The film-making came into an area of digital revolution in 90s. The boom of innovative digital technologies on the one hand created more spectacular but also expensive visual effects while on the other hand, triggered the emergence of mobile devices and streaming media providing more opportunities for the audience to watch movies outside the cinema. This made the cost of spectacular films rocket up and the attendance in the movie theater drip low. Hollywood in order to minimalize the risk of launching a movie in theater, allocates much of its investment in marketing this movie and the sensational visual effects. Studios began to safeguard their profits by producing sequels, prequels and adaptions from previous successful movies, popular toys and widely known comic books. Movies with innovative ideas and story-telling structure are marginalized. Here, it is surprising to see that two indie films-Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction fought their way out of the smothering and decaying environment of remake and franchises.These two films offer two ways for independent films to stand out from remakes and franchises .They either experiment with the confusion of personal time and historical time or conjure a subversive structure of story-telling. If Forrest Gump is personal time muting historical violence, then Pulp Fiction is story-mixing in a pulp like style.
Karen Boyle remarked that Forrest Gump, compared with its contemporary films like Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers with “their controversial portrayal of violence” is more muted or repressed in its expression of cruelty.
There were many mufflers to the nearly showing through brutal or tragic scenes. In the opening scene, when Gump was being stared and scrutinized for his leg braces, his mother protected him and encouraged him. “Don’t ever let anybody tell you that they’re better than you”. “Mom always had a way of explaining things so that I could understand them.” While his mother taught him conservative values to understand the world, Jenny told him to run if he could face something he could not cope with. When Gump was young, he escaped bullying by running. He ran through the confusing college years, through the Vietnam War and through his own depression of losing Jenny. Conservative values and running became two things Gump used to withstand the overwhelming historical and personal brutality and tragedy. Karen Boyle said: “The world will never be the same once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump”. The lack of understanding the historical significance and the way he adopted to refuse the responsibility of interpretation make this movie a satirical comment on historical revisionism.
Roger Ebert on the other hand suggested that Jenny and Gump “have covered all of the landmarks of our recent cultural history, and the accommodation they arrive at in the end is like a dream of reconciliation for our society.”
This does not seem true from the content of this movie. Jenny’s life was intertwined with counter-cultural movements like Black Panther and Hippie movement with the sentiment of anti-Vietnam War and her own childhood traumas while Forrest Gump was flourishing in his glory. Here is a very ironic scene when Jenny was singing an anti-war song “Blowing in the Wind” in a lurid theater without any clothes on. After Gump punched those guys who harassed Jenny, Jenny said something very resonating: “You can’t keep trying to rescue me”. Sabine Moller said that “Forrest Gump was perceived as a political text that fit a conservative desire to exploit the nation’s past”. This exploitation was realized in putting anti-culture elements such as anti-war sentiments in a very repulsive way and conceiving the predominant conservative values as a noble rescuer. Jenny’s words are more of a protest to this exploitation.
Even the final reconciliation was symbolized in the death of Jenny and Forrest’s story-telling about her life. When Jenny was bedridden, Forrest recited his own experience and said Jenny was always there with him. It was Forrest imagination of Jenny but not Jenny the independent, not Jenny the drug addict. Forrest imposed his own interpretation upon Jenny’s life.
The trailer of this movie is about how Forrest Gump overcame his limp and ran through the history with success and glory. It is packed with a lot of encouraging and heartwarming shots. However, it does not include many of Jenny suffering scenes in it. Perhaps it is the bright side of this movie that this trailer wants to promote.
There is also this interview about how the digital revolution made it possible to insert historical film clips into the fictional Gump’s sequence. The technologies it used serve a purpose to push forward the theme but not stand on their own to attract the audience. That is the reason Forrest Gump differ from other spectacular movies.
All in all, Forrest Gump owes the success to its appeal to the audience’s collective memory and innovative employment of digital technologies to make this happen. Everyone who had gone through that period had some resonation in their heart and got some critical thinking in their mind after seeing this movie.
If Forrest Gump takes on the structure of personal story-telling with personal life measured against the chronological historical order, then Pulp Fiction is more post-modern in its subversive temporal structure of three stories. Instead of Forrest Gump’s intentional tuning down of violence, Pulp Fiction drills deeply into the crime activities and accords its violence with style.
