I happened to be living in Washington DC in 2008, at Scott Circle, just a few blocks from the White House. I remember being in the crowd on election night when a huge crowd outside the White House was chanting, ‘nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye’ to the soon to be outgoing president George W. Bush. The mood of excitement was like nothing I’d experienced before. Later, I was also at President Obama’s inauguration, where U2, Bon Jovi and others played. I’d been living in DC for a few years and had seen a lot of large political gatherings, but, again, the mood of expectation and the sense that something incredible was about to happen was palpable. Peter Zerzan’s short film, Election Night, is an attempt to recapture some of that sort of political excitement, but on a much smaller scale.
Instead of showing a group of supporters at election HQ as the news of victory is announced, Zerzan decided to focus in on two staff members at a random election office. All the volunteers had gone home for the night to await the results, but these two stayed behind. They strike up a conversation and discover that they have very different backgrounds.
There is a younger man and his superior. The younger man turns out to be a non-practicing Catholic and the woman seems to be a more devout Protestant. It’s not entirely clear why this turns out to be an important topic of conversation in Election Night. It is perhaps an attempt to demonstrate that certain politicians are able to draw from a number of different religious backgrounds, although I do not think that this is in question or surprising. It may, on the other hand, it may be an attempt to show that in the United States, religion always was, and continues to be, a very important part of civic life. This is more true of the US than most western democracies.
In the end, the younger man is perplexed that his boss has given up so much of her life to be involved in the all-consuming madness of one political campaign after another. The hours are long, she’s never been able to have a long term relationship or, we gather, have much of a life of her own at all. She reminisces fondly about 2008, with tears forming in her eyes.
When their candidate appears on the TV as the winner in the election, she gives a speech that involves a lot of quite common platitudes in her victory speech about fighting climate change, fighting for abortion rights, and maintaining the integrity of the electoral process and free elections. Clearly very inspired, the more senior campaigner exclaims that this is why she has devoted so much of her life to politics. These are all, of course, admirable causes and those who devote their lives to them should be applauded. Will the junior campaigner be swayed and now devote his own life to politics? We don’t know.
Perhaps this is the most interesting questions that the film poses: why is it that some people are drawn to politics to the extent that they will do some volunteering and go door to door a few nights, while others are willing to set aside their entire personal lives in order to fight for what they believe in? Does the latter group simply believe more deeply in helping others through the causes they fight for? It seems to me that even if the junior campaigner did care as much as the veteran, he might simply not have the capacity to do what she does. After all, not everyone is capable of putting in the sorts of hours this woman puts in. It may well be that what drives her is far more complex than anything that can be summed up in a few catchy phrases in a politician’s victory speech. Be that as it may, we should all be grateful that there are people like the veteran campaigner, since it is often these foot soldiers who are largely responsible for making ideals into reality.
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