The Dystopic Hippie Election Movie That Might Have Stopped the Twenty-sixth Amendment

max frost.jpg

Right now, Germany is considering eliminating its voting age requirement. This is a great idea. The American Scene had a post a few months ago explaining why crazy as it sounds at first, kids are no less irrational in their preferences than adults:

I think another age barrier would be just as senseless as the one we have now. Kids should be able to get the vote when they decide they want the vote. A child who is old enough to vote (and who is a better judge of that than himself?) should be able to walk into his friendly neighborhood voting registration office and register for himself.

Does this mean the FLDS could become a viable voting block? Well, maybe. But:

each electoral system is skewed a certain way. Britain’s first past the post system under-represents many groups, and of course much has been said about the American Electoral College (note that I support both first past the post and the Electoral College); proportional party list voting, supposed to be most representative, gives disproportionate influence to small, niche parties (Israel, anyone?). Today’s system essentially amounts to a vote subsidy (which then turns into a cash subsidy) to the old. Giving kids the vote would correct skewed voting, not introduce it.

With all these practicalities also taken into account, the final (and best) argument I can think of for giving kids the vote is simply one person one vote. It’s as simple as that. In a democracy, each person should have a vote. Children are persons. They should get the vote. The principle is straightforward enough, and I see no way to escape it.

You can read a lot of the comments here and here, but generally the only reason I think this could be a bad idea in practice is an obscure hippie dystopia-comedy called Wild in the Streets.

It’s based on a short story by Robert Thom (Death Race 2000) called “The Day it All Happened, Baby.” I can’t find the text online, but the title should give you some idea how it plays.

Rock star Max Frost wages a youth revolt after discovering “52% of America is under 25! They’re the minority! We’re the majority!” The kids rally together, first by electing the oldest of their friends to Congress. These 25 years old representatives make up a majority, and vote to lower the age limits. As Frost’s pothead girlfriend in a Paul Revere hat says, “Ask….for the constitution….to be…amended…to … uhh….” She bangs the drum. “We suggest the required age for a representative….be 14….for senete ….be 14….for president, 14.”

And they do it. Soon enough, Max Frost is elected United States president. “You’re part of that alcoholic generation, Dad,” a smirking kid says to his father, “But dig, I got the vote now, man.”

If you watch any of these YouTube clips, make it this one, with the campaign song, “14 or Fight”

It’s much stranger than The Trip or I Love You Alice B Toklas, or anything else I’ve seen from this era. Because rather than just playing out the absurdity of a twenty-something rock star president, things go all Lord of the Flies, and President Frost decides to send those old squares to internment camps where they are forced to take LSD. Cause they deserve it, those “sneaky panther olds!”

Everyone over the age of 30 is sent away, unless they pass as under 30 cause that means they’re cool, dig? “They’re heavy with honey and they can’t fly. You better believe me. they can’t fly!” President Frost explains to anyone who might think the internment camps are a touch insensitive.

Not to say he’s any less articulate than the sitting president, but the script clearly never saw a second draft. It’s chock full of gems like, “What about the chicks? nobody gave them the vote. they fought for it…we got the old tigers scared baby, because right now we outnumber the fuzz and we outnumber the shopkeepers…we can take them out, baby.”

It’s consistently bleak. Leading up to the grand idea of LSD camps, the “heads” joke about assasinating people in congress. And Shelley Winters has this disturbing LCD meltdown:

As you can see, she’s wearing a Peace sign patch on her sleeve. Hmm. Enforcing the LSD camps are black clad soldiers. The Holocaust insinuation becomes clearer when you watch some “olds” crying as they hide in a basement. Or maybe it’s an overblown comparison to slavery — they talk about finding an old person “underground railroad” to Mexico or Canada.

But hey, it’s cool. President Frost says, chill, he’s just trying to “create the most purely hedonistic society the world has ever known.”

Ummm….What exactly is this film trying to say?

Having watched it in its entirety, I am totally convinced this was all an elaborately staged pro-Nixon operation. And it’s a good thing it never found a wider audience, because it might have prevented the twenty-sixth amendment from passing three years later. “Hey man, we fight for our country at 18, we should vote at 18,” is a lot less convincing an argument coming from a tie-dye t-shirt-wearing dude with a pipe in his hand.

Wild in the Streets is the most coherent argument for political “experience” ever made. I’m now paranoid the GOP might find a way to start playing it on TBS Sunday afternoons as a super subversive Swiftboat attack. The Freepers, unsurprisingly, are at it, suggesting Barack Obama borrow the line “Who in America can resist the clarion call of youth? Never has it been so brazenly sounded. Experience? It has brought you nothing. Max Frost has told you that. Down with experience!” for his next speech.

Previously:

The New Wave of Neural-Advertising in Michael Crichton’s “Looker”
Oliver Stone’s Prescient SFnal Scientology Critique

Related links:

Posted by Joanne on Jul. 15, 2008 Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One Response to “The Dystopic Hippie Election Movie That Might Have Stopped the Twenty-sixth Amendment”

  1. Posted by: thatguy - 08/12/2008

    i am 14 myself, and i have my own views. unfortunately many of my peers dont. id imagine them voting for their parents choice just to make them happy. while the voting age should be lowered, theres a point where you just end up giving parents an extra vote. also the first video didnt work. and the full movie anywhere on the internet?

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