Transcription
In 1892, a Christian minister named Francis Bellamy wrote an early version of what became the Pledge of Allegiance, a loyalty oath to be recited by the people of the United States of America. He had no official standing until 1942, when, in the midst of World War Two, the United States Congress adopted this pledge, albeit with slightly different language from the late 19th-century version.
In 1954, it changed once more to include the words "under God." With the Cold War in full effect, many Americans distinguished themselves from the Soviet Union and their so-called state atheism with a renewed Christian zeal.
Official national anthems and pledges are common enough, but what is uncommon is how the Pledge of Allegiance is utilized in public schools in the United States. Children recite this loyalty oath once a day, every day, for their entire childhoods: kindergarten, middle school. Every day begins with the Pledge of Allegiance.
Reciting a loyalty oath to the nation is seen as bizarre, creepy, even cult-like from the perspective of people living in other countries. Canada does something at least a little similar; schools play the national anthem, not a Pledge of Allegiance, over the intercom, but nobody is expected to sing along, and "Oh Canada" is not a loyalty oath. The Australian version of a Pledge of Allegiance was phased out years ago, and most other countries in Europe do not practice this in schools at all.
Apologists for the Pledge of Allegiance for children say that this is a harmless bit of civic pride, but there are a few problems with that. For one, it's mandatory, and children will get in trouble for not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. For another, children cannot possibly be aware of what they are normalizing in themselves at such a young age. And for another, apologists say that this is not actually a loyalty oath, but a pledge is a synonym for an oath, and allegiance is a synonym for loyalty, so let's not split hairs here.
To Americans, the Pledge of Allegiance is unquestioned. Do - how early everyone is taught to recite it, and how normalized it becomes for each individual. If nobody actively questions it, then it may never occur to an individual to think of it as anything but benign. If someone calls it what it is: indoctrination, Americans get defensive because it is so common to them, so normal, that criticizing this totally normal thing feels abnormal.
The state enshrines in itself and for its people a series of values, all of which are designed to create a productive population for the benefit of the state and to protect the state from unrest by its own people. These had gained values, normalized behaviors, mainstreamed politics, and propagandized right way to be create a status quo or current state of affairs. The dull obedience to the United States demanded by the pledge is similar to the dull obedience of never questioning having to recite the Pledge in the first place. The circular logic of it confuses the people into never questioning it.
The pledge says the United States is good. The pledge says obedience is good. Therefore, obedience to the United States is good. And I know the United States is good because the pledge says so. I know the pledge is good because it's a pledge to the United States, which I know is good. And yeah, I'm talking about Forrest Gump here.
What are American values? They may seem nebulous, and indeed, that is part of the appeal of those who employ the term. It's malleability allows for those using the term to never be wrong. However, it would be reasonable to say that some values are given priority or rightness over others, creating the rightness of the status quo. Such values include a belief in Christianity and the prioritization of Christianity over other religions. "And they found Jesus." Yet, "no, I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him."
So, another is the goodness of the United States military and the otherness of foreign military powers. But instead, they decided the best way for me to fight the Communists was to play ping pong. Another still is the necessity of capitalism, opportunity, and the American Dream, as well as the otherness of socialism. "Yes, we got more money in the David Crockett."
Obedience to these values, this status quo, is preferable to opposition to these values. These values are so unquestioned that obedience is not considered political, but instead a-political, whereas only opposition to these values is considered political. This, of course, is nonsense, but that is the beauty of the status quo. Something normal and expected has the benefit of being unquestioned and therefore natural. Nothing that upsets the order of things. Disobedience is considered radical and unwelcome.
Something that is frequently asserted by the text of Forrest Gump. In this 1994 film, Gump, played by Tom Hanks, drifts through modern American history. As a youth, he forms a friendship with a young girl named Jenny, who he knows his whole life. Gump is a little slow on the uptake, but his trust in others and obedience take him far in life. Gump is an exceptional football player, even if he needs to be told when to stop. His athleticism grants him a football scholarship, and he graduates college. He is recruited to join the military, something he does on a whim. His obedience makes him an excellent private, and his trust in Jenny has him run away when his platoon is attacked by the North Vietnamese. Once safe, he is able to run back and rescue his platoon. Gump discovers that he's a prodigy at ping-pong; the repetition being completely natural to him. This success allows him to buy a boat and start a shrimping business.
Gump's reliance on obedience, repetition, acceptance of the status quo, and a complete lack of interest in upsetting the status quo eventually leads him to becoming a millionaire and an American Hero. In contrast, Jenny bucks tradition, joins the new left, associates with the Black Panthers, protests the war in Vietnam, participates in the counterculture of the time, leads a miserable life full of hardship, disease, and eventually an early death. Jenny is a radical, disobedient to American values.
