Confessions Gump Report 1/12/25

“I’ve never seen Forrest Gump and I don’t intend to do so”

I have some notion that it’s about a man who is stunted, kind of like a child, who travels very far - from one point to another - driven by a great love. There is a relationship here between the limited and the limitless. He is limited in a way that allows him to travel further, following a singular narrowed path. His limitation becomes a kind of streamlining. I feel like this a lot, especially when i wear my corset and run really fast down 3rd avenue towards KGB bar. I also feel like this when I know very little about what’s happening, or what I want, but still I stubbornly squint, crank back my drunken fist, bite my lip, and split the screen. I draw a jagged and rough conclusion, through the facts of the situation and fling myself down it. I feel sometimes like the less I know about something the faster I move. I feel this way about the movie Forrest Gump, which I have never seen but am studying deeply and allowing to affect me on a cellular level, and am writing about at breakneck speed in the last moments before I must present my findings. I think that love is involved, that he learns difficult life lessons, and does much of his traveling on foot.

I looked up Forrest Gump on the website Does the Dog Die Dot Com, which was originally a website designed to answer that titular question only, which in its simplicity was a beautiful thing. Since its launch in 2011, it has predictably devolved into a website dedicated to tracking more than 190 different crowd-sourced and alphabetized triggers in films and other media. On the trigger warning page, 37 people said that no dogs die in Forrest Gump, which I feel neutral about. However, seven people also said that someone leaves without saying goodbye, which means I absolutely cannot watch the film or I will crash out, say things I will later regret, and cry until I am dry heaving. Compare this to one of my favorite movies of all time in which at least 37 dogs die and someone leaves in a context of unspeakable mutual betrayal, but does say “goodbye” before leaving.

Another thing I learned about Forrest Gump through my research on Does the Dog Die Dot Com is that it’s not totally clear whether there is stalking involved in the plot. This is because, quote, “Forrest is always trying to find Jenny. Not in a bad way though.” One of the other listed triggers is “are there bugs” and a concerned viewer warns “shrimps is bugs.”

Something else I instinctively and spiritually know about Forrest Gump is that it is about gambling addiction, which is caused by dopamine addiction, and which is epitomized by the pop-culturally memed line from the movie “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” In freshman year of art school I brought home a box of candy that would become the subject of a video essay my roommate developed for one of our video classes. It was a box of marzipan much like this one, and she was fixated on the fact that the marzipan is meticulously shaped and airbrushed to look like different types of fruit, suggesting different flavors or experiences attached to each singular-seeming piece. However, inside they are all the same pale almond paste, they are all made of the same rich, dense stuff.