"In his sequel [to 'Election,' Tom] Perrotta elaborates on the case of Tracy’s mistaken identity. Do people (mostly men, but some women) hate her because of … misogyny? Or is it because they can’t stop themselves from punishing a person who insists, absurdly, on believing that life should be fair? Or is it because Tracy, for all her political ambitions, still fails to grasp the most important political skill of all, which is the gift of making other people feel good about themselves? In middle age, Tracy’s optimism (or naïveté) is unchanged.... Maybe it’s a credit to her integrity that she hasn’t been squashed into submission. Maybe it’s preposterous that she refuses, after all this time, to play by the rules of the game. Even if the game is rigged. Even if she shouldn’t have to play it...."
From "‘Tracy Flick Can’t Win’ Catches Up With a Hard-Luck High Achiever/Tom Perrotta’s sequel to 'Election' finds Flick, the character immortalized in film by Reese Witherspoon, reconsidering her past" by Molly Young (NYT).
If you haven't seen the movie "Election" (or read the book it was based on), this post probably won't make much sense to you. This post is for those who have.
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“Election” was directed by Omaha native and resident Alexander Payne. It was shot at a local suburban high school.
I hated "Election" with the fire of a thousand suns, so I think I'll be skipping this book (and its inevitable movie adaptation).
I'm not surprised at the revisionism going on in that excerpt. Yeah, we don't like her because she's a woman. It's not the grasping for power for power's sake or the the shameless self-promotion and manipulation, it's misogyny. The movie had some layers that made her sympathetic--mostly around her relationship with her mom, but naivete and character are not words one would use to describe Tracy Flick.
Such an excellent movie! Reese Witherspoon's greatest performance. I've never read the novel, but perhaps I will, in order to refresh myself on the details and to read the sequel.
Wait, Tracy was the good person in that story?
Does the audience really hate her? Isn't she more a comic figure? I think it's more that when one actually has to deal with people like that in real life one does come to dislike them. They can be very tiresome and hard to be around.
Pushy, irritating people are probably the way they are because they lack something inside, but that doesn't make them any less irritating, and often hatred is a hybrid -- we hate somebody for always pushing themselves forward and thinking that they are better than they are, but we also hate them because deep down we think that we are better than they are.
Perhaps in hating Tracey the teacher (was it Paul Rudd?) is also hating something in himself, the awkward teen he may have been in high school. Perhaps he is taking revenge on somebody who hasn't learned the lessons he has, and taking out his own frustrations on someone who hasn't learned to live inside the limits he's come to live with.
Anyway, it's great that Perotta can find so much to ponder in something most people would probably think of as just a Reece Witherspoon movie. Now do Legally Blonde.
I remember the movie but hadn't heard of a sequel. I myself want a sequel for Get Smart (2008) and Live Die Repeat (2014). The latter would pose a very hard courtship problem, the former a continuation problem.
Thanx for making me remember this movie. I've seen it at least 5 times*.. It SUCKS
5 times* Honestly; i have GOT to find that remote!
Shock To the System (1990) is another of the genre, very pleasant film written by Andrew Klavan before his analysis went to hell by being born again.
As the kids were progressing through school I would occasionally comment to my wife “Tracy Flick” when hearing the resume of activities some of the middle/high school kids were developing.
I don’t do the paywall stuff so didn’t read the article. In the sequel, did Tracy become a never-Trumper and switch to the Democratic Party?
"the most important political skill of all, which is the gift of making other people feel good about themselves?"
We know that can't be the most important political skill, otherwise Joe would be riding high: his lying bumbling senile ineptitude should make other people feel good about themselves, by comparison.
Actually, the most important political skill is the gift of giving people other people's money without shame.
Huge Tom Perotta fan. Believe I have read everything he has written (which isn't much!).
Wish he would write more.
Whenever a White woman is running for president or governor or something, someone dredges out the Tracy Flick comparison. Do minorities have their own version?
The problem with Tracy Flick in the movie is that she isn't naive. She games the system and breaks rules. In the opening act, they graphically reveal she's sleeping with her teacher and that teacher rightfully gets destroyed for it. But they immediately feed you the idea that maybe this is more than a teacher taking advantage of a vulnerable student.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but Tracy comes across as a psychopath. I get the same "hair stands up on the back of my neck" feeling from her as I do from Kathleen Turner in 'Serial Mom'.
I grokked this idea of who the Flick character was intended to be the very first time I saw the movie 23 years ago. I always saw her in a sympathetic light- I thought it was really a genius move by whoever wrote the script. I think most people did, too- at least the people with whom I discussed the movie. I look forward to seeing the continuation of the story.
I didn't even know it was a book. I may have to buy it and read it.
I'm not much of a Reese Witherspoon fan. She has this "gift" of taking a book I really like, finding a character in it she wants to play, and then altering the story to make the whole thing about her. So I'm not excited about seeing a sequel about a truly unlikeable character. Anybody up for "The Brunch Club", the story about 5 people who met in detention in high school and now meet one Saturday a month to have brunch?
Tracy Flick was hated because she assumed her authority, rather than earning it, and refused to accept that anyone else was her equal, with equal rights. She was a leftist in embryonic form. Here's hoping the article, which I can't read online, shows her in adulthood to be a victim of everything and everyone, as that is the true essence of her personality.
