MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Paramount Pictures’ 1994 adaptation of Winston Groom’s novel Forrest Gump is, for many, the quintessential “badaptation.” Critics lament the film’s lack of fidelity to its sourcetext, especially as the political right commandeered the film in the service of its capture of Congress in the fall of 1994. At one extreme, Thomas Byers reads the intent of film’s liberties as “aggressively conservative” and “reactionary.” More charitably, David Lavery interprets its deviations as simply a “marketing decision.” Regardless, the case of Forrest Gump can certainly be, as it often is, used to illustrate the argument that modern Hollywood neutralizes oppositional and irreverent texts for profit.

Following Simone Murray’s urging to materialize adaptation study – that is to ground analysis and criticism in a study of the processes of cultural institutions – this paper traces the production of Forrest Gump from the sale of Winston Groom’s novel to the film’s canonization at the 1995 Academy Awards. This analysis challenges the official production mythology that was oft-circulated in the promotional discourse surrounding the film’s release and the subsequent critical readings of the filmmakers’ nefarious intentions. Instead, a closer interrogation of the film’s production history reveals the ways in which the adaptation is shaped by the industrial imperatives of late-1980s and early-1990s Hollywood and the place therein of Paramount Pictures, a studio in flux.