And then you realize that Forrest knows about his condition all along and your heart breaks a little.
a little?
A LITTLE?!Of course Forrest knows. That’s the whole point. His best “friend” spends his life calling him an idiot, people go around calling him an ~*~inspiration~*~ for living his life as usual, treating him condescendingly because they think he won’t know any different.
But he knows. Of course he knows. And he doesn’t have the words to say “fuck you all, I’m not my mental condition, I’m Forrest.”
I’d like to add that my uncle is mentally retarded (i.e. that’s his official diagnosis, it’s never been updated to “developmentally challenged” or whatever the most modern official language is) due to scarlet fever as a child and the first time he saw this movie, he cried. He’s not Forrest (although he has shaken hands with Jimmy Carter and met Ray Romano, and he held a single good job for 30 years before retiring from it), but Forrest was the first time in his entire life that he saw someone like himself onscreen.
My uncle was born in 1950 and became mentally disabled at the age of ten.
Forrest Gump came out in 1994.
After 34 years of isolation, being made fun of at work and shunned by neighbors, beaten up for being “weird” and whispered about in his community, my uncle—whose life dream was to become a preacher and who instead spray-painted locomotives for General Electric—saw someone else like himself. And he knew it.
He never read the book because he doesn’t have the mental capacity to read anything more complicated than a newspaper. When I told him there was a book—and that there’s a sequel to the book—he got really excited. Not because he could read it; not even because he’d be able to follow the story if I read it to him, but just because it exists.
There are Forrests among us. Don’t treat them the way this one was treated.
I promise you: they know.
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