Forrest Gump and the rural ideal

This blog post isn't based on an article or news piece. Rather, it will be regarding my recent re-viewing of the movie Forrest Gump. As many know, this 1994 blockbuster won Tom Hanks his second Oscar in a row (having previously won for Philadelphia), playing the slow but genuine title character. What struck me when seeing it again was that I started to see it through the eyes of "rural realism" or to put it less succinctly, how director Robert Zemeckis saw the rural and Gump's personification of it.

First is the place and the location of Green Bow, Alabama. Obviously a fictional town, Green Bow seems to personify the bucolic rural Southern town, with its tall trees, meandering rivers, and small-town charm (for example, the town barbershop is the location continuously returned to whenever Forrest is running through the town). Gump's home is set back from the road, among willows and ponds and always appears white and pristine, like something from a postcard. The location is not entirely eden-nistic though, for we still see the rundown shack of both Jenny's family (made to evince the thought that Jenny's family were sharecroppers) and Bubba's mom's home.

While these visual components are a surface reminder of all that is wonderful about the rural South, what was more interesting to me was the sound that accompanied each location. When characters (especially Jenny) were somewhere besides a rural place, there was a cacophony of sounds...music, cars, voices, the aural detritus of urban living. However, Green Bow is always quiet, save the occasional lawn mower or dog bark. When Forrest is running across the country he is never seen running through a city but always through some pristine rural place (the movie shows Forrest running through the Santa Monica pier but even shows that rather loud place as filled with nothing more than the sounds of the Pacific). It is also a place of redemption, when Jenny needs to rediscover herself she returns to Green Bow and Forrest. When Lt. Dan decides he wants to live, he goes to the South and makes peace with his demons. Zemeckis seems to be treating the rural South and rural places in general as a panacea for whatever ails you.

Second are the people, Gump is the epitome of the wise simpleton. Genuine and without an ounce of guile, the protagonist is the vessel through which many of the other characters find peace and happiness. Zemeckis and Hanks make Gump the bastion of what is solid and good in the American soul; love of country, of family, respect, hard work, and dedication that the movie seems to tie to the Southern rural mystique. After all, they could have placed the movie in Iowa or Nebraska but they chose the deep, rural South.

But again, they also show our collective representations of the 'bad' South: Jenny's alcoholic, abusive father, the racism throughout the white population, the abuse that Forrest receives at the hands of classmates simply because he is different (an "other").

So, Zemeckis and Hanks do show us differing portraits of the rural South but the dominant one is that rural places are wholesome and good, places where the simple life can fix the twisting of urban living and self-destruction. This leads to the question, is this the representation that is normally seen in movies?