There are only two times when Jenny is truly happy. First, whenever she is with Forrest. He represents stability, obedience, the status quo, American values. The film shows us this leads to happiness, and it also means Forrest represents what Jenny is battling. Jenny drifts in and out of Forrest's life, checking in on each other, but never staying together for long. Second, Jenny is happy when she finally accepts a traditional lifestyle. She has a job as a waitress in a diner. What could be more American? She has a roof over her head and a child fathered by Forrest, unbeknownst to him. Only by abandoning her radical politics and the counterculture does Jenny find happiness. Unfortunately, it's too late, as she is dying.
The film never explicitly says so, but since Jenny says she is dying from an unknown virus in 1981, the implication is that she is HIV positive. Within the context of the film, Jenny has been punished for her lifestyle. That's not to say that Jenny is an unsympathetic character; nobody would accept her as a villain. So instead, she is the perfect cautionary tale: a warning about radical politics, about disobedience, about disregarding American values.
Forrest Gump, the movie, not the character, isn't a conservative or liberal film by the mistaken American standards that have people believe they are far apart on the political spectrum. Instead, Forrest Gump is an anti-radical film, an anti-leftist film. It dismisses or condemns the politics to the left of liberalism. It doesn't really matter if the filmmakers meant it this way or not, and their denial would not change the events of the film. What Robert Zemeckis really believes is not relevant to this topic. In fact, accidentally making a film that reaffirms American values and denounces un-American values is the byproduct of these values being an invisible status quo in society. We acknowledge them as a given, a truism. We participate in them, we accept them, we promote them because we have been conditioned to believe they are natural and normal rather than the product of indoctrination and propaganda.
A filmmaker can make a war movie with American heroes saving the day and claim the movie is apolitical because American soldiers being heroes and the American military being the good guys are understood as unassailable truths in the United States. Nevertheless, it is political, regardless of intent toward remaining apolitical or ignorance about being political. First, Gump is the embodiment of this falsely apolitical status quo. When he begins running across the country, reporters ask him why he's doing this, offering various political causes as the possible reason, but Forrest quickly responds only that he felt like running. In another scene, Forrest marks, "World peace was within our hands, but I just played ping pong."
The film consistently and repeatedly makes two assertions: one, that obedience to American values leads to happiness and prosperity; two, disobedience to American values leads to unhappiness and tragedy. This can come in a variety of ways, and throughout the narrative of Forrest Gump, we see it reoccur with each of the most cherished American values upheld and disobedience to these values punished.
Let's start with a big one. Straight out of college, Forrest is recruited into the military. His voluntary recruitment sidesteps the issue of the draft altogether. Glorification of the U.S. military is undoubtedly a cross-party, cross-political American value. Controversial and catastrophic wars can be dismissed not with carefully constructed arguments, but with slogans: "Freedom isn't free," "Support our troops." Neither of these empty phrases take into account the loss of both American and foreign lives. But because glorification of the military is status quo among the American population, an ideology need only fit on a bumper sticker to get its point across.
Apologists would claim that all countries do this and that the United States is not unique in its military glorification. This is false for three reasons: One, public confidence in the military varies by country. There are similar numbers in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, but significantly different numbers in Spain, Germany, and Scandinavian countries. Two, public confidence does not equal fetishism. Denmark does not have a motion picture industry that consistently pumps out media that promotes the military and inspires recruitment; the United States does. Sweden does not have a homegrown genre of music that houses a sub-genre made to promote and excuse military interventionism; the United States does. When people from other countries see U.S. military fetishism, they don't remark how it's the same as in their country; often, they are surprised or disturbed. It's one of the qualities of the United States, one of the American values, that not Americans find so galling. Third, even if, say, Switzerland, the population was equally as trusting of and enthusiastic about their military, this Swiss glorification of the military would not have the same consequences as American glorification of the military because Switzerland is not a massive military power that participates in catastrophic interventions in other countries, raking in countless civilian casualties, creating millions of refugees, devastating poverty, all for the protection of its economic interests. But the United States is.
Forrest is quickly sent to fight in Vietnam. The movie never questions U.S. intervention in the country; why the U.S. military is even there. All that matters is that Forrest is there, and he will obediently do what he is told. In following Jenny's instructions, he rescues his platoon, saves himself, and receives the Congressional Medal of Honor. Forrest Gump, as well as other American-made Vietnam movies, focus on the tragedy of Vietnam as their tragedy, as their defeat. Indeed, many American servicemen, forcibly drafted or duped into waging a war for U.S. interests, tragically perished in Vietnam, an estimated 58,000. However, this is a very small fraction of the total lost in the conflict. Due to the chaotic nature of the conflict and the politicization of the figures by different political entities, estimates of the total casualties, both civilian and military, are in dispute, but the highest estimate puts the figure at well over 3 million lost, the vast majority being Vietnamese, not Americans, as well as millions more who were displaced and became refugees.
