{"id":9733,"date":"2010-12-21T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T20:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=9733"},"modified":"2011-10-16T09:23:11","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T16:23:11","slug":"hate-mail-forrest-gump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/hate-mail-forrest-gump\/","title":{"rendered":"Just the Thing to Fire Up Some Holiday Cheer – Hate Mail!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Charlie Brown and friends remind us: “Christmas time is here. Happiness and cheer. Fun or all that children call their favorite time of year.”<\/em> Oh, and you know what else is great for building up that festive holiday spirit? Hate mail! I got a doozy the other day.<\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n

This one was sent to me as a personal message through Facebook. It’s so crazy I’ve had to censor part of it! I think you’ll understand why.<\/p>\n

Subject: Response to your opinions on forrest gump<\/p>\n

I find your description unprofessional, you said the movie was racist, I am black and I see nothing wrong about it, and I think your racist for even implying it. you got the message of the movie wrong, the message is that life isn’t predetermined its free and random. the character is easy the most likable character, he’s caring has no hate, for example he gave the money from apple to bubba’s family. I would bet non of you self righteous jerks would do that. just remember a n***er wrote this racist bastard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This seems to be in reference to our very first Roundtable post<\/a>, which was published back in June. To be fair, that piece has been highlighted in our “Popular Posts” section ever since, so it’s not like this person had to go digging for it or anything.<\/p>\n

So, why did I call ‘Forrest Gump<\/a>‘ racist? Well, there’s the obvious answer: Because it is. <\/p>\n

To elaborate: There are only two types of black characters depicted in ‘Forrest Gump’. First, there’s Bubba and his family \u2013 the only characters in the entire movie who are just as intellectually stunted as Forrest, if not more so. They’re so ignorant and pathetic and helpless that they need a single-digit IQ, mouth-breathing white man to save them from their circumstances. Yet unlike Forrest, there’s no reference at all in the movie to Bubba or his family being developmentally challenged. No, in the world of ‘Forrest Gump’, that’s just what black folks are like, the intellectual equals of a mentally retarded white man. <\/p>\n

To counterpoint this, the movie also shows us the other side of African American culture \u2013 the psychotically violent Black Panther members who use and abuse nice white girl Jenny, then get her hooked on drugs. Lovely.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I think that ‘Forrest Gump’ is racist. Shockingly racist, in fact. And you should too, if you think about it. But that’s the worst part about ‘Forrest Gump’. The movie instructs you not<\/em> to think about it, not to look beneath the surface, not to ever question anything beyond face value. The movie explicitly tells us that thinking is a bad thing and the cause of all the troubles of the world, all the while subversively slipping in some frighteningly reactionary messages about race, about gender, about politics, and about history. This is truly one of the most hateful movies ever made. Stupid is as stupid does, indeed.<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Charlie Brown and friends remind us: “Christmas time is here. Happiness and cheer. Fun or all that children call their favorite time of year.” Oh, and you know what else is great for building up that festive holiday spirit? Hate mail! I got a doozy the other day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":9776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[555,290,1891],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9733"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23777,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9733\/revisions\/23777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}