Canon Ball: Election
Binge the Fringe
Canon Ball = a 3 argument case for books, movies, shows and albums we consider unheralded and under-appreciated.
There may be no better modern political allegory than Election, a blistering MTV films picture from 1999, which bombed at the box office.
Election exposes the melodrama of American politics by re-contextualizing the devious political scheming of Washington into the (seemingly low-stakes) world of Student Government.
Now let’s go through a sadly formulaic (but extremely digestible!) listicle about why Election deserves to be a treasured piece of cinema:
1. Memorable, tragic characters drive the story.
As Tracy Flick, Reese Witherspoon embodies a specific breed of smug politician who pardons their own duplicity in the service of subjective good intentions (see: her vindictive public takedown of an adversary over a crime for which Flick herself is responsible… followed by a self-serving prayer to a God she considers a mere accomplice to her own ruthless, self-righteous ambition).
But for all Flick’s gleeful gloating, Witherspoon deftly evaporates Flick’s assured facade to give the film a remarkable emotional climax.
Matthew Broderick’s Jim McAllister is a hapless bureaucrat on a quest for independence that proves too unwieldy, given his glaring lack of tact. Watching his futile attempts at controlling ballots, booty and bee stings is like watching an amateur juggler replace hankies with chainsaws.
Despite those two powerhouse performances, the film’s most poignant acting belongs to Jessica Campbell’s Tammy Metzler, who provides Election’s most fascinating dynamic character arc. Metzler’s journey teaches her that you can weaponize truth via anarchic subversiveness and tempered nonchalance… and it’s going to piss many dishonest people off.
Her populist campaign speech is the film’s best moment, serving as the story’s razor sharp thesis and a repudiation of the dehumanizing effect of our “democratic” system.
2. It strikes with the subtlety of a velvet hammer.
Election makes some of its most powerful points and funniest observations through more subdued moments, which seems to be the point.
Take Tammy, whose aforementioned intrigue would call for greater narrative development if this were a different story. Instead, her marginalized role is intentional: and the negative space of her absence critique a system that doesn’t have room for someone with multifaceted depth and dimension.
Beyond shrewd, symbolic usage of character, Election employs several sly asides it has the wisdom to deliver without a wink. The most telling is a brief reference to the total “throwaway” votes, a number higher than the count for either legitimate candidate. It’s never mentioned again.
3. It negotiates the tricky balance of unbiased satire.
Especially viewed through the lens of 2016, it’s impossible not to draw parallels to modern politics. The film ultimately finds no redemption in the political realm: if you play in the sandbox, you’re gonna get dirty.
Being an apolitical film about politics is perhaps Election’s most impressive feat. Rather than ululating over the injustices of a populace abandoned by its politicians (an opportunity a screenwriter like say, Aaron Sorkin, would get hard for), Election instead chooses to examine how personal motives sustain systemic complicity of a broken political system.
In doing so, the story bypasses easy bipartisan moralizing in favor of a sobering, objective look at why we continue to end up with a small set of immoral people determining morals for the rest of us.
As viewers from the outside of the bubble, our solace is in asking: just who the fuck do these people think they are?
Words by Jesse Hagen.
You can currently watch Election on Hulu.
