11/24/2023 0 Comments Tracy flick for presidentIt’s to Payne’s credit that Tracy is far more than a two-dimensional victim - after Novotny lures the fatherless Tracy with every sleazy-older-guy cliché, she turns the tables, dumps him, and leaves him crying about love as he loses his job. The middle-aged perv in question is McAllister’s best friend, a teacher named Novotny, who takes Tracy out to pizza, asks her if she’s lonely, and says he’s found her “attractive” since she was in the ninth grade. Then McAllister interrupts: “There’s one more thing you should know about Tracy.” Cut to a middle-aged man growling straight to the camera: “Her pussy gets so wet, you can’t believe it.” “Some people think I’m an overachiever, but I think they’re just jealous,” Tracy says as a series of clips show her starring in the school musical, leading the yearbook staff, and leading a litany of student clubs. At the beginning of the film version of Election, McAllister and Flick take turns describing the straight-A student in voice-overs. ![]() If Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick’s destiny, then Monica Lewinsky is her origin. Perrotta’s novel hit shelves shortly after the Lewinsky scandal broke - which means, though similarities between Tracy and Hillary were likely intentional, echoes of Monica Lewinsky may have been an eerie stroke of luck. ![]() Today, with a dick-obsessed demagogue unleashing vitriol toward the most ambitious woman in American history, Election is downright brutal. Seventeen years ago, Election’s portrayal of a chronically emasculated teacher’s campaign to destroy his most talented female student was darkly comedic. But when I rewatched the movie last week, the most blistering commentary wasn’t about Hillary so much as the people who hate her. Over the years, critics have debated the relative accuracies - and sexist cruelties - of likening Clinton to Flick. (Tracy’s single mother has one hobby: writing letters to female leaders and political wives for advice on raising her daughter.) The comparison is so deeply ingrained that, when asked whether she would ever play Hillary, Reese Witherspoon said she already had - and that she discussed the role with Hillary when they met. Tracy Flick has long been viewed as an homage to Hillary in the ’90s - they have the same blonde bobs, jutting chins, and feminist gumption. At his nadir, McAllister rigs the election against Tracy - and manipulates his announcement of the fraudulent results to maximize her humiliation. At her nadir, Tracy tears down a wall of campaign posters. ![]() As McAllister spirals into a full-blown midlife crisis marked by his psychosexual obsession with Flick, the tightly wound Tracy also unravels. And in a performance that defined public perception of her for years, Reese Witherspoon played Tracy Flick, “the ambitious, cutthroat know-it-all who sits in the front row and raises her hand a little too often.” When McAllister realizes that Flick is running for student president uncontested, he recruits popular-but-ignorant jock Paul Metzler to run against her. Matthew Broderick, who earned infamy as high-school slacker icon Ferris Bueller, played the teacher, Jim McAllister. Directed by Alexander Payne and based on a 1998 novel by Tom Perrotta, Election depicts a high-school civics teacher’s descent into madness as he tries to thwart a reviled overachiever’s ascent to the student-council presidency. Tracy Flick, the teenage headband-wearing protagonist of 1999’s Election, remains the fictional character most frequently associated with Hillary Clinton - even though the movie is nearly as old as today’s youngest voters. “And you know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be president, and I think that’s a good thing.” Somewhere, fictional high-school honor-roll student Tracy Flick was beaming. And, yes, I did,” Clinton said, turning to look at him. ![]() Of the many Trump-blasting retorts Hillary Clinton delivered during last night’s presidential debate, the one that drew that most gleeful response from the type-A women in my life was the one designed to address a persistent critique of Clinton - her so-called overpreparation - and rebrand it as a strength: “I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate.
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