It ultimately comes down to choosing between apples and oranges, but should a pear ever got on the ballot we’re all screwed.Īll still true and actually quite prescient. The try harders might seem like idealists, but in reality they’re not above getting blood on their hands, or, in Tracy’s case, red ink. Impartial third parties often turn quite partial. The system is built to weed out the wild cards but can’t always do so. The cool kids (represented by Chris Klein’s Paul Metzler, a former football star goated into running) forever battle the try harders (Tracy Flick, obviously) and occasional let’s-blow-it-all-up wild cards (represented by Jessica Campbell’s Tammy Metzler, who runs on a campaign of promising to disband student government entirely). We, as the New York Times’ AO Scott just argued, need more people like her, though.Įlection is an argument that the politics we experience in high school are ultimately repeated with minor variations all throughout our political lives. Post- Election, “Tracy Flick” became dismissive shorthand for so many things we should want in society – like drive and ambition – but not-so-secretly resent. Look at Reese playing the hell out of the comedy and Payne heightening the humor with that clearly fake rear projection. Tracy, paranoid someone might be following her, driving with the trash bags full of torn campaign posters in her trunk. Plus, Reese Witherspoon is just so funny and Payne so clever about how films the sequence and its aftermath. (They had a garage band and everything!) Hilarious, war cry audio cues tease that Tracy’s actually hiding plenty of pent up rage, and when she finally snaps and pulls down all of her opponent’s banners the night before the election we laugh because the whole movie has been building up to it. Flashbacks reveal that buried in her past is a little-known sex scandal involving her and one of her now-fired teachers, which contributes to McAllister’s grudge against her since that fired teacher was his best friend. She is routinely belittled in the voiceovers provided by faculty advisor Mr. The movie, which was adapted from Tom Perrotta’s 1998 novel and is told in alternating viewpoints between the major players, makes a joke out of her determination: the world” psyche is a razor sharp bite you won’t see coming until she’s taken your head clean off. She, in short, cares so much about politics and power that she makes everyone else look bad by comparison, but underneath her “me vs. She’s the first to school in the morning and last to leave in the evening, sacrificing any hope of a social life in her larger pursuit of greatness. In modern parlance, we would call Tracy a try harder: She participates in every school club and quotes Henry David Thoreau in speeches. The chasm between what I thought of the movie back then versus what I think about it now is far wider than I expected.īack then, Election gifted unto the world the readymade punching bag that is Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon’s breakout role – or at least one of her many breakout roles – as an ultra-determined teenager running for high school class president during her senior year. I didn’t see it in a movie theater until just this past weekend when a local revival house in my town ran it as part of a “Party Like It’s 1999” anniversary series. Like seemingly most people, I found Alexander Payne’s dark comedy cult classic Election through home video well after its theatrical release.
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