light as a feather (11. 667)

Going into general release in the USA on this day in 1994, admittedly I never watched the Robert Zemeckis adaptation of the Winston Groom novel that follows the life of the protagonist photobombing pivotal events of the twentieth century and recalling his story ignorant of their significance but never skipped it out of any ideological reason that I was aware of but rather that I missed the moment and it was already part of the Zeitgeist and could surmise, intuit it by enough popular references. I never appreciated however that the film was part of the ongoing values debate in America and limns a contentious divide for those who interpret the melodrama about being present as either a nostalgic glamorisation of conservative (and counter- counter-cultural) credentials or as a sweet as a box of chocolates but glib reduction of the most consequent decades of the mid-twentieth century.