In the film, the peace movement is portrayed as being unsympathetic to U.S. servicemen, but that is outdated and disproved propaganda. Jenny's boyfriend, Wesley, calls Forrest a "baby killer," something that the popular imagination surrounding Vietnam claims that the peace movement frequently called servicemen. In truth, this was famously said by one protester who later apologized for it. The peace movement and the new left were sympathetic to servicemen, as many were drafted, and all of them suffered some kind of trauma. The other lie about the peace movement is that they would often spit on returning servicemen, but this was largely disproved years ago. It persists in urban legend, popular culture, half-remembered encounters, and recollections of a friend of a friend who says it happened all the time. Forrest Gump portrays the peace movement as misguided at best and heartless at worst. In the film, the peace movement is antithetical to American values, which has the byproduct of portraying interventionism as aligning with American values. Much of the carnage in Vietnam centered on U.S. economic interests in the region, as nearly all U.S. conflicts over the past century have been waged for this purpose, with more superficial and flag-waving justifications played up for the media and populists.
Instead, and yet another moment of the film showing obedience to the status quo and how this is an apolitical position, when Forrest is asked what he thought about the war in Vietnam, the sound system is sabotaged, not allowing the audience, both in the film and the audience in the theater, to hear him. Forrest completes a charmed life. Although born with some disadvantages, Forrest is able to become rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams. He plays ping-pong for the United States, and a sports company pays him to endorse their ping-pong paddles. He runs a successful shrimping company and stumbles into owning part of Apple Computers. Forrest Gump is the realization of the American Dream: that with a little hard work and adherence to American values, anyone can be successful. "We're all just millionaires in waiting." Rags to riches, that's what Americans are taught. Forrest's disadvantages do not matter; all that matters is his obedience to the American Way of Life. This is a fabrication, a lie. Children who grew up in poverty are as much as 75 times more likely to be poor in adulthood than those who don't. Workers struggling to overcome those odds are rewarded even less for their labor than they once were. The productivity of American workers has increased 70% since 1979, but their average hourly pay has gone up less than 12% in modern times. The federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 for over a decade.
There are a great many reasons why the poor remain poor. For one, a low income makes it difficult to pay loans, rent, and utilities on time. If any of those bills go unpaid for a long enough period, they will affect one's credit score, which in turn makes it much more difficult to secure loans for housing or vehicles. And late fees can pile up, creating a kind of trap that is nearly impossible to get out of. A bad credit score makes it difficult to acquire a loan for a small business, which means starting a business with credit is a challenge right from the start. And even if the business can be started, maintaining it for a long enough to earn a profit, all the while having bad credit and a loan to pay back, compounds this challenge even further. Also, since poor people live in poor neighborhoods, attracting lucrative business and big spenders faces challenges that businesses in middle-class or rich neighborhoods do not have. Many middle-class jobs with middle-class wages require a bachelor's degree or a master's degree. However, college costs money, and if someone is born into a low-income family, when one or both of their parents are not college educated, then a college education is difficult to afford. The parents could get a loan, but with the effort mentioned, a challenge of paying back loans and bills piling up, this may be either impossible or at least not a particularly attractive prospect. For the upper and middle class, unexpected costs are a nuisance but can be overcome (a hospital bill, an appliance bill, etc.). For the poor, these unexpected bills can be insurmountable. Furthermore, in the United States, there is no universal healthcare, and affording healthcare can be a struggle. That means that an unexpected hospital visit for a poor family and a hospital visit for a family that could afford a healthcare plan will have very different consequences. If a middle-class wage earner with a healthcare plan breaks his leg, his insurance might cover the hospital visit. If a lower-class wage earner without a healthcare plan breaks his leg, he will be paying off that bill for years. Same incident, completely different consequences. The disparity between the rich and the poor continues to grow. All of the hardships of a family struggling to make ends meet create conditions that make it incredibly unlikely to reach a higher economic class. Most of the "rags to millionaire" stories about Apple Computers and Amazon are myths and fabrications. It's not impossible to go from rags to riches, but exceptions do not disprove inescapable patterns and statistics.
