----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On March 30, Tony Williams wrote to SCREEN-L: > PULP FICTION was not much of an alternative [to Gump] but [at > > least] it had some complexity and acknowledgement of the dark > side of American existence... With all due respect, professor, Gump [the movie] didn't have a dark side? Did not deliver complex messages about wounding, hubris, and greed? Do we persist in mass denial because Gump [the character] didn't have a dark side? If he didn't, it's because *he is a fictional character*, a device, a charicature, a part-object, a tool, a mouthpiece. This mostly- saccharine simpleton is thus absolved of any responsibility in delivering the message -- if we *get* the message(s), then in our proper outrage, at least we won't turn and kill the messanger -- isn't that what satire is all about? In real life, even men as develop- mentally compromised as Forrest *do indeed* have their dark side, the shadow side that every real person possesses. I bet you felt Gump [the movie] had a happy ending, too. Regards, Bet MacArthur Arts Analysis Inst Cambridge MA