When most people think about Forrest Gump, they’re probably thinking about the movie, not the book.
Huh? This is the first time I can recall seeing anybody claim that “the Wise, Innocent Child” is in any way linked to the Baby Boom generation.
I thought that type of character was far older.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFool
The novel Forrest Gump was written by Winston Groom - born in 1943. The screenplay was written by Eric Roth (b. 1945)
I have no opinion on what Forrest Gump means (never saw it), but the Baby Boom was a big demographic event, creating an unusual population distribution (see here A Century of Population Change in the Age and Sex Composition of the Nation), so it’s not completely unbelievable that the Boomers developed some unusual ideas about themselves based on the fact that they outnumbered the populations that succeeded them.*
*I’m an extraordinarily late Boomer - born in 1964, but qualifying for the designation in a variety of other ways (oldest child of a WW2 veteran, raised by parents who lived through the Depression, first in the family to go to college and to grow up with TV, etc.).
Are you sure it wasn’t ironically? 
True. And the movie is crap.
And, on edit, I must have been thinking about The Magic Christian.
No, she is saying Dorothy is neither ugly nor beautiful. Otherwise she wouldn’t ask. And in the film she is kinda plain, not glamorous nor ugly.
There was an immediate reaction and criticism to Forrest Gump being a promotion of conservative values and anti-progressive views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump#Political_interpretations
If you’re dumb and oblivious, the American Dream will fall into your lap. If you’re a drug-using, anti-war, promiscuous hippie, you get cancer and die young.
I can definitely see big Boomer energy in Forest Gump. But I’m not sure it’s self-aware.
The boomers didn’t invent the wise fool. It has been firmly rooted in American culture since at least the days of Brother Jonathan. But they sure love to apply it to their generation as a group, which is where they differ with those before and after. “We’re the uncorrupted youth who will fix everything that all the evil people over 30 are doing.” And FG is a solid example in that they take it to such extremes for a laugh. Mooning LBJ out of dim-witted earnestness. Causing the Watergate scandal by (Mistakenly. remember, it has to out of a desire to do good) reporting intruders at the hotel. Apparently saying the most profound anti-war wisdom at a rally. Which The Man wrecks by pulling the speaker wires. All these things to show what a good person Gump is. Because after all, he’s a boomer. That holy, beautiful group.
Gee, it almost sounds like people over 30 are untrustworthy. I think the biggest shock the ensuing ‘gEnEraTiOns’ are experiencing is that they are nothing more than the New Boomers.
Forrest Gump always reminds me of this Doonesbury cartoon:
Reverend Sloan is describing the plot of his new novel to Zonker, and ends by saying “it’s sort of about the sixties.”
To me, FG is a tragedy. Through sheer dumb luck, one man gets to experience some of the most extraordinary events of the late 20th Century, and he is completely unable to appreciate them. Not that brushes with fame should necessarily make someone happy, but all these amazing experiences are wasted on someone who doesn’t even realize he’s having them. That’s a tragedy.
I thought it was obvious that Jenny died of AIDS. “It’s sort of about the eighties.”
I never thought of Forrest Gump as a Boomer. Jenny, Lieutenant Dan, everyone else - they’re the Boomers. They’re the generation who’s main problem is that they think too much, which often means that they waste their lives on naval-gazing. Forrest, who barely thinks at all, is the outsider chronicling their follies.
In other words, the movie is about Boomers mocking themselves, made back when they still had a sense of humor.
According to numerous websites I just checked, Forrest Gump was born on D-Day, June 6 1944. This is apparently stated specifically somewhere in the novel or the book. He was thus a member of the Silent Generation, not a Baby Boomer. Most of the Baby Boomers were born too late to serve in Vietnam. Those Americans who served in Vietnam were either in the Silent Generation or were Baby Boomers. I’m getting really tired of hearing people who use the term boomer to mean just “you know, someone older than me, but I can’t be bothered to actually look up dates”. it doesn’t mean, for instance, anyone who’s retired. 60% of Baby Boomers aren’t retired. Many members of the Silent Generation aren’t retired either.
A previous thread about generations:
I am aware. But, look at the entrance, and the stairwell, and tell me that’s not the same place? Perhaps the original owner of the Afterlife was fond of the old bar in Tokyo, and modeled his or her place after it. It would fit the theme, too, where [in the game’s fictional world] Night City was originally founded as a corporate project rather than organically, and the Afterlife itself is held to be a poor imitation of the spirit of Club Atlantis, so who would be surprised if the grungy-looking décor were a rip-off too.
[As for the game’s designers, how could they not be aware of 1970s–1980s Japanese cyberpunk cinema…]
Forrest Gump is kind of like Being There but with less cynicism and more pop-culture references.
And I love Being There, and despise Forrest Gump. 
I think FG is a great movie, one of the weirdest films ever to win Best Picture (and it deserved the nod, sorry), and, above all, it’s one of the great Rorscharch tests in American cinema.
Interesting observations / comments re FG and the boomer thing. I really like FG and in the dozen times I’ve seen it, I guess I always took it at face value (not a boomer, btw). I don’t really see what some are seeing but to each his own.
So, boomers were always assholes? I thought they were just the scourge of today 
No. They’re just the useful whipping boys of today.