The film is about a naive and honest American who is very successful in any job he gets in. Somehow Forrest Gump represents the United States.

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2010)

For me the film is a promoter of American culture and values and I want to look at the film from this point of view. It is the promoter of the American values using both conservative and liberal values, but the conservative values are more dominant and highlighted and liberal values are loosely used to promote just the American culture and at the end liberal values are defeated by conservative values although both ideologies are used to promote the American culture. The film also uses the American icon and figure to promote the American culture.
Family is and home are very important in film, Forrest mother is a devoted mother who does her best to keep the family and nurture her child although Forrest father is not present and may leave the family but the mother asserts that that he is on vacation so she wants to that they are a family. "there is no place like home" and "family forever" these themes can be seen in the film when Forrest, Jenny and their child return their home, Greenbow, Alabama, as a family. Gump is the man family, he is loyal to his love and does his best to have his own family. Gump is a hard working guy who works and tries hard to achieve happiness he expects nothing without hard-working. From the beginning Gump is running and he even runs across the US, symbolically "chasing the American Dream". Gump also is religious person, after returning home from China he says that people in China do not go to the church or he goes to the church to pray in order to have a big shrimping. Forrest also uses liberal gestures, like participating in anti-Vietnam War rally and taking part in a TV show to talk about his experience in China, telling that Chinese people are deprived from freedom and basic human rights. Gump is the symbol of conservative values and Jenny is the symbol of liberal values but at the end Jenny is dead but Gump as the symbol of the conservatives is the source of maintenance and continuity of the American culture.
Totally the film was made to appeal to conservatives and invalidate liberals but to promote the American culture even by utilizing liberal values. It also is a condemnation of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and its aftermaths. Jennifer Hyland Wang, movie critic, argued that Curran's death to an unnamed virus "...symbolizes the death of liberal America and the death of the protests that defined a decade [1960s]." Even the main structure of the film crew connote the conservative orientation of the film. Steve Tisch, one of the producers of the film is a conservative person who has produced other conservative film after Forrest Gump like Knowing and The Pursuit of Happiness that the later one alongside Forrest Gump are among the best 25 conservative movies by the National Review magazine.