No. In the summer of '81 the CDC itself hadn’t even publicly identified AIDS yet.
Wow… and I clearly remember the jokes going around the school… how to keep from getting AIDS…what do you call a F## on skates… etc.
Must be false memories.
I sit corrected.
I always thought it was obviously AIDS, and that they specifically showed her with that guy who was shooting up to show how she got it, although this was probably the subtlest thing in the movie. She either got it from sharing needles with him, or by sleeping with him- who got AIDS from sharing needles. Her conversation with Forrest takes place in the early 80s, which falls in line with “I have a virus, the doctors don’t know what it is”. AIDS was still a mystery, and was originally thought to only affect gay men. Which Jenny obviously was not. The thought it might be AIDS probably wouldn’t have been strongly considered yet.
HBV was identified and being warned against prior to HIV. It’s also a blood-borne pathogen. In addition, though AIDS wasn’t generally publicly identified as a thing until 1981, it was known in the gay community earlier than that that something bad was happening.
WOW. I either never knew or had completely forgotten that Haley Joel Osment was in this movie.
It’s never Lupus.
I always assumed Jenny had AIDS. It brackets the movie appropriately. Forrest had polio, a virus spread, incurable, possible lethal disease that made young Forrest a social pariah. Jenny acquired HIV, and passed to her son, who is now starting his first day of school, with a viral disease, incurable, and likely facing social ostracism for it. The film ends like it began.
I used to hate part of this message – Jenny’s wild lifestyle exposes her to AIDS, Forrest seems immune, basically by being a nice guy. However, differences in transmission rates for women to men notwithstanding, there’s no reason Forrest can’t be HIV positive, and may eventually die of AIDS. Why not, his story’s done.
Also, Forrest doesn’t have an IQ of 75. He may be a little slow, but coddled by his mother, shyness and his need for braces made him look worse to the administrator. Or he simply was a victim of flawed testing.
That was, as much as can be said definitely, the point of the movie. That’s from the film’s trailers – the world is different seen through Forrest’s eyes. Although I’m sure there are a variety of subtle meanings in the film, the whole point was to show how with encouragement, Forrest could excel.
Meh. I really enjoyed the movie back in the day, the camera tricks to put Forrest in historical situations was very entertaining. We didn’t have South Park and Family Guy to do that on a daily basis. The only thing we had was The Critic.
Bumping this thread because I saw an ‘article’ today. I won’t link to it because it’s click-bait (I jumped the page number to minimise clicking), but this is what it says on page 20:
So Hepatitis C it is.
The original book has Forrest hanging out with an ape and going into space as well. It is appalling bad and almost unreadable. I am still amazed that anyone was able to translate it into an Academy Award winning film (despite many opinions, I am still a huge fan of the movie and still think it is a brilliant touchstone).
What I am saying is that the book(s) and the movie aren’t that closely related. I have read the books and seen the movie dozens of times. At least in the movie, she died of AIDS complications. That is made abundantly clear without being blatantly stated. It really doesn’t matter what the book says because the screenwriters completely rewrote the entire story to be a montage of late 20th century history as seen through a retards eyes.
It’s no more ok to say the r-word than it is to say oriental. Even if it’s medically accurate, there’s a dozen better ways of describing his condition than using such a charged word.
So what do I call all these rugs then? Sorry…carpets?
Regrump Americans.
Coming in late, but I can’t believe anyone thinks it was anything other than AIDS. It fits the narrative, and if the timing is off, well, Forrest didn’t invent the smiley face or “Have A Nice Day”, either but no one complains about that.
And, as much as I like the film, I fear that deep down, the filmmaker’s true point is that “it is better to be a stupid homebody than a free thinking free spirit.” Ignorance is bliss, be God-fearing and don’t think for yourself, and everything will be just fine. In other words, the perfect film for trump’s America.
…But Gump isn’t a homebody. He goes out into the world and has adventures and effects the world even if he doesn’t know it.
I apologize if I offended Forrest. The fact still remains that Forrest and Bubba were retards, Jenny was a whore and Lieutenant Dan is an asshole. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. You sometimes just have to work with what you are given kind of like a box of chocolates. To be fair, I don’t think anyone ever used the term “retard” in the movie. They used the more PC term, “local idiot”.
As I understand it, things are Oriental,people are Asian. I’ve never seen an explanation as to why, but it’s one of those things I just accept out of respect.
“Being an idiot is no box of chocolates.”
Maybe also consider apologizing to people who suffer from that condition or those who have people in their lives who suffer from it and have spent their entire lives hearing that word being used as a pejorative against them or people who continue to insist to deploy it in an attempt to be edgy despite a dozen similar words that don’t carry those same connotations.
We all understand that it used to be a medical term in the same way that Negro was a scientific classification but the connotations its gained over the decades has turned it into a hateful slur that trivializes intellectual disability and dehumanizes people.
Would you have said “Fact is, Bubba Gump was a nigger”? Bubba can’t be offended, so it’s okay, right?
A slur is different from a normal word. It doesn’t just attack the person. It attacks an entire group of people. Just as calling even the worst person a “nigger” or “faggot” is beyond the pale, so is calling the most mentally challenged person a “retard.”
They have told you that it is hurts. They have proven that it is used to dehumanize them. So, if you do care, stop using that word. If you don’t, then don’t whine about the consequences. It was your choice.