The film started with two crooks talking about how to rob. The dialogue is very interesting and unconventional. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny were discussing where it is the most convenient to rob without anyone being killed. They mentioned that all it took to rob a bank was a telephone and robbing a restaurant was the least risky business minus the hero factor. Roger Ebert remarked that “A lot of movies these days use flat, functional speech: The characters say only enough to advance the plot. But the people in Pulp Fiction are in love with words for their own sake.” Other crime films usually use very precise and functional conversations in characters’ crime activities.
Also people could never imagine that two gangsters Vincent and Jules could talk about European hash bars and hamburgers in such a casual way and discussed nearly philosophically the meaning of foot massage Antwan had done to Mia. Pulp Fiction is different in its occasional dialogue aberration from crime activities and aimless excursion into characters’ life as gangsters. Roger Ebert in another review said that “It is Tarantino’s strategy in all of his films to have the characters speak at right angles to the action, or depart on flights of fancy”
As to its subversive temporal structure, Pulp Fiction deviated from other conventional crime films in that it focused on characters rather than stories. Vincent careless and casual attitude in dealing with his assignment and his caution in dealing with Boss’ wife were reflected in his interaction with Jules Wolfe and Mia. Jules’ religious adherence to miracle and God was also told in his cooperation with Vincent. Marsellus has been clearly established as someone people don’t mess with. Characters are like a pulp which is diluted in the beginning but as long as you keep stirring it by interactions, it became sticker and sticker. Therefore the link between stories is also the underlying friction between personalities. There was no unifying temporal thread through all three stories. Characters are established or pronounced by the interaction and friction between each other. Kevin Howley suggested that “Tarantino and Avery are interested in exploring the intersections and interpenetrations between people, places, and actions: precisely those ingredients that Pauline Kael suggests are the “stuff” of movies”
The trailer of this movie cut all the intense interaction and dialogue between characters into one short video. The characters were very vivid and lively by that.
Quentin Tarantino on the other hand admitted his intention to connect three stories in a dynamic way and make these characters interact to show their lives. So, Forrest Gump is a single hero measured against time while Pulp Fiction is characters development which penetrates across the barrier of time into each other’s life.
Pulp Fiction is a low budget film with great box office while Forrest Gump‘s budget is a little higher for its digital insertion of historical sequence. Forrest Gump was produced at the cost of 55 million dollars and grossed 677.9 million dollars while Pulp Fiction’s budget was a little over 8 million dollars and grossed more than 210 million dollars. Forrest Gump was placed first at the box office narrowly beating The Lion King an animation. Pulp Fiction was widely regarded as Tarantino’s masterpiece and it became the touchstone of postmodern movies.
Forrest Gump:
Academic Resource:
Karen Boyle “New Man, Old Brutalisms? Reconstructing a Violent History in Forrest Gump”
Sabine Moller “Blockbusting history: Forrest Gump as a powerful medium of American cultural memory”
Journalistic Resource:
Roger Ebert’s review about Forrest Gump
Textual Evidence:
Primary Resource:
The trailer of this movie and this interview from the director
Pulp Ficiton :
Academic Resource:
Kevin Howley ” Breaking, Making, and Killing Time in Pulp Fiction”
Journalistic Resource: Roger Ebert’s 1994 review Roger Ebert’s 2001 review
Textual Evidence: You Tube clip You Tube clip
Primary Resource: Quentin Tarantino’s interview , The trailer
Hui,
I also studied violence in the last section’s movies. I used them in a not-so-obvious was as you did here. It is unusual because Forrest Gump is not an obviously violent movie but you made a clear connection. I like the way you compared both movies and aligned them using that common theme. As you write, Forrest Gump is a sort of violent movie.
Best regards,
Joei Conwell
Hui,
I love both of these movies, so I have to comment on this post. I am interested in the route you took in comparing these films. I think the way you are describing these film’s violence is unique. Pulp Fiction, without a doubt, is a blatantly violent film in a traditional sense. However, and not necessarily contradictory to Pulp Fiction – Forrest Gump sometimes has an ominous, over-looming umbrella of violence, but does not physically show it. For example, throughout his life he is tormented by various types of people, the general knowledge of the Black Panther movement and the Vietnam war are some of America’s more violent times. I think this movie was so popular because it brings back true feelings for people that may understand the era but did not need a frank reminder of some of the things, they remember form Vietnam or their childhood bullies.