“Since 1935, the American Legion sponsored a program for teenagers to learn about democracy and civil discourse through a week-long experiment in self-governance. There are separate programs for boys and girls.”
So begins the Sundance-award-winning 2020 film Boys State, directed and produced by documentarians Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine. In this film the audience will follow a group of rowdy sixteen- to eighteen-year-old Texas boys, giving us a small glimpse into the next generation of future voters and potential budding politicians.
A documentary is only as strong as its cast of characters, and Moss and McBaine have been successful in honing in on boys who reflect a diverse set of perspectives and backgrounds. We are introduced to Ben—an ambitious bilateral amputee who idolizes Reagan, Steven—an idealist sporting a Beto t-shirt whose family immigrated to America from Mexico with hopes of a brighter future, Robert—a people-pleasing West Point hopeful donning his newly bought bitcoin boots, and Rene—an eloquent speaker with progressive views whose identity as both a young black man and a liberal put him squarely in the minority group of these thousand political hopefuls. These four young men will become our lens through which we view this long-running social and political experiment.
From the outset we are presented with an interesting dichotomy. As some boys audition for the talent show with their best saxophone melodies and take on interpretive dance, others scramble for votes to have a chance at winning the coveted 2018 governorship. Some solicit candidacy signatures through push-up contests and small talk, while others use access to the teen operated radio station to get their message across. Even when the legislature has been formed, policies positions range from the silly—banishing all Texas Prius drivers to Oklahoma—to the substantive—universal background checks for gun ownership. There’s something strange about watching seventeen-year-old boys plot party domination over a bowl of Fruit Loops in the lunchroom.
It doesn’t take long for the dirty politics to come to the surface—from accusations of party bias to shadow-operated Twitter accounts posting racist memes, all the way to talk of impeachment. It’s easy to view this incivility as a product of the immaturity of the subjects in question. What can you expect from a group of keyed up high schoolers playing a low-stakes seven-day political game? Does it even matter in the grand scheme of things?
But game or not, these boys are a reflection of the politicians we see today. They are students of what they have seen play out in our larger political world, and this is their test on the material. Maybe some of them have seen that often victory isn’t achieved through honesty or open-mindedness to new ideas, but through mud-slinging and personal accusations. Who are their political heroes—Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Joe Manchin, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump? This informs their strategies.
It’s easy to go into this film immediately picking teams. In our polarized political environment, I know that I had instant favorites—I found myself nodding along the moment one boy got on stage to speak and cringing at some of the others. But as our characters got into the more intimate confessionals where their audience was merely a camera rather than their peers, the complexities of their ideologies and motives were much more nuanced. These one-on-one moments were one of the films greatest tools. It gave the viewer an opportunity to examine the differences between public persona versus private thought and to realize that initial impressions can be misleading.
It’s difficult to guess what message any particular individual might take from this film. Perhaps all the Machiavellian scheming can be justified as long as the end result is a political triumph from some viewers’ perspectives. Others might find the boys’ lack of integrity to be a troubling forecast for the future of democracy in our country. A few may see young men who represent some possibility of hope—some chance of civility and compromise for our future. Are you a Ben or a Rene? A Robert or a Steven? Regardless of your worldview, this is a film worth watching because it asks as many questions as it answers.
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