It’s film awards season, so what better time to revisit a critical, commercial, and award-winning success like Forrest Gump? Of course, upon revisiting, you may discover the rather unsettling subtextual messages that Director Robert Zemeckis planted throughout his film. At least that’s the premise of the latest episode of After Hours from Cracked, a regular video feature that finds Soren Bowie, Daniel O’Brien, Michael Swaim, and Katie Willert dissecting some piece of pop culture to note its broader implications. And while Cracked’s After Hours segments may be saddled with some unfortunately clickbait-y titles, it tends to offer up fresh insights that expose a side of the subject that most may have never previously considered.
The latest episode, “12 Horrible Messages In Forrest Gump,” revisits the 1994 megahit but also harkens back to the very first After Hours installment. That premiere video, “Why Back To The Future Is Secretly Horrifying” showed how the film was essentially a whitewash of black history by attributing many achievements of black people to time traveling Marty McFly/Calvin Klein. Picking up on that this time around, the crew reveals how Forrest Gump manages to insult the Left, whitewash black history again, and treat its female characters with something just a little shy of contempt.
It’s an entertaining journey that reveals that, while Zemeckis may not have sought to make two films that replace black achievers with inept white people, he certainly has, at least, a subconscious running theme through his works. That and the fact the film gave birth to the gastronomic hate crime known as Bubba Gump Shrimp Company may forever taint this Oscar-winner.