MacGuffin and Forest Gump

Firstly we were shown three objects: a cricket ball, chewing gum and a Buzz Light Year toy. We were then asked to write down what came into our mind when thinking about the 3 objects.

Cricket Ball

• sport
• bounce
• Australia
• Ashes
• summer  

Buzz Light Year toy

• Childhood
• Fun
• joy
• toy story
• space
• infinity
• Astronauts 

Chewing Gum

• sticky
• fresh
• minty
• tables
• school 

All these are connotations for these objects. Connotations: The non Literal meaning we interpret of something e.g. a box can connotate  feelings of excitement,, suspense and anticipation 

We then looked at the connotations of a feather, these are some of the ideas I came up with:

Feather 

• float
• light
• pure
• flight
• freedom
• peaceful
• beauty

After looking at the connotations a feather might have, we then looked at the opening 2 minutes of Forest Gump (1994). Here we see a feather falling from the sky and landing next to someones feet

Next we looked at MacGuffin, and I put the definition into my own words. MacGuffin : in fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot devise in the form of goal or desired object that moves the narrative along and also informs the audience what the film is about.

After this we looked at the feather connotations again and linked this to the film. we originally said that the feather is pure and peaceful, we know  from watching the film that Forrest Gump is also pure and peaceful and therefore we can see that the director has shown us the character of Forrest Gump through the use of a feather. We also can see from the clip that the feather goes on a sort of journey to get to the character of Forrest Gumps feet. we know from watching the film that Forrest too goes on a journey. This also creates enigma for the audience as we want to know what the journey is and how he got to the place that he is in now.