At some point in the past it seems being a teacher was a profession to take pride in. It was, or at least should have been a career choice that was respected, revered, and rewarded. For numerous reasons though, it ends up as the profession of the cancelled and the reviled. Teaching has increasingly become a profession fraught with scandals of various types, resulting in careers destroyed in the roaring bonfire of social media judgement even though some accusations of misconduct towards students may be exaggerated or otherwise suspect.
However, Election is one of the best movies about high school ever made – precisely because it stands completely apart from any other story about the high school environment which typically revolves around horror and/or sex and silliness. Since piercing and intelligent satire scarcely characterizes the typical teen-oriented movie, Election is outstanding because it skewers politics as the realm of the desperately ambitious and the morally suspect which adults can appreciate. It’s also a bald statement of how deep-seated resentment against a student from a teacher results in poor judgement calls that end up derailing the career of a normally responsible adult.
It’s this deepening, unshakeable resentment which marks the downward career spiral of history & civics teacher Jim McCallister (Matthew Broderick). Naturally, he’s upset that his colleague and best friend loses his position at the school after his affair with student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is exposed. McCallister’s animus against her is understandable though, as Flick might be one of the most irritating, off-putting high school characters ever created for the screen.
Election is even more pointed in the sense that Flick is the overachiever who is also overbearing in a calculated adult manner well beyond her teenage years. Typically, high school scenarios portray underachieving students that a teacher cannot encourage enough. Or, teachers are portrayed as peripheral dweebs with minimal impact on their students.
Know-it-all teenagers are trying enough for their parents to cope with – let alone for underpaid and under appreciated teachers who have to handle them. Flick’s obnoxious quest to win student government president at an Omaha, Nebraska high school (and unopposed at that!) is appalling to McAllister who schemes to have another student, a popular football star, Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) run against her, to which he reluctantly agrees.
Naturally, the race is very close with Flick barely eking out a win. This outcome is intolerable to McAllister, who gets rid of two ballots which makes Metzler the winner. Though his action is so egregious, at the same time it’s hard to blame him for wanting to cut Flick down to size. One can only assume she will become even more pretentious and trying on the nerves were she to win the election.
It should also be noted that a third party candidate (Metzler’s adopted sister Tammy) joins the fray as a delightfully subversive disruption, adding further controversy to the Election proceedings – the blatantly anti-political wild card who vocally derides the whole process as a sham. Of course, McAllister’s tampering is quickly discovered resulting in his swift termination. His marital problems only compound his career woes and he leaves Omaha to pursue a new life in New York City. Tracy Flick, on the other hand, uses her victory as a whip to spur herself onward and upward, moving into privileged Republican circles in Washington D.C. after graduating high school.
Tracy’s success serves to underscore McAllister’s defeat. Even before the election scandal and his marital failures cause his final downfall, it is plainly obvious that he is drained of vitality, portrayed as economically and emotionally vulnerable, locked in place. Everything about him: where he lives, the car he drives, the clothes he wears, his timidity, accentuates his drab, downbeat path to oblivion. The message could hardly be more clear that students Tracy Flick are poised to quickly surpass him in prestige and earning power. The theatrical poster promoting Election makes it dreadfully (if somehow hilariously) clear that he is devoured by her greedy, power-mad desperation.
Originally based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, the two main inspirations for Election were the 1992 presidential elections when a rare third-party candidate (Ross Perot) entered the fray a la Tammy Metzler. The second event was an incident where a pregnant student was elected as the homecoming queen of a high school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin but the ballots were destroyed by administrators and a different winner was announced. The Wisconsin incident is all the more fascinating as it occurred pre-internet but still managed to cause a nationwide furor.
Election was directed by Alexander Payne who skillfully used voiceovers, flashbacks, and freeze frames to enhance rather than hinder the narrative. This was no small feat as these techniques have been overused many times by less capable directors in the past. Payne’s insistence on utilizing actual high school locations in Omaha also added to the realism rather than relying upon the artificiality of studio sets and soundstages. Additionally, Election excels as a character study of high magnitude where the tightly suppressed characters of both McAllister and Flick finally disgorge their inner ugliness, contaminating the school environment. Election also well illustrates how upright qualities like integrity and honesty mix with politics about as agreeably as oil and water.
