The Forrest Gump Effect

I often wonder if anyone ever understands what I am talking about. Somethings I can understand, like when I make a specific literary reference to Dante (in Italian nonetheless), or Babylonian nomenclature (such as "Khabiru"). But sometimes I am personally dumbfounded by how dumbfounded some people can be at some references I make.

My roommates were watching Forrest Gump, and I stuck around for the scene when Forrest calls hotel services about the men with flashlights across the way keeping him up. I laughed because I just find that a comical means of working the Watergate scandal into the movie. My roommates on the other hand just looked at me. Since one of them is a history major I would assume she would have made some kind of remark. But no, she didn't understand what was so funny.

Are we that pathetic of an American generation that we don't even know our own nation's recent history? Or were we just not listening in U.S. History class in high school? I can still remember several years ago when Deep Throat finally revealed himself, and my friends finding the fact that the words "Deep Throat" were printed really large on the front page of the newspaper. I was stunned and they were giggling; most of them clueless to who Deep Throat was. I think I still know several people who don't know Deep Throat's implications on the X-Files.

I have only met one person who understood what I was joking about when I tried to lite myself on fire (I had been drinking) and said, "I'm protesting the French occupation of Vietnam". Is Jersey Shore all we have to contribute? Is The Real World the only piece of contemporary American history(?) we care about? I am still stunned by the many who think the Masons are conspiring to take over America... !!! The Freemasons built this country! And personally, I feel very comfortable with a fraternal group of individuals who are freethinkers - and not limited to the views imposed upon them by MTV - running this country.

MTV, the empty icon; the name doesn't mean anything anymore. Literally. MTV no longer stands for Music Television. It doesn't stand for anything, literally and figuratively. It is simply eMpTy V. So shallow is our generation's understanding of recent history in our nation and those events' consequences on our contemporary social disposition, that it should leave even the most stout individual's stomach turning.

All great empires fall due to their own ignorance, corruption, and vices. America is not #1 anymore, but it is still an empire that is soon to fall into the hands of people who don't get the jokes in Forrest Gump. I bet I am one of a handful of Savannahians that get the joke that Forrest is running the wrong way when he is going towards Henry Street (he's running north, though the real Henry Street is south. And Henry Street is not "five or six blocks" away, but almost a mile).

America the Ruinous. America the Fallen. (That's an etymology joke, by the way).