Audrey Fox
It’s hard to deny that audiences have certain expectations of teenage girls on screen. There are specific archetypes that viewers embrace, the ones that they’re most comfortable with: the goody two shoes, the mean girls, the misunderstood outcast. But in Election, Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick – a high-school student determined to win student body president at all costs – gives us a teenage girl character who is something different: completely and utterly ruthless.
Witherspoon’s role as Tracy is one of jarring contradictions. She’s a sweet-as-apple-pie teacher’s pet, the Hermione Granger type whose hand shoots up to answer every teacher’s question with a perfect textbook definition. She participates in every club and seems utterly committed to making her school community a better place. She has a bright smile and blond curls, outwardly presenting the image of an ideal high-school student. But Tracy, we quickly realize, also has a bit of a dark side. Her voice-over narration, delivered with the perky diction of a debate club champion who has had plenty of public speaking experience, occasionally gives way to a violent rage that belies her sunny demeanor. She’s sort of like if Rachel Berry from Glee had gone into Model U.N. instead of theater. Much of her efforts to win student body president fall under the heading of typical overachiever behavior – she brings in baked goods and offers free gum to win over her fellow students, she makes herself available to speak to her would-be constituents about the issues. And to be fair, she’s up against a tidal wave of peak ‘90s apathy, faced with students and even fellow candidates who think the entire election is a waste of time.
But she also engages in her fair share of unethical behavior. When one corner of her poster falls down, she flies into a temper, tearing not just her poster, but those of her competitors. What’s more, she throws away the evidence of her crime and hurls accusations at her fellow candidate, sophomore Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), who had used her stump speech to advocate for the abolishment of the student council itself. Tracy Flick knows exactly how much work she’s put into this election, and she believes she’s entitled to the presidency. So what does it matter if she breaks a few rules to reach her rightful place?
As much as Tracy appears to have ice in her veins when it comes to the pursuit of her own goals, Election also shows hints of vulnerability, especially in her inner monologue and quieter moments. When she believes that she actually lost the election, it shakes her sense of self, and you can’t help but feel bad for her as she sobs in her childhood bedroom, filled with overwhelming anxiety and sorrow. At the culmination of her triumph, when she arrives at Georgetown to take a giant step toward her political destiny, she reluctantly admits to herself that it wasn’t exactly what she was expecting. She had imagined that everyone who attended a school like Georgetown would be as driven and focused as she was, but that’s not necessarily the case, and she’s just as much an outsider at college as she was in high school. Tracy Flick is a bold character whose presence dominates the screen, but these brief moments of nuance make her a much more dynamic figure than most audiences remember. She’s definitely not a hero, but it’s hard to fully see her as a villain – unless you’re the supremely unreliable narrator, Mr. McCallister (Matthew Broderick), that is.
The way he views Tracy, with barely concealed disgust even before the voting debacle plays out, plainly shows that she is meant to be punished somehow. Not necessarily for her crimes, which, since McCallister engaged in plenty of immoral behavior himself, he should be able to forgive. There’s a sense that McCallister – and the audience as a whole – would be much more willing to embrace the idea of Tracy if she was just a cold-hearted wannabe politician. Instead, she’s something that viewers have been trained to inherently dislike: A grating teenage girl who has the ability to make others root for her failure through the sheer force of her personality. After all, McCallister’s hatred of her is strongest when she’s happy – when he sees her as getting everything she ever wanted in spite of how annoying he finds her.
In the end, Election has its use of multiple inner monologues to thank for how compelling Tracy’s character is to delve into. Through the eyes of McCallister, Tracy is a grasping know-at-all whose very voice makes him shudder – everything we’re taught to find distasteful in women, but especially teenage girls. Yet Tracy’s narration gives us another perspective. And, refreshingly, it doesn’t show her in a necessarily better light – she’s still irritable, judgmental, and obsessed with her own success – but we can see that although her ruthlessness is a baked-in character trait, she’s so much more than just that.
“Election” is streaming on Max and Kanopy.
