Great Characters: Tracy Flick (“Election”)
Matthew Broderick’s character high school civics teacher Jim McAllister may the Protagonist of the 1999 comedy Election, but the most memorable character in the story is Tracy Flick:
In a terrific performance by Reese Witherspoon, Flick is an interesting Nemesis, a young woman who would have been perfectly satisfied to leave McAllister alone — that is until he got in her way. A plot summary from IMDB:
Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year’s high school student election. But school civics teacher Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks popular varsity football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well. Chaos ensues.
Chaos is right as Tracy is a force of nature when it comes to achieving her goals. Check out this side of dialogue:
You might think it upset me that Paul Metzler had decided to run against me but nothing could be further from the truth. He was no competition for me; it was like apples and oranges. I had to work a little harder, that’s all, see I believe in the voters; they understand that elections aren’t just popularity contests, they know this country was built by people just like me who work very hard and don’t have everything handed to them on a silver spoon. Not like some rich kids who everybody likes because their fathers owns Metzlers cement and give them trucks on their 16th birthday and throw them big parties all the time. No, they don’t ever have to work for anything. They think they can just all of a sudden one day out of the blue waltz right in with no qualifications what’s so ever and try to take away what other people have worked very, very hard for their entire lives. No, it didn’t bother me at all.
And this one:
I don’t know what you’re referring to, but maybe if certain older, wiser people hadn’t acted like such little babies, and gotten so mushy, then everything would be ok… and I think certain older people, like you, and your colleague, shouldn’t be leching after their students, especially when some of them can’t even get their own wives pregnant… and they certainly shouldn’t be making slanderous accusations, especially when certain young, naive peoples’ mothers are paralegal secretaries at the cities biggest law firm, and have won many successful law suits, and if you want to keep questioning me like this, I won’t continue without my attorney present.