What is he misinformed about? That's precisely what Forrest Gump was in every single situation in which the movie put him in (i.e., American cultural attitude is to respond by dumbifying or make light of everything - especially violence), and that review was spot about this movie - which was awful.
The message of Forrest Gump was that if you think about the hard stuff too much, you'll either get AIDS or lose your legs.
Dumar, if you honestly walked away from that movie with this impression? Then anything I type here is going to be futile..But I can't sleep. His views on Gump are asinine because Gumps' "thing" was that it specifically
didn'thave a message. It lets the audience make every call. Gump himself may as well have been a camera going from event to event, being mildly pleasing between the action on the screen. The movie was just a historical accounting of moments in time, seen through an
apoliticalset of eyes. And they intentionally drilled it into the audiences thick head that Gump wasn't going to make a moral call on any of this because he was retarded; it was up to YOU to do that. Somehow that got twisted into the movie promoting the delusional narrative above.
For example; you could take Dan's leg loss SO many other ways--especially considering he was the only person who wished to be in the war, and who supported it and he only became happy against after being disillusioned with his patriotism. How Taibi could twist such dark message about blind patriotism hurting people into the above bullshit? Is
incredible, it's honestly some delusional social justice shit right there. (I mean, when you say the genre of Vietnam war films, which shit all over that war, and
oftenportrayed American soldiers as murderers and savages, were not deprecating enough because they only had us "care" about our own guys? There is nothing that will please you. At that point, you are just complaining because you like to feel special that you have some special knowledge about how much war REALLY sucks, and all the rest of the people are sheep for not being more angry. And that's what it comes down to, the person who realizes how bad stuff REALLY is, is the smartest, most special post-structuralist snow flake.) But, honestly, if someone could walk away with the above sentiment about Forest Gump? It says infinitely more about you than Hollywood media or movies or whatever.
Anyway; Taib's misinformed about the issues in this movie mainly because the issues he discusses don't actually have an association with the movie (At first I thought he might not have even watched it due to the hyperbole about finally being fed up with killing kids. It's obvious they emphasize how fucked up he was over his first shot. And they made sure to have all the soldiers literally state their disillusionment with war.). The fact is the movie is about a single man, caught up in something much larger than himself. Now, I personally think the movie
failedto tell that story well for a few reasons--however, none of those reasons include the lack of a political message (Only time he came close to a point is when he said the real Chris Kyle was probably more of a dick, the movie Kyle was very Mary Sue, which was one of the movie's failings). Taibi's entire critique is based off just that, the lack of a political message; he can't simply allow people to see a child being shot and let them decide that shit is bad. No, he has to run us through every American mistake and make sure everyone knows it was all bad, to emphasize that a child being killed was TRULY awful. (News Flash Taibi; everyone already does believe Iraq was blunder. No one who hated the Iraq war is going to go watch this and say "oh, I like it now".)
Not every piece of media will ever be able to capture all the nuance around complex issues. Especially once you start heading into personal perspectives and opinions. If that yard stick is going to be used to shit on something--that it did NOT include the vast amount of context that all complex problems have--then I could shit all over half of Taibi's economic stories (And my own posts, even). Taibi's editorial here would be like me finding his article about futures trading and screaming about how he doesn't cover X or Y huge benefit of futures and therefor his whole article is a festering piece of anti-capitalist shit. Because if an article doesn't teach someone enough to be an Economist, it's a bad article. (Obviously this isn't true--it's one perspective of a single problem, it's not meant to cover all the nuance.)
Taibi just used this to soap box about the Iraq war and how is was terrible. And he was mad because the movie didn't do that MORE for him. To call the movie "dangerous" because it presents a different point of view is as silly as saying Call of Duty is "dangerous" because it glorifies war. Or, more specifically to Taibi, it's as dumb as some of the hardcore Capitalists I know who critique Taibi's views on U.S. financial muscle being insidious as myopic, and "dangerous", because he doesn't talk about how they limit certain state sponsored warfare and generally promote trade/connectivity and a host of other benefits it provides, not just to the U.S., but the world. (These are arguments I've actually heard after I started reading him and discussing him with old colleagues, and some of them are grounded in pretty robust understanding of how the U.S. economic system reduces the incentive of risk behavior--Just ask Russia how Ukraine is working out!). The reality is, the economic system can have benefits, but also be seriously bad-it depends on context, and the specifics of what's being discussed. The Iraq war can be bad, but a movie can still be about good things within it, or an inspiring story from it. (Even if it didn't really manage to achieve that.)
