The movie 'Election' 25 years on
As part of our series on movies that came out in 1999, NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Vox culture writer Constance Grady about the impact of the film "Election."
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
I know a lot of you are thinking about the presidential election. But as we continue our series looking back at some of the notable films of 1999, this weekend we wanted to focus on a different look at the Democratic process, Alexander Payne's film "Election."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ELECTION")
REESE WITHERSPOON: (As Tracy) You see, I believe in the voters. They understand that elections aren't just popularity contests.
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WITHERSPOON: (As Tracy) They know this country was built by people just like me who work very hard and don't have everything handed to them on a silver spoon.
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DETROW: Those are the words of high school overachiever Tracy Flick, played in a breakthrough performance by Reese Witherspoon. Since Payne's satire first hit theaters, Tracy has become an archetype of female ambition, as well as a litmus test for how our society views ambitious women and how that has changed over time since the movie first came out. As viewed by her teacher, played by Matthew Broderick, Tracy is a threat.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ELECTION")
MATTHEW BRODERICK: (As Jim) Who knew how high she would climb in life? How many people would suffer because of her? I had to stop her.
DETROW: And he wasn't alone. Many viewers also initially found her villainous. At the time of the film's release, The Washington Post called Tracy, quote, "wonderfully monstrous." Flick also drew comparisons to a certain former presidential candidate.
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HILLARY CLINTON: It is about working hard.
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WITHERSPOON: (As Tracy) He was no competition for me. It was like apples and oranges.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUTTON MAKER SLAMMING)
WITHERSPOON: (As Tracy) I had to work a little harder. That's all.
DETROW: We will get to that as well in a moment. But first, we're going to talk about how our views on Tracy have changed. Constance Grady thinks so. In 2022, she wrote a piece for Vox called "How The World Changed Its Mind On Tracy Flick." Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
CONSTANCE GRADY: Thanks so much for having me.
DETROW: You know, watching the film again, it is kind of wild to me to think about that initial framing of people viewing Tracy as the villain in this. I mean, sure, she certainly makes some choices running for student body president. But if you compare that to what the adults around her are doing, it does not seem to be a question. Like, what do you think it was that led to this initial view?
GRADY: I think that part of what it is, and part of the reason why Tracy Flick has become such a potent symbol, is she represents how off-putting ambition can be, and especially feminine ambition, right?
DETROW: Yeah.
GRADY: She's a very girly character. She has her little Peter Pan collars, and her hair is always in curls. And that gets combined in this very pointed way with her forward drive and the steeliness. And those two traits, when they're pushed up against each other, they seem to have just sparked something in the audience that made them be like, oh, no, this girl is a monster.
DETROW: In different ways at different times, there have been these comparisons and links between Tracy Flick and Hillary Clinton, to the point where, like, Reese Witherspoon was once asked if she would ever play Hillary Clinton and she said, I already did that. Can you talk about that connection and what you made of it, and how you thought about it and what you saw change over time?
GRADY: I think one of the reasons that Hillary Clinton and Tracy Flick work so well as a pair is Tracy really demonstrates how much people don't like it when women are actively ambitious. And that is an issue that Hillary faced again and again. Whenever she was not actively running for office, she was actually extremely popular. So people might remember when she was Obama's secretary of state, there was that meme, texts from Hillary. People really loved that picture of her wearing her sunglasses, texting. She was an extraordinarily popular figure up until she said, OK, now I'm going to run for president. And then her approval ratings dropped dramatically. Tracy Flick really, I think, embodies why this happens. People find it so off-putting and annoying and almost monstrous when a girl or a woman says I think I'm qualified for this position of power - I'm going to go after it.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ELECTION")
WITHERSPOON: (As Tracy) Some people say I'm an overachiever, but I think they're just jealous.
DETROW: What are the ways that jump out to you the most about how broader culture softened and changed its mind on Tracy Flick and came around to her?
GRADY: You know, there's been this whole sort of cottage industry of us looking back at the late '90s, early 2000s, sort of the Bush era and saying, oh, we've really treated women wrong then. Right? There's been this whole reconsideration of how we treated Britney Spears. Jessica Simpson has a memoir that really caused a big cycle of conversation about this. And I will say that, as a journalist, this is something that I've been part of, too. I think it's really fascinating for us to look back at how we thought about women then and how we think about them now.
Tracy Flick kind of got the same treatment from a lot of people as Britney Spears. There was a lot of looking back and saying, oh, wait. We blamed this teenage girl for wanting to run for an office she was qualified for, and also for having a romantic relationship with her teacher. That seems pretty messed up. We totally think about both of those things very, very differently now. It's really an illustration of the way that the #MeToo movement changed the way we talk about women in pop culture.
DETROW: I engage with the internet very differently than I did during the 2016 election.
GRADY: (Laughter).
DETROW: I have not seen any overt Tracy Flick references that much in this moment where Kamala Harris is running to be the first woman president. Have you seen it at all? Do you think it's not as relevant this time around? Do you think things have changed enough, or am I just not looking in the right corners of the internet?
GRADY: I have also not seen very many...
DETROW: Yeah.
GRADY: ...Tracy Flick references when it comes to Kamala Harris. Where I think that "Election" can be helpful when thinking about Kamala Harris is the way that Mr. M, the antagonist against Tracy, ends up using her sexuality to humiliate her as punishment for her running for office, right? He is constantly threatening to reveal the relationship she had with her teacher. He has a lot of very sexual fantasies about her that are sort of about him establishing his masculinity over her. And what we've seen with Kamala Harris is that consistently figures on the right, starting with Donald Trump, they have made the false claim that she started her political career because of a relationship she had with Willie Brown in the 1990s. He was the former mayor of San Francisco. So you can see an attempt to go back to this Mr. McAllister playbook of trying to say a woman is disqualified for office because of her romantic relationships and because of her sexuality.
DETROW: Yeah, I do not think there has been any discourse about any other presidential nominee's single dating life in the way that this has repeatedly come up in terms of comments from Republicans or stuff on the internet. What do you think holds up best in this movie and what do you think holds up worst in this movie?
GRADY: You know, the movie is so rich and interesting that almost all of it holds up, except for the way that we used to talk about it. It really stands on its...
DETROW: So we were the problem, not the movie?
GRADY: Yeah, we were really the problem with it.
DETROW: Constance Grady is a culture writer for Vox. Thank you so much for talking to us.
GRADY: Thanks so much for having me.
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