Review: 'Boys State' Assesses the Entrenched Demagoguery of American Politics
“A message of unity —as good as it sounds and as good as it ultimately is for our country — is not winning anyone any elections.”
“TEXAS BOYS STATE VOTES TO SECEDE FROM UNION,” read a headline from the June 26th, 2017 edition of The Washington Post.
“On June 15, the boys marched to the Texas State Capitol to vote on the legislation…The speaker of the house read the bill on the floor…The bill won approval in the House and passed in the Senate in a vote of 44-1, with 3 abstentions. Videos of the scene show the boys erupting in applause when one of the legislators announces the final tally and slams the gavel down.”
In the program’s eighty-two year history, across all fifty states, never had a class of Boys State attendees voted to leave the union. Perhaps it was to be expected. In the wake of the 2016 election — an election marked for its historic and deeply unsettling outcome — and while the aura of probable improbability was still fresh in everyone’s mind, a mock legislature made up of 1,100 high schoolers carried out a vote long floated by Texas politicians for years and succeeded where they could not.
Ranging from the age of sixteen to eighteen, these highly regarded individuals selected by the American Legion hold the most promise in becoming America’s next class of male leaders hailing from the Lone Star state, and for one week, in the middle of summer, they converge on the Texas state capital to participate in a simulated state government.
Maybe their vote was a declarative act against political disenfranchisement. Maybe a continued disruption of political norms taking place within the tumultuous landscape. Or maybe, like the 2016 Republican presidential campaign, it was simply a joke taken too far. Who knows? The intent of these hormone fueled teens is best left to conjecture, but the unprecedented outcome was enough to draw the eyes of Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss who descended upon the simulation the following year with a documentary crew to find answers.
Their efforts gave us Boys State, the secondary film in the A24 / Apple distribution deal that sold for a head-turning $12 million at this year’s Sundance and walked away with the Grand Jury Prize. Naturally, there was an inclination to know why.
It’s no moot point that politics drive our daily conversation. You wake up each morning, open up Twitter, and see what new hell awaits you. Day in and day out. In this environment, a documentary that holds a political mirror to ourselves is probably worth $12 million to the world’s most valuable company — though truthfully that ticket price is nothing more than an accounting error when you’re worth $1.928 trillion. The idea that we’d find a kernel of truth in this simulated game designed to pad the resumes of future overachievers is where Boys State manages to expose more deep-seated, more pervasive issues of the American political system.
After settling in and getting past the awkward ice breaker introduction, the boys are split into two groups — Federalists and Nationalists — and subsequently subdivided into counties and cities. They elect party leaders, nominate candidates to run for office positions, and draft legislature to be voted on, all-the-while competing against the other party to fill the most coveted positions, namely state governor.
Enter our shifting leads. Robert MacDougal (Nationalist), a future West Point commit with a demeanor straight out of Sigma Alpha Epsilon who makes an early bid for governor. Ben Feinstein (Federalist), an ambitious party chair with a cut throat, win-at-all-costs mentality that includes, but is not limited to, slinging mud across the aisle if needed. Rene Otero (Nationalist), party chair opposite Feinstein with a glowing charisma and a righteous perseverance. And finally Steven Garza (Nationalist), a first generation American-born citizen who campaigns for governor on principled virtues and honest public service and represents the best in all of us.
The story of these four individuals are intertwined, frequently crossing at various points along the campaign trail and often finding each other on opposite ends of a debate stage. It is here within their inflammatory rhetoric, politicized motives, and individualized goals that Boys State finds its kernel of truth. Up and down the line, tweets and article headlines call Boys State a “microcosm” of the American political system, and while that may be true to some degree, that might be too reductive for our government. Truthfully, the film’s message feels much narrower.
Front and center is entrenched demagoguery in American politics, a facet so pervasive in our system that it has permeated the minds of the nation’s youth. Candidates like MacDougal campaign on hyper-masculine appeals because the voter base eats it up. Unconditional protection for the second amendment and the criminalization of abortion — a position MacDougal rationalizes because there are loving couples who would gladly adopt the child — become inflamed by boisterous, roaring speeches that draw cheers from the crowd not because they make sense, but because they tap into the fears and passions of the electorate. Feinstein and the Federalists run on verifiably false information and overblown scandal just so they can demonize the opposition while contributing little in the realm of civil discourse. Their actions make clear that in Boys State, as with American politics, demagoguery is the name of the game.
Conversely, this inflammatory behavior contrasts with the campaigns of Otero and Garza, highlighting just how effective a demagogue can be when political ignorance pervades a constituency. Otero adhere to the political norms and rules of his position only to receive flack from the opposition and fellow Nationalists. Most tragic of all is how Garza upholds the ideals of our political system — honor, decorum, fair representation, etc. — only to face exploitative and manipulative attacks from his political opponent, Eddie Conti. While the election results reveal the film’s ultimate punctuation on this theme, audiences can see early on that the grip of a demagogue is much stronger than that of a rational human being, something the 2016 election made painfully obvious.
In the end, Boys State rounds out with a message of optimistic unity, that through our nation’s youth we will one day be able to bridge the aisle in ways our current leaders cannot. Frankly, this feel-good tonic doesn’t sit well these days. As seen in the doc and in real life, the influence of a demagogue trumps rational thought, and the result is much more serious than political impasse. Blatant corruption corrodes the very institutions that are supposed to help us. Political slander and ethnic attacks replace empathy and moral backbone. Rarely is contention a matter of political difference when in reality it’s the lack of basic human decency. The one thread that sticks even weeks after seeing Boys State is that as long as there are leaders like Steven Garza, leaders who are willing to fight for what is truly right and progressive, then we should all be willing to reciprocate their effort.
