Film Review: KID CANDIDATE: Irony Breeds Authenticity in a Tale of Modern Political Campaigning [SXSW 2021]

Kid Candidate Review

Kid Candidate (2021) Film Review from the 28th Annual South By Southwest Film Festival, a movie directed by Jasmine Stodel, and featuring Hayden Pedigo, L’Hannah Pedigo, Jeff Blackburn, Ginger Nelson, David Lovejoy, Tim Heidecker, Agol Aloak, and Claudia Stravato.

If there’s anything that coming of age on the Internet has taught us millennials and zoomers, it’s the sociological potency of irony. Doing or not doing something just because it’s weird, unexpected, and simply for “the lulz” is our generation’s way of toeing the line of authenticity. We’re not necessarily afraid to throw our hearts into something or rally behind a cause, but we want to test the waters first to make sure it’s for us … even if our way of doing that is with a shitpost.

This sort of road to self-discovery is at the heart of Jasmine Stodel’s Kid Candidate, a new documentary that eschews tradition in favor of paving new paths toward political awakening in modern-day America.

The doc follows 24-year-old Hayden Pedigo and his run for city council in Amarillo, Texas, in the spring of 2019. Prior to his foray into politics, Pedigo – a bank worker and musician by trade – spent his free time filming comedic skits with his friends around town. In one, inspired by the infamous provocations of Harmony Korine, Pedigo leapt, stomped, and crawled around Amarillo with a tape measure to see if things “measured up” to equitable standards. Not really expecting much to come of it, Pedigo enjoyed the attention he got when the video – which looks like a local ad ripped straight from a VHS recording of a broadcasting station’s Saturday matinee block in the 1990s – suddenly went viral. But he started to wonder if he should take that attention and “turn it into something more important”, to use his temporary spotlight to incite change within his own northern Texas community.

With the support of his friends, his wife, and a fire-brand, constantly-vaping campaign advisor, Pedigo starts his city council campaign in earnest. He refuses to collect donations out of respect for his fellow twentysomethings who are barely scraping by as it is, and for his nearly singular commitment to get money out of politics. His dedicated fanbase spurs him on and his welcoming and laidback demeanor brings more younger constituents (many of whom are self-admitted first-time [local] voters) out of the woodworks. Simultaneously, he begins to form a more cogent politic as a result of his voter outreach, making him all the more dedicated to his cause.

But the race begins to wear on Pedigo the longer it goes on, as he finds his no-budget campaign can’t always churn out a decent defensive line to his longtime incumbents’ six figure PAC funding. With his long-suppressed self-doubt bubbling up as the election booths are about to open, Pedigo wonders if he and his town will ever be able to break their corporate stranglehold over their Texas town, and if his work will all be for naught.

Pedigo’s emotional growth and intellectual development is a case study in how The Youth of Today™ engage with politics, and why in the latter half of the past decade they’ve been getting more vocal about it.

For a generation that’s been sold an individualistic dream of success wherein politics was something they rarely had to think about, it’s getting harder for them to ignore the fact that politics rarely benefits them in the first place. It’s also hard to shrug off how the aforementioned “dream” has faded into an unending nightmare of neoliberal economics that’s further fueled burgeoning class and cultural divides.

These very ills divide Pedigo’s Amarillo, keeping the primarily Black and lower-class communities in poverty on the north side of the city while the town’s coffers are funneled to the affluent white communities on the south side – overseen, of course, by the corporate-friendly politicians from City Hall, whose influence is constantly reinstated by the looming Amarillo Matters political action committee.

It’s very easy to get “blackpilled” on this reality, using a detached sense of irony to make that fact go down with less pain. But that “pill” is also a time-release capsule of political radicalization, and the irony is a nothing but its smooth placebo coating. Granted, irony poisoning is a thing and too much of it can lead you down a very wrong path (something I can only hope featured persona and fellow Adult Swim producer Tim Heidecker is well aware of), but when dosed correctly it can lead to productive activist work beyond just dirtbag-left trolling.

This slow awakening is what feeds into Pedigo’s own political journey: he can’t pretend his townspeople’s plights don’t exist and feels like he needs to do something about it beside just making silly Internet videos. Nevertheless, this awakening of his is still a new psychological fit and he undoubtedly fumbles in it from time to time – particularly with his tiptoeing around the specifics of Amarillo’s/America’s racial and class inequalities and only occasionally dropping buzzwords like “progressive” and “spending” with little commitment (the former of which he says in his closing statements at a local Tea Party meeting he was invited to, much to the chagrin of its MAGA-clad attendees). He’s also very much hindered by the psychological toll of his conservative Christian past, as well as his dysfunctional relationship with his family, which makes him reluctant to evolve too much and become too rigid whilst in the public spotlight.

But he’s certain of one thing: politics as it exists in Amarillo (and America) today doesn’t work for a lot of people, and that needs to change. While Pedigo might not be the most illustrious orator of his townspeople’s particular ailments, his basic acknowledgment of them – coupled with his open demeanor – gives him an in-route into Amarillo that the establishment incumbents don’t have. He rides on his own and others’ dedication to see his hometown flourish, subscribing to the goal of discovering “what can we do with where we’re planted” rather than sending Amarillo out to corporate-controlled pasture.

But this isn’t a shoddy hit-job against a small Texas town elite, as Stodel gives each side their time to shine and said elite are more than happy take themselves out. Whether they openly shill for the Amarillo Matters PAC or weaponize their own identities to decry the hardships of political office, they seem blatantly naïve to how they’re digging their own optical grave. In particular: seeing the incumbent, PAC-supported mayor Ginger Nelson say she grew up “middle class” whilst sitting in her large, hyper-furnished home, and tear up as she discusses her vulnerability to public critique while juxtaposed with a relatively tame attack ad that’s just a parody of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” is honestly funny on a deep level (even though it’s also a mask-off example of white femininity being utilized to uphold positions of power).

As a fellow twentysomething who also grew up in a world that hammered in apathetic stoicism above all else, it’s always inspiring to see stories wherein genuine care inspires people’s decisions beyond self-serving means. If this is the future of our country’s politics, then I think we’re in good hands.

Review: 8/10

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