Charity, ungraciously described as "making other people feel good about themselves", is not a political skill. Flick (it's been decades since I saw that movie) had no kindness, no forgiveness, and no human connection to the fallen. I haven't watched it again because I didn't want to spend more time with anyone in that film.
If you haven't seen the movie "Election" (or read the book it was based on), this post probably won't make much sense to you.
Thank God...
That was a very entertaining movie. I don't remember much of it, though. Not even the lesbian sister-candidate. (Not like me at all.)
I do recall some very liberal neighbors saying that they were going to watch it at home with their young daughters but turned it off after that first bit of dialogue (in the movie, not the trailer). Parental guidance, indeed.
Is it because Tracy, for all her political ambitions, still fails to grasp the most important political skill of all, which is the gift of making other people feel good about themselves?
Tracy Flick = Hillary Clinton, and the sentence above is the reason Bill Clinton spent eight years as President and his wife did not.
Just confirming:
This is about a novel.
Which is to say, it's about the fantasy inside an author's head, not about actual reality, correct?
It's a delightful movie. Reese is priceless.
Why she's hated? (And she's not; it's a silly fictional portrayal.) Because she's self-centered, dismissive of others, and does not play fair. No need to stretch for misogyny or anything like it.
I didn't find Tracy Flick to be hateable, but rather off-putting in a way that goes beyond "she doesn't make other people feel better about themselves".
I think it's more akin to meeting someone who's just borderline psychopathic personality. Like, they're not going to kill you or be a serious criminal, but they're obviously not really capable of forming normal emotional relationships either. You kind of pity them, but at the same time, you realize that it might not be within your power to try and make it better.
And... I think at kind of an instinctual level, you don't want to put people like that in positions of authority because of the high likelihood they'd operate according to "the rules" and never mind common sense. Like, Tracy wouldn't be anybody you'd want making a judgement call where leniency about the human condition were called for. At least movie version. I haven't read the book.
There's a character in another book I'm reading who's described as off-putting because he's too good. He's capable, and handsome and will always do the right thing even if it meant hurting people and not really even consider the fact he's hurting people. Tracy's not even that much of a utilitarian... her bar to hurt people is probably much more akin to "they didn't follow the rules"
Wait, Tracy was the good person in that story?
Yes and no. Everyone is a mix of good and bad, with the balance varying widely individual to individual. The other people around Tracy were certainly not any more "good" than Tracy.
Tracy Flick is in no way a sympathetic character or the good person. The whole point of the first film is to show an example of why the system is broken and someone like Flick can take advantage of it.
Charity, ungraciously described as "making other people feel good about themselves", is not a political skill.
This hits the nail on its head: without charity, conceived as the desire for the common good and the good of others, the virtues (justice, fortitude, prudence etc) which in the right circumstances make a sound politics work are-- what is the image?-- like horses pulling a riderless chariot. Tracy will feel herself thwarted until she learns to put her undoubted talents at the service of those she wants to manage (or whatever it is that assistant principals are meant to do): as it is, imperfect heroine and anti-heroine, she is her own worst enemy. But I had no idea that the movie was based on Perrotta's novel so I ought to go read that.
I had so little sympathy for both Mr M and for Tracy Flick, I quit watching the movie somewhere in the middle. I like both Witherspoon and Broderick so it was the script. Was the book better than the movie?
Okay, it was Matthew Broderick, not Paul Rudd. Their niches overlap. Broderick a little more comic, Rudd a little more romantic.
What if Tracey were male? Would we still see the victim in her, or would we just write her off as an arrogant asshole?
Flick doesn't cheat in the election, at least not with criminal forethought. The key moment is when she tries to fix her campaign poster that has partially come unattached from the wall in the school hallway- she accidentally tears it off the wall when she slips and falls off whatever it was she was standing on (a garbage can, I think). The frustration builds in her, and she is set off when she sees the campaign picture of her campaign rival, the kind doofus football star (another character that subverts the classic school movie trope for such a character). She loses complete control and tears down all the posters, and then realizing what she has done in a moment of passion, then covers it up- remember, this is a teenage girl.
That is the only real moment of cheating- of playing unfairly- and she wins the election anyway, even under the suspicion she had torn down the posters. There are other moments in the movie where you can see she hates how she is alienated from the rest of the students- how she clearly envies the easy-going charm of the Chris Klein character, and how the other students clearly love him in a way she will never attain.
The other people around Tracy were certainly not any more "good" than Tracy.
The jock running for office was dumb, but altruistic. Too good to be in politics was the theme of his character as I remember. His sister was mischievous but misguided because in reality all she wanted was to be a lesbian. Her dabble in politics was an outlet.
The teachers were easily manipulated but also manipulative. They represented the "media" of modern politics.
I liked the movie but Tracy always gave me a psychopath feeling. Definite sociopath.
The casting of way-too-cool-for-school Ferris Bueller as Mr. M was brilliant, and Tracy Flick even more brilliantly upstaged him. It’s a great movie that is made even greater by it’s haters. Another great movie from this genre and time period is Rushmore. The theme they have in common, I think, is not growing up. What we dislike about Tracy Flick is that she has grown up beyond her years, while Mr. M stews in petty childishness. In the end, Tracy Flick does win, so it will be curious where the new book will go with the idea that Tracy Flick can’t win.
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