Forrest Gump, the film, not the character, recognizes poverty but it does not address poverty. Almost everyone who is poor in the movie becomes rich. Forrest himself, of course, Bubba's family through the generosity of Forrest. Lieutenant Dan, who after the war lives in a crummy apartment but eventually runs the Bubba Gump Company. All except Jenny, who opposed American values. Forrest is rewarded for his obedience with millions of dollars. Lieutenant Dan is rewarded for his service to his country and his implied conversion to Christianity from his previous atheism. The movie even implies that God struck down all the other shrimp boats and saved Forrest's boat. Bubba's family is rewarded for their hard work and really their association with someone who embodies American values.
If there is an opponent to American values, it is radical politics, opposition to capitalism, and opposition to imperialism. In the film, radicals are portrayed negatively. Jenny's boyfriend, Wesley, is abusive. The boyfriend is identified as someone from Berkeley, California, which is conservative shorthand for a far-left loony radical. Wesley, when apologizing for his abuse, blames President Lyndon Johnson for his behavior. Jenny and her comrades' opposition to the war in Vietnam is framed as immature at best and an excuse for violence at worst. Forrest encounters a gathering of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, more commonly called the Black Panthers. The film portrays them as shouting, ill-tempered men who almost immediately eject Forrest from the room when he defends Jenny from an assault. The Black Panthers instantly side against Jenny, even though she is assaulted, and threaten Forrest with their guns for rescuing her and causing a minor stir in their presence. This is not an accurate portrayal of the Black Panthers, but it is a common portrayal in fiction influenced by propaganda and a rewriting of history. The Black Panther emerged as a group to defend African Americans from police brutality and injustice. Early activities of the Black Panthers did have them armed, but this was completely legal and within their rights. When an African American was being harassed or arrested by the police, the Black Panthers were there to monitor the situation, and since the police knew they were armed, this influenced the police to treat their target more fairly. Their monitoring activities undoubtedly saved the lives of African American men and women who would have otherwise been harmed by the police, a common occurrence both then and now. The Black Panthers monitoring police arresting African Americans in the 1960s is simply the modern-day equivalent of recording the police with camera phones to expose them when they go over the line. When the Black Panthers take the side of Jenny's boyfriend instead of Jenny herself, this seems to suggest she might be less welcome than her boyfriend. However, according to the documentary "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution," membership of the Black Panthers had become predominantly women after the first few years. The Black Panthers were primarily concerned with racial justice, but they also knew this was compounded by capitalism. The Black Panthers created free food programs and free medical programs for impoverished people across the country. Seeing the Black Panthers as a threat to white supremacy and to capitalism, J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a years-long investigation into the Black Panthers and other radical groups that the FBI called COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program. The goal of COINTELPRO was not to root out actual criminal activities, but to break up and, in some cases, frame groups they found subversive to American values. Through a series of arrests, massacres, and counterintelligence designed to splinter the Black Panthers, the group eventually fell out of popularity and disbanded.
So, I have five million Black Panther Party. The film looks at radical politics unfavorably, and since Forrest represents obedience to the status quo, he is righteous and saves Jenny. The Black Panthers shoo away Forrest for this. The framing of who is right and who is wrong is completely clear and unambiguous. Every black character Forrest encounters in the movie is background fodder for his story: the woman who clearly wants him to leave her alone but is too afraid to confront a white man in Alabama; the black man who opens his Dr. Pepper and allows Drill Sergeant with no name in regards to race. Forrest Gump is the classic example of a white man's own self-congratulation, casting himself as the hero of the Civil Rights Movement. Forrest does nothing to turn the tide of racism or poverty, only helping the one black person he knows and propping himself up as the fantasy benevolent capitalist.
There has always been a debate about whether Forrest Gump is a conservative movie or a liberal movie. By American standards, that have people believe they are far apart on the political spectrum, but the film does not oppose liberalism or conservatism, as both ideologies endorse capitalism and both major political parties in the United States historically endorse imperialism and interventionism. Forrest Gump does not oppose liberal politics; it opposes leftist politics, radical politics. Liberal politics are pretty mainstream. Forrest Gump plays to both traditional American values, something espoused by social conservatives, and strokes the egos of white liberals who believe they had the primary role to play in social change for marginalized people. Forrest Gump does not condemn liberalism; it condemns disobedience to American values. It condemns subversion. Forrest Gump is COINTELPRO, the movie. It's why it's such an inoffensive movie to American audiences and why it was so easy to praise, especially around awards season. One of the producers once ducked the political question and said that Forrest Gump is a movie about hope. Really, hope for who? Not hope for the poor, if you think the best way out of poverty is the system that put them in poverty. Not hope for the people that are bombed back to the Stone Age; we don't even get to see their faces. Oh well, nothing to be done.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic.