Twen­ty years on, Elec­tion feels more rel­e­vant than ever

Twen­ty years ago, Tra­cy Flick launched her can­di­da­cy for stu­dent pres­i­dent and, con­se­quent­ly, a litany of real-world com­par­isons. Tra­cy, the brass-necked wiseacre at the heart of 1999’s Elec­tion, bril­liant­ly played by Reese With­er­spoon, became a peren­ni­al teen movie arche­type and easy short­hand for ruth­less ambi­tion. Amer­i­can vot­ers seem­ing­ly see her in Hillary Clin­ton, Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Kirsten Gilli­brand; in any blonde, white woman run­ning for Pres­i­dent. It’s devel­oped into an insult. Being com­pared to Tra­cy Flick is cer­tain­ly no com­pli­ment but giv­en the character’s lofty goals and her tenac­i­ty, it begs the ques­tion of why she is con­sid­ered such an unpleas­ant individual.

In both Tom Perrotta’s nov­el and Alexan­der Payne’s film, Tra­cy is the pro­tag­o­nist despite her grat­ing zeal and under­hand tac­tics. In some form of cin­e­mat­ic Man­dela effect, she is often regard­ed as the vil­lain, her Type A per­son­al­i­ty being just too much for some peo­ple. An alter­na­tive hero, and the yang to Tracy’s yin, is Jim McAl­lis­ter (Matthew Brod­er­ick), her well-liked civics teacher and the would-be archi­tect of Tracy’s polit­i­cal demise. Jim noticed some­thing in Tra­cy, a glim­mer of venal­i­ty so tox­ic it was worth destroy­ing the aspi­ra­tions of an under­age pol­i­tics stu­dent, and his­to­ry has let him off the hook.

The char­ac­ters at the heart of Elec­tion are impos­si­ble to box in yet it’s dif­fi­cult not to see the sim­i­lar­i­ties to our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate. When ret­ro­spec­tives of Elec­tion are pub­lished, they equate Jim with Tra­cy because they are both objec­tive­ly unap­peal­ing char­ac­ters. Yet Jim’s con­tempt for Tra­cy aris­es from her being groomed by a fel­low teacher and his best friend, who was caught and sub­se­quent­ly fired as a result.

That Tra­cy some­how holds any kind of respon­si­bil­i­ty in this sit­u­a­tion is, nat­u­ral­ly, a repel­lent idea, and is unfor­tu­nate­ly not where Jim’s per­vert­ed sense of moral­i­ty ends. He also resents Tra­cy because he believes she is com­bin­ing her polit­i­cal savvy with her sex­u­al­i­ty to sway him per­son­al­ly. It’s ludi­crous to con­sid­er Tra­cy Flick and Jim McAl­lis­ter as anti­heroes of equal stand­ing, and the fact that it’s only more recent­ly that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Tra­cy being a vic­tim is being writ­ten about speaks to the impos­si­bly high lev­els of misog­y­ny direct­ed at ambi­tious women.

The bat­tle for stu­dent pres­i­den­cy between Tra­cy and unwit­ting jock Paul Met­zler speaks to the cur­rent state of main­stream pol­i­tics in a way that is far more depress­ing than it is faint­ly amus­ing. Met­zler, unam­bi­tious and unen­gaged, is coerced into run­ning by Jim who believes the easy-going foot­ball hero’s pop­u­lar­i­ty will cement the win for him against Tra­cy, who has been prepar­ing for this for years. The once pure­ly comedic par­al­lels of the charm­ing but unqual­i­fied man vying against a stilt­ed but sea­soned female politi­cian have fol­lowed us all the way up to the present day.

A key part of pop culture’s vil­i­fi­ca­tion of Tra­cy seems to stem from her stat­ed Repub­li­can affil­i­a­tion. We dis­cov­er ear­ly on that her idols are for­mer news anchor Con­nie Chung and, most inter­est­ing­ly, Repub­li­can stal­wart Eliz­a­beth Dole. To cap it off, Elec­tion fin­ish­es with Jim wit­ness­ing Tra­cy work­ing along­side a con­gress­man from her staunch­ly red home state of Nebras­ka. That Tra­cy is a con­ser­v­a­tive jus­ti­fies her being the result of elec­toral rig­ging is both baf­fling and a cheap excuse for misogyny.

Tra­cy is, of course, no saint and it would be remiss to ignore the fact she act­ed uneth­i­cal­ly to win. Imme­di­ate­ly pri­or to the vote she tore down Metzler’s posters in a fit of rage and was luck­i­ly saved when Paul’s embit­tered sis­ter, Tam­my took the fall. Tracy’s sun­ny dis­po­si­tion is tem­pered by her occa­sion­al dis­plays of pent-up fury, accom­pa­nied by an ani­mal­is­tic war cry audio cue, which we see dur­ing her poster-rip­ping out­burst. That Tra­cy, despite her flaw­less­ly com­posed cam­paign, is vic­tim to unsports­man­like con­duct rounds out her char­ac­ter because to see glimpses of anger against a sys­tem that seeks to dimin­ish her and her accom­plish­ments is only human.

It’s revealed in voiceover that Jim har­bours his own secret sex­u­al desire for Tra­cy along­side a gen­er­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the plateau­ing of his life. His vendet­ta against the young girl aris­es from observ­ing her poten­tial and com­par­ing it to his own bleak career tra­jec­to­ry. Noth­ing sum­maris­es Jim’s unadul­ter­at­ed misog­y­ny more than when he spots Tra­cy, tipped off to her win, jump­ing with joy. ​“The sight of Tra­cy at that moment affect­ed me in a way I can’t ful­ly explain,” he says before rig­ging the elec­tion against her.

Ever since Elec­tion was first released, Tra­cy Flick has been vil­i­fied in our col­lec­tive con­science and it’s a mis­char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion that needs to be rec­ti­fied. Per­haps only when a woman breaks through the thick­est glass ceil­ing and into the Oval Office will Tra­cy Flick final­ly receive the vin­di­ca­tion she deserves.