Boys State (2020)
dir. Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Apple TV+
Filmmaker Jesse Moss considers Harlan County, USA to be the high-water mark of documentary filmmaking. You can see that influence all over Boys State, the new documentary that Moss directed with his wife and frequent collaborator, Amanda McBaine. The film is a masterful piece of observational, verité cinema. It’s every bit as engrossing as Harlan County – although the stakes of that film, about striking coal miners in Kentucky, are literally life-and-death – and carries on the grand tradition of the direct cinema approach of the Maysles Brothers and Frederick Wiseman. Moss and McBaine’s largely fly-on-the-wall approach exposes the deepest flaws in our democracy – and the flaws of how we teach it to our children – while offering a fascinating inside look at a society with a one-week lifespan.
Once a year in each US state, local American Legion chapters select participants for their Boys State and Girls State civics program from among the eligible high school student applicants. Those selected participate in a week-long camp that hopes to teach the future leaders of the country about how the work of their state-level government is done. They form political parties from the ground up, collect signatures to run for office, run campaigns, and hold mock elections. The highest office in each camp that the students can run for is governor. Boys State follows a few of the participants in the Texas version of this program, which is held in the state’s capital, Austin. The American Legion uses some of the state capital grounds for the camp, and the students even hold mock legislative sessions in the actual Texas congressional chamber.
Moss and McBaine’s film isn’t pure direct cinema. The directors make editorial decisions and craft a narrative, but much of the footage in Boys State relies on the cameras simply capturing events as they unfold. The camp splits the 1,100 students into two political parties, the Federalists and the Nationalists. From there, each party forms smaller political groups based on Texas’s county and municipal political structure.
The most unsettling thing about Boys State is seeing our current political climate reflected in the opinions and, more importantly, the strategies these high school students use in their political campaigns during the camp. The film opens with a scene of a teacher lecturing some of the students on Neil Postman’s seminal book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Late in the film, we see one party use an Instagram account to hurl racist memes to attack an opponent. Postman’s warnings of facile distraction taking the place of meaningful political discourse is on full display.
You might be able to dismiss this as the behavior of immature high school students, if not for the tragic similarities to both the 2016 American presidential campaign and the current hellscape of the 2020 campaign. The next generation is learning well what we are teaching them, which is a horrifying prospect.
Boys State shines a light on how flawed this American Legion project is, and, by comparison, how flawed our actual political system is as well. The project doesn’t stress civic engagement with ideas or forming fact-based arguments that require the students to think about why they believe what they believe. Instead, the American Legion project focuses on party identification, process, and the zero-sum sport that exemplifies the worst of our political process. It’s a fast-track to demagoguery and group-think. Moss and McBaine slyly open the film with a quote from George Washington about the corrupting influence of unquestioning fealty to political parties. It’s the perfect preface to set the stage for what follows.
The filmmakers also craft some real emotional human stakes in the picture.
We meet Ben, a self-described “politics junkie” who idolizes Ronald Reagan. The American ideals of personal responsibility and rugged individualism have so permeated Ben’s identity that he sees the loss of both his legs to a childhood case of meningitis as proof that anyone can overcome any obstacle through personal strength alone. Ben sees focusing on identity and systemic injustice as a counterproductive waste of time.
Rob, one of the students running for governor, has a cynical approach to winning in politics. In one of the film’s few talking-head interviews, Rob makes a stunning admission. He is personally pro-choice, but he’s read the room of his assigned political party, and he knows he has a much greater chance of securing his party’s nomination if he takes a pro-life stance, which he does. The democracy we’ve created, and teach to our future leaders, is a blood sport, and as Ben says at one point, “It’s politics, you play to win.”
Texas is a deeply conservative state – I speak from personal experience; Texas has been my home since the age of five – and Boys State focuses on a few of the students who go against the dominant ideology. René, a black student and recent transplant from Chicago, has never seen so many white people in one place. He is unapologetic in his liberal views and sees it as his duty to confront his fellow campmates with perspectives they’ve never considered. He never backs down, even though he is the target of the racist social media campaign.
Then there’s Steven, a Latinx student who was galvanized to become politically active by the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign and a school shooting in his hometown of Houston. A quiet, introspective kid who becomes the gubernatorial candidate for the Nationalist party, Steven is the de facto hero of the movie. He isn’t immune to the effects of party loyalty and politicking – he must pay tribute to the sanctity of the second amendment even though he supports universal background checks and sensible gun restrictions – but he is ultimately true to his core beliefs.
Steven also comes across as a much more serious and contemplative young man than most of his fellow Boys State colleagues. He stands out for his heartfelt speeches and stances when compared to campaign platforms that range from merely facile – “I stand for freedom.” – to disturbing and toxic – “Our masculinity will not be infringed!”
The massive group chants during party rallies – to say nothing of the win-at-all-costs, party-over-all ethos that the camp fosters – is chilling. It’s more so when you consider how many of these 1,100 boys would gleefully legislate their views onto an oppressed group’s bodies without ever considering their own privilege in the matter.
I won’t spoil the climax of Boys State, the election results of the governor’s race. But, considering the point the film is making about how sensationalism and group-think reigns in modern politics, I probably don’t have to. Steven runs a sincere, earnest campaign. One of the (slight) flaws of Boys State is that we never quite get to know his opponent. The film instead focuses more on that party’s power brokers – like Ben – and their political machinations behind the scenes.
I recently said to a friend that I thought we should hand over the running of the world to women for about 500 years or so, since men have been running things up until now to fairly disastrous, petty, spiteful, and regressive results. I’m sure Moss and McBaine decided to follow the Boys State version of this camp because men still have vastly more power in shaping political policy in both America and the world. But it would have been instructive to see the Girls State version. I recently heard it described in an interview that when it comes to institutions, women form collaboratives and men form hierarchies. Boys State shows us the world as it is, to engrossing and fascinating effect. Girls State, however, might have shown us the world as it could be.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Some pretty fascinating and horrifying stuff here. Moss and McBaine get a little lost in observing things (I really would have liked to get to know Steven’s gubernatorial opponent better), but this documentary is never boring. For better or worse, it’s a window on what the future of politics will look like for all of us.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Individualism is a cancer. There, I said it. The fanatical belief in every-person-for-themselves holds us back as a species from achieving anything truly great.
- If I get the message accurately from the right-wing Ben, to critique America for anything it has ever done wrong or is currently doing wrong is to hate America. I think it’s a way to be an adult in the world and hold institutions and leaders accountable, but that’s just me.
- Keep an eye on Steven Garza. That kid is going places.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Another Apple+ original (to which they picked up the rights along side A24). It was a great acquisition; Boys State is perhaps one of the best documentaries of the year.