Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Slay the Dragon’ on Hulu, a (Mostly) Upbeat Political Documentary About Gerrymandering

Now on Hulu, Slay the Dragon is a rah-rah political documentary shaking the pompoms for citizen activism. In this case, the issue is gerrymandering, one of the approximately 300 trillion tiny cuts that’s slowly bleeding American democracy dry. I’ll attempt to explain the concept as simply as possible: It’s a rotten load of manure. I’ll try again with more detail: It’s a practice that politicians undertake to redraw states’ district lines to benefit a chosen party. That’s why, when you look at a district map, the lines look like they’ve been drawn by a six-year-old who doesn’t know how to use a straightedge. Am I doing gerrymandering any justice? Maybe, but gerrymandering probably isn’t doing you any justice, which is the assertion of this movie.

SLAY THE DRAGON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The film opens in Flint, Michigan. You know the place: Famous for having lead-tainted water, the result of a dirty political deal. Thousands were poisoned; some died. It’s a result of a series of events that began with gerrymandering — a series of events too complicated to get into here, but that the movie outlines quite plainly. Does it have to do with Republicans being in power and subverting the will of voters as a direct result of redrawing district lines to assure they’re reelected and therefore hold onto that power? Of course it does.

If Katie Fahey was mad about this, she sure doesn’t show it. She’s a smiley, optimistic Michigander who blindly threw a post about gerrymandering on her Facebook wall and ended up founding Voters not Politicians, a grassroots organization that overcame considerable odds to get a proposition to end the practice on the statewide ballot. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Republicans engaged in the same skullduggery, and because gerrymandering allows them to vote for unpopular legislation and not be held accountable by voters, they gutted workers’ union rights. Such action prompted a group of homegrown activists and lawyers to formulate a legal argument against gerrymandering, which went all the way to D.C., to the Supreme Court.

Slay the Dragon alternates between these two narratives, interjecting some as-clear-as-possible context about the long history of gerrymandering — how the name derived from a 19th-century Massachusetts governor named Elbridge Gerry (with a hard “G,” amusingly), what “cracking” and “packing” means, the strategies both Republicans and Democrats but mostly Republicans use to manipulate the maps, etc. Some of it is enraging, e.g., the Flint deal, the disregard for core values of constitutional democracy, the institutional racism. And some of it is funny, because the meticulously nitpicked district lines sometimes resemble cartoon characters or animals in shape, although they’re all theoretically shaped like a middle finger in the face of voters.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pick a modern political enragement doc, pick any political enragement doc: ACLU doc The Fight, voting-machine cybersecurity doc Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections, propaganda doc After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News, etc.

Memorable Dialogue: “Goofy kicking Donald Duck” — the unofficial name of a bizarrely shaped district in Pennsylvania, which is funny, except it really isn’t.

Sex and Skin: None, unless you want to count voters getting f—ed.

Our Take: There’s a scene late in the film where Fahey, stressed that the gerrymandering proposal won’t be allowed on the Michigan ballot, records a video for her mass of social media followers and breaks down in tears — what if the people really don’t have the power, like they’re supposed to? Slay the Dragon ultimately shows that they do. Maybe the people’s footing is shakier than ever, but in Fahey’s case, their voices were heard, and we don’t have to shovel dirt atop the coffin of American democracy yet.

Directors Chris Durrance and Barak Goodman wisely opt more for a shiny-happy tone and end on an up beat rather than taking the gloom-and-doom we’re-all-gonna-die route. They build some suspense as their subjects experience the ups and downs of their righteous, but humble crusades, landing at tense scenes of Fahey watching election results come in and a Wisconsin lawyer couple refreshing their browsers for a Supreme Court decision. It’s not hard to be drawn in by these stories.

Crucially, the film doesn’t get too far out in the weeds while explaining gerrymandering and its wonkier qualities — it’s visually dynamic with all its colorful geographic graphics, and features some passionate and compelling talking heads to explain things without talking down to anybody. It won’t alienate viewers, and might serve as an excellent primer on the topic for the uninitiated. Of course, it’s inevitably partisan, not because a blank sheet of paper is partisan in 2020, but because the little people make great underdog protagonists, and Republicans make great self-serving villains. Durrance and Goodman don’t just interview lefties; a couple of righties make brief appearances, including Chris Jankowski, a Republican who outlines the strategies the party took in 2010 (amusingly dubbed the “steroid era” of gerrymandering). You’ll wish they pushed him more on the ethics of gerrymandering, but the subtext of his commentary is, if you’re a corrupt POS, all’s fair in politics.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Slay the Dragon is a moderately rousing David-vs.-Goliath doc addressing something that’s one of the far, far, far too many absolutely relevant issues of the day. Watch it, and be thankful it’s idealistic.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Slay the Dragon on Hulu