That right there should tell you why you shouldn’t have used it.
According to my Google-fu, one of the girls (prostitutes?) with Lt Dan and Forrest in New York calls Forest a “retard”.
Also, according to this site, it’s Hep C:
http://www.90skidsonly.com/1272811/secrets-behind-filming-forrest-gump-revealed/20/
Go figure.
That’d be the same thing mentioned here, which, as noted in the following post, has virtually nothing to do with the movie.
“Retard” was never a medical term anymore than “psycho” is a psychiatry term. People who work with people with developmental disabilities STILL use the term “Mentally Retarded,” and in the correct context, there is nothing wrong with it. When someone is retarded, we generally say “a retarded person”; until the 1980s, there was a term “retardate,” which meant the same thing, but it fell by the wayside, because it was too close to “retard.” Granted, “retard” is short for “mentally retarded,” but it’s a short form no one in the field has ever used, just as no one in psychiatry has ever used “psycho” as an abbreviation of “psychopath,” or “psychotic.”
So? People used “retard” as an insult all the time (and probably still do). Most people called “retarded” on the playground were not actually retarded.
Let me get this straight. We just had the most severe mass shooting in U.S. history, Trump is still President. Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico have massive hurricane damage and the best thing we have to talk about are insults to fictional characters? Let’s talk about nigger Jim from Huckleberry Finn while we are at it. Jesus Christ on a stick, these types of things are what people are referring to when they talk about PC culture gone bad.
I love the movie Forrest Gump but it has no relevance to anything in real life. He is just a retard that just happens to fall into every available opportunity by chance. The reason he was disabled is never given but I assume it was some kind of delivery complication rather than genetic. The whole point of the story isn’t about him. It is just a vehicle to showcase American history.
I can change my language if it makes anyone feel better.
Forrest was an intellectually challenged individual that was mainstreamed because his mother was kind enough to fuck the principal so that he didn’t have to go to a “special” school.
Actually, polio was a major health threat for children especially until the late 1950s, when Salk’s vaccine became available. I remember going to the Public Health Center in downtown Minneapolis with my mother and brother to get inoculated when I was four or five (1959–60).*
So yeah, his having to wear leg braces was very much part of American culture at the time.
*Afterwards, we went to a planetarium show at the brand new MPS Public Library on Nicollet Avenue, before it became part of “The Mall.”
[Moderating]
I’m ruling that “retard” falls into the same category as other offensive slurs, and giving a Warning for this one. “Retarded person” would carry the same meaning without being offensive, and “idiot” or “moron”, while old-fashioned in scientific usage, would still have worked.
EDIT: On further review, I have rescinded the formal Warning, but “retard” is still not appropriate language.