From Nostalgia to Now: Election Connection

When Election came out in 1999, I wanted to see it.  A twisty tale about the evils of high school politics starring Reese Witherspoon?  Yes, please.  After all, I was a high school senior myself and could relate.  Not because I ever ran for office or wanted to, but because the social maze of schooldays were a struggle.  Then again, maybe that's why I ended up not seeing it.

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic, which meant that I was catching up on old movies.  One night I was scrolling through my options when Election came up.  Twenty-two years later, and it was finally time.  It was so good!  Witherspoon made the perfect Tracy Flick, an overbearing overachiever intent on becoming student government president no matter what.  And Chris Klein was her ideal foil as Paul, the affable, big-man-on-campus puppet primed to defeat her.  I enjoyed it so much that I ordered the book, by Tom Perrotta, whom I'd heard of but never read.  Not surprisingly, it was even better than the movie, a rich character study of suburbia told baldly from multiple points of view.  So last fall when I heard that there was a sequel to Election called Tracy Flick Can't Win, I was pumped.       

In this installment, Perrotta introduces us to a forty-something version of the high school anti-hero (cue the Taylor Swift).  Tracy's not a senator or even a lawyer like she planned, but a single mom and assistant principal.  For all her scheming and dreaming, she's right back where she started, a big fish in a small pond campaigning to be, not president, but principal.  Still, Perrotta gives us a more vulnerable and nuanced look at her, especially as she comes to terms with sleeping with her English teacher.  Indeed, the novel is full of wronged women, their stories woven like faded rainbows in Perrotta's crazy quilt of suburban satire.  His skill in describing women is impressive, especially when writing about them dealing with -- and falling for -- men who are their superiors.  As they blame themselves for what happened to them, it's all too clear how the patriarchy sets up women to fail.  Yet Perrotta reminds us that, in many ways, it sets up men to fail too.  No character is all good or bad, and that's what makes Perrotta's storytelling so realistic.  Regardless of the obstacles these troubled souls face, they do the best with what they've got.      

And that's always worth voting for.