that strong emotions impair critical thinking and increase suggestibility.
one of the most unique things Forrest Gump is its structure. This is not a continuous narrative. Rather, it is a series of brief vignettes that take place at different times in Forrest’s life.
Each vignette begins a story and ends with a swelling emotional scene. It’s timed in such a way that when each new segment begins, the audience is in an intense emotional state created by the previous segment.
We feel shame when Forrest is laughed at for being stupid. Fear in the jungles of Vietnam. My mother died and I was devastated. While the audience is constantly primed, Forrest Gump uses this to convey something sinister: a morality play in which Obedience is rewarded and Independent thought is punished.
All of this is wrapped in nostalgia and empathy so thickly that you shouldn’t notice.
Forrest Gump as a Compliance Activity
From the beginning, Forrest Gump was a rule follower, no matter how bad the rules around him were. The film begins with Forrest relaying what his mother told him and explaining how he followed her instructions.
The entire movie becomes an exercise in obedience for Forrest, a man who never questions anything, and the script serves the audience well by portraying him as a man of limited intelligence.
Of course, Forrest just complied. He’s not smart enough to do anything else. But from a persuasion perspective, it doesn’t matter why Forrest obeys; indeed consistenta film that leaves the audience cheering for his obedience.
Forrest Gump succeeded because he did exactly what he was told. Not in a metaphorical sense. Literally.
Run, Forrest. He runs.
join the army. He joined.
Play table tennis. He plays.
Invest in shrimp. He invests.
Forrest never questioned anyone’s instructions. He never rebelled against authority. He never evaluates the results. he’s not even real choose. He complied, and the universe rewarded him abundantly. wealth. reputation. like. respect. Charmed Life delivers one order at a time.
The film depicts this as innocence. But structurally, it is perfect obedience.
Obey his mother and Jenny. Obey the state, let him die in the jungle, and then go play table tennis. Obedience is Forrest Gump’s whole life. He has no agency, and that’s something to celebrate.
One of Forrest’s only moments shown to any agency was a failed attempt to rescue Jenny, whom he saw making out with a boy in a car and mistakenly believed she was harmed. She yelled at him and told him he was wrong.
So go back now and do as he tells you. At that point, after he apologized and returned to compliance, Jenny rewarded him by taking off his top.
When no one complied, Forrest went into a waiting mode
When Forrest’s mother died and he had no one to obey, Forrest spent his time mowing lawns. Back and forth, locked in wait mode while waiting for the next command.
The pattern repeated itself when Jenny left him. Forrest started running. Back and forth, waiting for his next order. Like a feather being blown around by the wind.
Moral Cleansing and Forrest Gump
Forrest’s character is a textbook example of the “ethical laundering” persuasion technique. In ethical laundering, an unpopular or controversial idea becomes more palatable by attaching it to a trustworthy, heroic, or morally respectable figure, allowing that figure’s perceived virtues to be transferred to the message.
Ethical cleansing alone is not enough to convince viewers that full compliance is the best option. So the film contrasts our obedient hero with our old friend the Poisoned Well.
The “poison well” is a concept we’ve discussed many times here at Screenwashed, and it’s the polar opposite of “ethical money laundering.”
In “The Poisoned Well,” you have a bad guy who says something good and makes people think the good thing is just as bad as the person who said it.
Both ethical money laundering and poisoning wells exploit moral asymmetries.
moral asymmetry Humans tend to judge the morally acceptable or unacceptable behavior of the same behavior based on the person doing it rather than the behavior itself.
Forrest Gump is used to whitewash the idea that complete obedience is the best mode of behavior, while another character poisons the well against thinking for himself. Who is the ultimate free thinker in Forrest Gump? Jenny.
Jenny’s refusal to follow the rules reveals Forrest Gump’s true intentions
From the moment we meet Jenny, she refuses to conform and go with the flow. Forrest was bullied by the kids around him. Jenny had nothing; She resists the bully’s authority and befriends him.
Throughout the film, Jenny asks questions. Jenny is rebellious. Jenny did something unexpected. When she faces abuse from authority figures, she runs away. She rejects traditional paths. She challenges authority. She experiments with politics, sex and culture.
For this, the movie destroys her. It destroys her narratively by making her life a disaster, but it also destroys her image in the eyes of the audience by making her a villain. It expresses her independence by having her go through actions and thoughts that are intolerable to most viewers, and then turns her relationship with Forrest into one in which she takes advantage of him.
The film made Jenny the villain on purpose, rather than by accident as some critics believe. Every time Jenny exercises agency, the film punishes her with escalating consequences: abuse, addiction, disease, and isolation. Her curiosity was considered reckless. Her resistance was reframed as self-mutilation. Her independence became pathological.
This is not subtle storytelling. This is conditioning.
Jenny’s suffering only ends when she obeys
The movie pretends that Jenny’s pain is the result of “bad choices,” but it carefully rigs the game so that every disobedient choice results in pain. No version of Jenny’s life is able to think for herself. The audience is trained, scene after scene, to associate her autonomy with disaster.
Worst of all, Jenny can only be redeemed when she stops rebelling.
She returns home. She settled down. She became quiet. Sick. rely. Her independence was taken away from her; only then It was the happiness she allowed. Only briefly, before she died.
The message is unmistakable: An independent thinker must be broken before he can be accepted.
Forrest, meanwhile, never changes. He didn’t grow. He doesn’t study. He is rewarded precisely for remaining the same and never exercising any agency. He never thinks about himself. He always obeyed.
This is no accident. It is a narrative machine designed to make obedience feel moral and independence feel dangerous.
Forrest Gump wants you to think you have no agency.
In the final moments of the film, Forrest tells the audience that there are only two possibilities in life: everything is fate, or everything is random. Both possibilities have the same thing in common: you have no agency, you have no say in anything that happens to you. By the time the feathers fly away, the audience has been trained to believe that these two realities are the only possibilities, and that the best way to live is to follow orders, trust the system, and never ask why.
Life is a box of chocolates, Forrest Gump Teaches you to sit back and let life put whatever it wants into your mouth. So you cheer for those who never question. You mourn the person who does this. You walk away thinking this is how the world works and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Congratulations, obedient slave, you have been wiped out.
