Of Tykes and Tyrants: Elementary Democracy

The Orwellian oratory of Cheng Cheng in "Please Vote for Me" fails to win over his classmates in the race to become class monitor. (Silverdocs)

"Please Vote for Me" -- equal parts charmer and bitter exposé -- is a compact Chinese documentary about democracy that is likely to emerge as one of the favorite films in this year's Silverdocs festival, which began yesterday. It's hard to know exactly how much serious sociology one should read into this film -- which follows the campaigns of three third-graders hoping to be elected class monitor -- given that the data is confined to a single elementary school in the city of Wuhan, a metropolis about the size of London.

The students competing for the position, which empowers the lucky winner to terrorize his or her classmates, are all privileged offspring of China's increasingly prosperous bourgeoisie. Cheng Cheng is a chubby brat, drawn like a moth to his video games. Xiaofei, the only girl among the candidates, is pampered, hardworking and plays by the rules, but she is clearly too sensitive for the vicious tussle of third-grade politics. And Luo Lei, a former class monitor who seeks a new term, is a wiry bully whose power stems in part from his parents' high position in town.

It's an ugly campaign season, a mix of talent show, debate, old-fashioned politicking and dirty tricks. It's part "American Idol," part "Survivor." Cheng Cheng urges his supporters to mock Xiaofei so unmercifully she can hardly make it through her first speech. Then, in an appalling act of hypocrisy, he denounces his own thugs, who are brought weeping to justice. The battle is quickly reduced to a contest between the boys, Luo Lei and Cheng Cheng, whose debate is an eerily scripted exchange of Orwellian platitudes. Luo Lei must resort to graft -- a free trip for his whole class, organized by his parents, which helps turn the tide in his favor.

A cynical reading of this film, and the reading that director Weijun Chen clearly invites, would see dark days ahead for any kind of nascent democracy in China. It is not about empowerment or meritocracy but a contest between the old communist elites and the new capitalist managerial class. The children are drawn to power and privilege, not to reform or the exchange of ideas. Democracy emerges merely as a tool for choosing new autocratic leaders. The entire function of the class monitor, we learn at the end of the film, is to ensure conformity. The teachers and parents who manipulate this supposedly pedagogical lesson in democracy are simply underscoring the age-old attractions of realpolitik.

But hey, these are third-graders. Kids can be ugly, vicious little beasts, which is why adults are needed to teach and constrain them. There's a good reason we don't set the age of majority at 9 or 10. Would third-graders in this country behave any differently?

And would parents in this country, parents intent on getting their little ones into the best pre-kindergarten program as the first step on a relentless march to Harvard, behave much differently from the cynical schemers of "Please Vote for Me"?

Democracy and free markets tend to go together, the former ideally designed to ensure some kind of individual liberty, access to power and equality, the latter tending to reward ambition, connections and luck. The Chinese have enjoyed a taste of free markets, without much democracy, so naturally their prism for understanding the interplay of both systems favors the relentless pursuit of materialism and position.

The pendulum between these two forces has swung in both directions, in this country, as in every other democracy. Perhaps these third-graders will be more sophisticated about democracy when they are their parents' age. Or perhaps not. Democracy isn't exactly on the march these days.

Part of the problem with this film is the sheer cleverness of its initial conceit -- the close observation of a typically numbskull bit of participatory education. While holding a school election is all good fun (except for the losers and everyone bullied in the process), these kids would have been better served by studying democracy historically and theoretically, rather than enacting a preteen parody of it.

In the end, "Please Vote for Me" has a too-good-to-be-true air to it. Weijun Chen, whose previous film was a documentary about AIDS in China, had extraordinary access to the children and their families. But the slick, funny parable that emerges from that access feels almost too glib. It's entertaining, to be sure, and if you want to walk away from this film feeling you've learned something profound about the soul of democracy in China, well, history may prove you right. But this film has the strength and weakness of so much narrative journalism: A good story, richly detailed, doesn't necessarily yield objective or even representative data, just as a documentarian's "experiment" in democracy shouldn't be confused with a sociologist's. The conclusions drawn should be modest and provisional.

Please Vote for Me (55 minutes), is unrated and entirely unobjectionable. It will be screened at the Silverdocs festival on Friday at 2 p.m. and Saturday at 1:30 p.m. For more information, go to http://Silverdocs.com.