Discover Top Posts Tagged with #election (1999)

Have you seen Election (1999)?

Yes

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onOct 16, 2025

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election (1999)

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What I watched: Election (1999)

I discovered this film because of Fantasy High: Junior Year, and the comparison between the character of Kipperllily Copperkettle and Tracy Flick.

The first scene during the generic is a montage of the morning routine of Matthew Broderic's character and Tracy Flick. However, where the teacher's action are show in full, and his face clearly visible, Tracy's action are shown in a close up, her face obscured and a harsh sound accompany each of her movement. The framing builds empathy for the teacher, but deny it for Tracy.

That's the movie in a nutshell. The message of the film is not "people are motivated by selfish desire despite how much they deny it" it is "people who have selfish desire are more deserving of empathy." Of all the four narrators, Tracy Flick's inner life is the one that is the least explore. In fact, there are many women in the narrative, yet the film tends to be (not always!) from the viewpoint of the male characters.

I have seen an interesting argument that the movie has sympathie for it's women character because they all end up in a better place at the end of the film after the creeps are forced to leave. That is true, but my reply is that the way the scenes are presented, the way they are filmed, gives more sympathy to the male characters then the female ones.

What is interesting is that Tracy's narration says the relationship with the math teacher was mutual, then the next scene contradict it. That is something the film does a few time, it's part of the "people lie to themselves" idea. So the relationship is presented as predatory. But the film never really explore the consequence on Tracy. The film is just not interested in her perspective.

#election 1999 #matthew broderick #reese witherspoon #Tracy Flick #Kipperlilly copperkettle #d20 fantasy high #fantasy high junior year #rat grinders #cw: grooming

Cross of Iron (1977) / Election (1999)

#cross of iron #election 1999 #the tracy flick sergeant steiner parallels... the same character tbh

Election (1999)

#cinema #movies #film #movie #cinematography #cinemetography #election movie #election 1999 #reese witherspoon #matthew broderick #tracy flick #election #chris klein #best comedy movie #possibly

favorite girl who is weird about sex characters/media 👀

i think this is in relation to smth i retweeted about repressed girls, and after giving it quite a bit of thought, my favorite such iteration is tracy flick from election (1999). she's this mega-uptight, over achieving and obsessive type A high school student who is kind of a neurotic loner and weirdo and only cares about success and winning (she is jokingly/not jokingly modelled after young hillary clinton) and i absolutely loved her back in the day for being so unapologetic and obsessive and ambitious. even though she's not exactly likable, you do end up sympathizing with her quite a bit (or like me, you love her unconditionally) because the adults around her are much worse, actually, and the fact that she is a teenager who is trying her best in a really unfair, cut-throat world makes you kind of root for her. i sure did, even though i could see her many faults. and i kind of include her in the category of characters who are weird about sex, because tracy finds a strange sort of erotic fulfilment in her ambition and drive; there's this wonderful scene where she's alone at school one evening and starts tearing down the posters of a kid who is running against her for school president while an ennio morricone western theme plays in the background, and at the end she stares down at her bleeding hands, it's *chef's kiss*.

there's also a subplot about an older teacher who groomed her, banking on the fact that the nerdy over-achieving girl is always lonely, and tracy seems to derive pleasure out of psychoanalyzing this affair, sort of being self-aware about it, while also pointing out that what she liked most about it were the intellectual conversations between her and this older man. it's played as dark satire, but i also see it as tracy's coping mechanism. the true fantasy for her is power through intellectual fulfilment. and i find that really neat!!

(and if you grew up in the early 00s and you were a neurotic, self-punishing nerd like me, this character spoke to you in so many ways)

#tracy flick #replies #election 1999 #my thoughts

also, i don't get how tracy flick is supposed to be the villain. i understand that she's the antagonist to mcallister's protagonist, but there's about half an hour left in this movie and she hasn't done anything particularly monstrous. she has... torn down posters? she tore down some posters and let someone else take the fall for it.

#election 1999 #tracy flick #like im sorry but she's so not the villain here. jim mcallister is fantasizing about a high school junior and needs to be dead.